Derpy's family moves to Ponyville, forcing her to make new friends and a life-changing decision.
Moving across Equestria was not what Derpy had in mind for her senior year of school. She left all her friends behind just before Hearth's Warming, and found herself in a new school. Now she has to make new friends, as well as prepare herself for life outside school, a task complicated by a decision she makes during Winter Wrap-Up.
A Gift from Celestia Prologue: Las Pegasus Admiral Biscuit
It was the last day of school before Hearth's Warming. The entire building was nearly ready to burst with pent-up tension; everypony was ready to take a week off.
Everypony, that is, except for Ditzy.
Unlike her classmates, who were looking forward to a week of celebration with their families and friends, followed by reaffirming the old cliques and exchanging stories of the prior week, for Ditzy it was the end of life as she knew it. Her mother had taken a temporary job in Ponyville—a town which she hated, even though she'd never been there. It was small, and it didn't have very many pegasi. She'd begged and pleaded to stay behind and finish out her school year in Las Pegasus, but her mother would have none of it.
Their house was as empty as her heart. The living room held no decorations and no presents; even the couch was gone. All of her belongings were packed, and she was living out of a suitcase in the empty husk of her bedroom. Their new home was smaller and at a lower altitude, and it certainly wasn't in a neighborhood filled with her foalhood friends.
The only upside to the day was that her teacher, a veteran of countless Hearth's Warming breaks, had already planned for the day to be a complete waste as far as actual teaching went, and her class was the merest formality. She'd allowed them to divide into groups and discuss the unification of the three tribes among themselves, with the help of a lavishly illustrated book. Since everypony had already looked through the book several times, it lay untouched. The lack of education didn't bother the teacher; she was sitting back in her chair with a copy of Under the Sparkling Sea in her hooves, completely engrossed in the adventure novel.
"I can't believe your mom is making you go to Ponyville," Raindrops whispered. "My mom would have let you stay with us—we've got, like, two bedrooms that we never use since my older sisters graduated."
"Yeah." Ditzy pushed her hoof across the table absently. "At least I don't have to look at all of Dazzle's stuff any more. She came and packed it all up. Even took Papa's old typewriter for some reason."
"So have you been there? To Ponyville? Seen the new house? Met anypony?"
"No, it's too far away to visit for a weekend. Mother's turned moving into a giant family get-together: we're leaving tonight and heading to her sister's house, and then from there we're going to stop by my uncle's the next day, and so on across the country. We'll be able to spend one day at home unpacking." Ditzy stuck her tongue out. "And then it's off to school for me."
"School? Still?" For the soon-to-be-graduates, official classes ended after Hearth's Warming, replaced with a three-week class in advanced cloudbusting, followed by on-the-job training. Most of the ponies would finish out their final year on the Winter Wrap-Up circuit, starting with the southern cities and moving their way north, supplementing the local weather patrols. Ditzy had been looking forward to it for years—until she got her cutie mark, she wasn't eligible for cloud duty, so she'd been stuck in Las Pegasus doing busy-work on the ground with all the other foals. Last year, she and Raindrops had talked about how much fun they were going to have . . . except it turned out they wouldn't be doing it together after all.
"Yeah. By Ponyville educational standards, I don't have enough 'general education.' Like, what's that all about? Papa wasn't real sure, but Mom said she'd get in trouble if I didn't go. She obviously cares about herself more than me."
"What the hay's 'general education'? You can read and write, and work with weather . . . what more is there to know? Unless it's all mudpony stuff, like how to clean your horseshoes and plant carrots and flowers and junk."
"It better not be." Ditzy dropped her head on the table. "I swear, if we have to plant anything 'cause it's spring, I'm gonna run away and fly back here. I don't care what Mom says."
"Planting stuff can't be all that bad, just dig a hole in the dirt and drop the seeds in, right? And then put a little cloud over it for water, and presto, it grows." She mimicked her words, digging a small hole in the top of the table with a hoof, and dropping a pencil in it. "Hey, I heard that cows live in little towns like Ponyville. Like, real live cows that sell milk and stuff."
"So?"
"I dunno." Raindrops closed her notebook and shoved it in her bag. "It's just that I've never seen a cow before."
"If I make friends with one, I'll have her write you," Ditzy said. "Maybe you can become pen pals. I don't think they have to go to school. I could paint spots all over my coat, and pretend I'm a cow."
Raindrops looked around quickly and lowered her voice. "I'm a cow! Moo! Milk me, oh yes, rub your hooves on my teats. I love being touched by a mudpony."
"You've been practicing," Ditzy whispered back. "Admit it, you want to bed a mudpony, have him hold you down, pin your wings to your sides, and—"
"As if." Raindrops rolled her eyes. "Everypony knows the best way is in the air. You can't get any sexier than that. I wanted to try once, but he chickened out, can you believe? He said he only wanted to do it in a bed or on a cloud. What a wuss." She sighed dramatically. "Someday I'll find a special somepony who wants to take a leap off a cloud with me."
"I'll be lucky to find anypony," Ditzy mumbled. "I bet there aren't any pegasi my age at the Ponyville school."
A Gift from Celestia Chapter 1: Ponyville Admiral Biscuit
There weren't.
The week of Hearth's Warming was over, and Ditzy had just landed in the playground of the Ponyville school, coming in for a neat landing by the swingset. As arrivals went, she couldn't have been more conspicuous unless she'd been accompanied by the Royal Guard or Princess Celestia Herself. A moment's observation revealed that she was the only grown pegasus at the school.
A gaggle of foals ran over to her, quickly mobbing her, drawn by the novelty of her arrival. The older students stayed where they were, observing from a distance and making their first judgements on the newcomer in their midst.
Ditzy sighed. If she'd walked to school, nopony would have paid her much mind, but it was too late now. She ignored the foals, looking around curiously at the other ponies her age. There weren't very many: a small cluster of mares up against the schoolhouse wall, where they were sheltered from the biting wind, and an all-blue stallion and two colts next to a pine tree.
She pressed her way through the cluster of foals and into the school, where a few students were already sitting at their desks. Ditzy stomped off her hooves on the mat, while glancing around the small room. A few dozen desks were scattered around the room in two groups, all focused on the chalkboard. Two rows of pegs—a tall row and a short row—lined the back wall, each with a name written above it. Ditzy scanned down the upper level until she saw her hook, and hung her hat and scarf up. Right above the peg was a cubby she guessed was for her lunch and other personal belongings.
She picked a seat at the back of the classroom, squeezing herself into the uncomfortable chair. Outside, she could hear an adult speaking, and shortly thereafter, the students who'd been gathered outside began filing into the classroom, noisily putting up their winter clothes before taking seats. Ditzy looked over as a rose-colored earth pony slid into the desk beside her.
"Hey, I'm Cherry Berry," she said, sticking out a hoof. "New in town, huh?"
"Yeah," Ditzy said, hesitating slightly before giving her a quick hoof-bump. "From Las Pegasus."
"Cool. I always wanted to go there."
"You? An earth pony?" Ditzy looked at her in confusion.
"A mare can dream," she said. "If you didn't know, the teacher's name is Play Write, but everypony calls her 'Pencils', 'cause that's what her cutie mark is."
"Pencils?"
"Yeah, but don't let her hear you calling her that. She doesn't like the nickname."
Ditzy looked back as the soft rumble of dozens of hooves shook the classroom floor. A pale yellow mare with a collar and tie was herding the foals into the building, glaring at them over her half-glasses. She glanced around the room, before clearing her throat. "Does anypony know where Applejack is today?"
"I do! She had to help clear an ice dam at the farm, and can't come in today."
"Thank you, Cheerilee. Would you be so kind as to stop by the farm on your way home and share the lesson with her?"
"Yes, Miss Write."
Teacher's pet, Ditzy thought. If this pitiful excuse for a school has an honor roll, I bet she's on it.
"Pay attention, class. We have a new student today; her name is Ditzy Doo. She's a pegasus."
Please don't ask me to get up and introduce myself, Ditzy thought.
"Ditzy, would you like to say a few words about yourself?"
I knew it . . . every teacher ever . . . "Um, I'm Ditzy. I'm from Las Pegasus, and, um, that's about it."
"Very good. Now, if everypony will take out a sheet of paper, we'll pick up with where we left off: division, which is the opposite of multiplication."
Ditzy sighed as she picked up her pencil. Who the hay needs to know division?
• • •
At lunchtime, she went to her cubby and pulled out the small bag containing her lunch: a sandwich and a carton of juice. When she turned to go back to her desk, she tripped over an energetic light-blue maned lavender filly, dropped the bag, took a side-step, and promptly stepped on her own lunch.
“Way to go, derpy hooves," a stallion's voice rang out.
Face hot, she turned to face the speaker. He was all blue—named Blue Bonnet if she remembered right. “It wasn’t my fault!”
“Sure it was.” He rolled his eyes up. “Cloud-brain.”
"She tripped me," Ditzy said, pointing to the filly.
"If you'd looked where you were going, you wouldn't have run into her," he replied. "I guess that's hard to do when your eyes are all derpy, though." He began twirling a hoof around his ear. "And bubbles—that's because you're a complete airhead, right?"
The two foals who'd been hanging out with him in the schoolyard began snickering. "I bet she runs into stuff all the time," one opined.
Ditzy bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. "I'm only here with you mudponies because my Mom got a job here," she hissed.
"Mudponies?" He bared his teeth. "Fly away, featherbrain. We don't want your kind here."
She jumped up and tackled him, forgetting that there were rules against flying and fighting while in school. She had also forgotten that earth ponies were much stronger than pegasi, although his kick to her belly only launched her back to hovering altitude. At that point, the fight began in earnest. The rest of the class circled around them, watching the combatants intently.
For a moment, Ditzy thought she had the upper hoof. Every time he rolled her onto her back, she countered with a wing-flip, eventually pushing hard enough to roll him over. As she considered her next move, he bit down on her wing and jerked his head sideways. She flopped over on her side gasping in pain as he spit out a mouthful of feathers.
An instant later, she was back at him. He'd made the mistake of thinking that a wing-bite would end the fight, but he didn't know that pegasi wings were a lot stronger than they looked. Ditzy bucked his legs out from under him with her hind hooves, and grabbed a mouthful of mane—she'd been going for his ear, but her aim was off. She wrapped her hind legs around his barrel, pinning him in position, and yanked his head back.
“What in Tartarus is going on in here?” Several dozen pairs of guilty eyes faced the vengeful stare of their teacher.
“You. Ditzy. Outside. You, too, Blue.”
Meekly, heads lowered, they shuffled out to the yard and into the snow. Pencils followed, her voice muffled by the willow switch she’d grabbed on her way out the door. “I won’t have fighting in my classroom. You’re here to learn.”
Ditzy didn’t need to look behind her to know that all her classmates had their muzzles pressed against the window, watching eagerly for punishment to be meted out. After all, she would have done the exact same thing in their shoes.
She started on Blue Bonnet first. He was already whimpering. What a coward, Ditzy thought. I can endure this. But the first smack of the switch was bone-jarringly loud, and each subsequent hit sounded worse.
Finally, there was a moment of respite, marred only by the stallion’s quiet sobbing. Ditzy bit her lip, waiting for the axe to fall, tensing herself for the blow. For an agonizingly long time, it did not. She began to wonder if she was being spared—maybe Pencils had learned that Blue Bonnet had started the whole thing and was—
SMACK!
A trail of fire lanced across her rump. Before she could even gasp, the switch came back the other way. She began crying, unable to help herself.
Ditzy didn't know how many times the switch hit her—she lost count after the third strike. By the time it was over, she felt like she'd sat in a campfire. Pencils didn't say anything when she was done, she simply walked back to the schoolhouse.
Ditzy gave Blue Bonnet a hate-filled glare before she followed her teacher back to the classroom. She looked around at her classmates, all of whom were busily engaged with their lunches and not making eye contact with either of them. She went back to her desk, took one look at her mashed lunchbag—which somepony had put on her desk—and grabbed it in her teeth and tossed it in the wastebasket.
She suffered through the rest of the day standing by her desk, totally ignoring the lecture. Her wing had started to spasm, and she didn't want to draw any more attention to herself by unfolding it, so she kept it clamped tightly to her side, even though she knew that would ultimately make it worse. Her only slight consolation was that Blue Bonnet had made the mistake of sitting in his chair.
When they were finally dismissed for the day, Ditzy was the first one to her cubby, and she wasted no time grabbing her things and rushing out the door. Behind her, she could hear a few snide remarks, but she ignored them, trotting to the relative anonymity of the back of the schoolhouse.
With a pained moan, she extended her wing, wincing as her muscles cramped. There was no way she was going to be able to fly home until she'd done a complete stretching regimen, and the last place she wanted to do it was right here, in full view of a school full of hateful mudponies. On the other hoof, there was one primary with a broken vane that she had to do something about; it was itching like crazy. She bent her head back into her wing and worked her lips around the offending feather, gently tugging it straight and working it into her mouth with her tongue so she could bite it off.
She didn't have to look to know what Blue Bonnet had done with his teeth: she was going to have a small bare patch for a while, but it wasn't enough to really affect her flight once she got the rest of her feathers back into their place. She'd recieved worse injuries in fights back in Las Pegasus.
A quick nip, and Ditzy pulled her muzzle back off of her wing and spit her feather on the ground before realizing that there was another pony standing right next to her.
"Hey." Cherry Berry shuffled her hoof on the ground, making a small furrow in the snow. "'Sup?"
"I suppose you think it's funny that I can't fly right now?" Ditzy flicked her tail. "Well, go on, laugh."
"Whoa. I don't wanna pick a fight, just, um . . . look, I'm real sorry about Blue Bonnet. He's a jerk." She picked her hoof out of the snow and rubbed her chin. "I, well, me and some of the girls like to go to the bakery and hang out after class, you know? And I wonder if you wanna come along?"
Ditzy looked at her suspiciously, before untensing. "Sure, okay." She folded her wing loosely against her barrel and stepped out around the building.
"Hey, derpy hooves! How's your wing feel, huh? Maybe it'll fall—" A snowball hit Blue Bonnet right between the eyes and he dropped to the ground like he'd been poleaxed. Ditzy spun to face Cherry Berry, who had a small smile on her face.
"Come on. Let's get out of here before he gets up again," Cherry suggested.
"Hey, you stupid nag, there was a rock in that snowball," Blue Bonnet whined.
"Good thing I hit you in the head," she shouted back. "I'd hate to have hurt something important." She snorted and led Ditzy out of the schoolyard, to the path into town. "When did you get to town? Do you know your way around?"
"Just yesterday. Spent the whole day unpacking." She sighed. "Worst Hearth's Warming ever."
"I guess so. Didja get to see your family at least?"
Ditzy nodded. "Pretty much all of them, except my sister. She's in Zebrica or something. Silly filly."
"Zebrica . . . huh. That's a long ways away. What's she doing there?"
"I dunno. Probably sticking her muzzle into somepony else's business, 'cause that's what she's best at." Ditzy stretched out her wings, slowly working them as she walked, easing the tension out of her flight muscles.
They turned a corner and Ditzy stopped as pair of mares stared at her. She instinctively flared her wings out and widened her stance, which caused the orange-maned one to take a step back.
Cherry took two more steps before she realized something was off, and glanced over her shoulder at Ditzy. "Oh, come on. They're friends."
"I didn't know Cherry was going to bring a pegasus with her," the orange-maned pony whispered to her plum-coated companion—just loud enough for Ditzy to hear. "Although I'm not surprised."
"Hey!" Cherry Berry glared at her. "Come on, Goldie. Get your muzzle out of the dirt for a minute and stop being a bitch. Nothing wrong with a pegasus. Don't you remember the Hearth's Warming pageant? Three tribes, unity, and all that?"
"You just want to be one," the plum pony mumbled, and started snickering. "Maybe she'll give you a ponyback ride into the clouds. Better make sure you hold on real tight."
"If you weren't pregnant, I would so punch you right now, Berry," Cherry retorted.
"Okay, she can come with us. But you're sitting next to her. Don't pegasi have feather mites or something? Feather mites can't be good for a baby."
Cherry gave Ditzy a look that said 'you see what I deal with?' and motioned her forward. "That's Goldie on the left, and Berry on the right." She trotted up to the group and Ditzy followed them into the building. Her stomach began growling the moment the warm air, laden with the delectable smells of fresh-baked goods, wafted out to her. Licking her lips, she gazed longingly at the gleaming display cases—before she remembered she didn't have any bits. Her ears fell.
"Come on, slide in," Cherry invited, pointing to the booth. "You can sit next to me, 'cause Berry's scared of getting feather mites, which I don't even think is a thing. And if it was, she hasn't got any feathers, so why worry?"
"Totally is a thing," Golden Harvest insisted. "Cloud Chaser had 'em once. She's, like, a distant cousin. Lives in Ponyville."
"How is she 'distant' if she lives in Ponyville?" Ditzy asked. "And that sounds like a pegasus name."
"Is." Golden Harvest waved a hoof at a gangly stallion wearing an apron. "A couple of my grandparents weren't too picky, I guess." She grinned. "Like Berry, here."
"Hey! Me and Cormano got a house by ourselves together. That's more than you can say, Carrot Top, you still live at home." She looked at Cherry. "She's got a house, too."
"Not all of us want to get away from our parents as fast as we can," Goldie countered. "And I'd rather spend my bits buying more land, rather than paying for a house. Maybe someday when I've got a family of my own, maybe then."
"No stallion's going to be interested in a mare who hasn't got her own place," Berry insisted.
Ditzy ignored them, instead watching the amber stallion who'd been behind the counter as he approached their booth. If he and Blue Bonnet were a representative sample of the adult males in Ponyville, the town was in danger of dying out from pure patheticness. Her minimal interest in a non-pegaus paramour was reduced to about zero—while she'd heard rumors about earth pony stallions being better endowed than pegasi, his unfortunate face was a bigger turn-off than what he might be blessed with.
"You girls ready to order?" the stallion asked in a squeaky voice, his eyes frequently flitting over to Ditzy.
"Same thing as always," Goldie said.
"Me, too," Cherry said.
He looked expectantly at Berry, who was puzzling over her menu like it was written in Neighponese. Finally, triumphantly, she folded it up and looked at him. "I want a scone, and a cupcake with blue frosting. And two pieces of rye toast. No, two cupcakes, and only one piece of rye toast."
"And you, miss?"
"Nothing," Ditzy whispered.
"You gotta get something," Cherry insisted. "Cup's the best baker in town—you can't come in here and not eat something."
"I don't have any bits," she mumbled.
"Get her a slice of double-chocolate cake and a hot chocolate," Cherry ordered. "Put it on my tab."
"I want a hot chocolate too," Berry added.
"You don't—"
"I do." Cherry put a hoof over Ditzy's mouth. "You can pay me back later, if you don't wanna accept a gift."
"Anything else?" He looked at the mares, before nodding and turning back to the counter to fill their orders.
• • •
The other three mares seemed more interested in talking than eating, and Ditzy felt a little greedy for wolfing down her food as quickly as she had—she'd barely even tasted the cake, and when it was gone her eyes were drawn to the thick slice of toast on Berry's plate—a slice of toast that went ignored as the mares talked about stallions and hoofball. It almost felt like she was back in Las Pegasus again, except that the stallion at the counter kept staring at her when he thought she wasn't looking, and occasional customers would do a double-take when they saw her wings.
Berry finally caught her staring at the toast, and shoved the plate across the table to her. “Go on, you're just a scrawny little thing. You don't want to turn out like Carrot.” She pointed a hoof at the stallion.
“Don't make fun of him,” Golden Harvest muttered. “Even if he is scrawny and gangly.”
“And he's a . . . he,” Cherry added. “So Ditzy doesn't have to worry about becoming Carrot.”
“I'm still eating the toast,” Ditzy said with her mouth full. “Better to be safe than sorry.”
“You're pretty cool for a pegasus,” Berry declared. “It was nice meeting you, but now I've gotta go. Cormano'll be home soon, and he gets lonely when I stay out with the girls. You'd think he'd never figured out how to use his own hoof.”
Golden Harvest slapped her hoof to her forehead. "Oh, Celestia."
"I just threw up in my mouth," Cherry frowned. "Ugh, who wants to know about Cormano's, ah, private life?"
"What?" Berry slid out of the booth before looking back at the other three mares. "Everypony does it, right? Carrot's probably thinking about Cup's chubby rump when he—"
Goldie clamped her forehooves over her ears. "I'm not listening, I'm not!"
"Bunch of fucking prudes," Berry muttered as she turned tail on the group.
“I have to go, too,” Golden Harvest said once Berry was gone. “I need to check on the carrots before it gets dark. Make sure they're warm enough. I'll see you around, Ditzy.”
“I should head home. I've got . . . stuff to do.” Cherry looked at Ditzy. “Wanna walk with me back to my house? It's on the south side of town . . . I guess I don't know where you live, so maybe it's not on the way.”
“We've got a cloudhouse; it's not really much farther from anyplace in Ponyville than anyplace else,” Ditzy said. That wasn't true, of course, but she felt obligated to hang out with Cherry a little bit longer, if that's what she wanted. She spent some of her bits on me, so I owe her at least that much, Ditzy thought.
“Cool.”
“How come you've got your own house, even though you're still in school?” Ditzy asked once they were walking down the main street. “Aren't you a little . . . young, to have your own place?”
“Nah. Mom and Dad set me up with some land, so I could start my own orchard. Thing was, there weren't any places close to their house where cherry trees would do well, and I can't just farm one place for a couple of years and then move on somewhere else, you know? So I built a little house so that I don't have to walk back to my parents' all the time.” She sighed. “I don't have to stay there in the winter; the trees are dormant, but I've got a little . . . project, in my barn, and I like to work on it whenever I can.” She looked glumly at her saddlebags. “When Pencils doesn’t give us too much homework, anyway.”
“Homework?”
“Yeah, all those division problems?”
“I thought that's what we were going to do tomorrow! Didn't she say 'do tomorrow?'”
“Due,” Cherry corrected. “You have to solve the problems on your own, and then turn them in in the morning.”
“That's stupid. Why can't we just do them in class? That's how we did stuff in Las Pegasus.”
“I dunno. I guess we're supposed to remember it better if we do it at home. Hey, listen. If you don't want to get in trouble with her tomorrow for not doing your homework, we could do it together at my place. I'll make some snacks, too.”
“Okay, but I've gotta be home by dark or else Mother will get mad. She doesn't like me to be out late. Says that's when the bat ponies are out.”
"Bat ponies?" Cherry looked at her in confusion. "What the hay are 'bat ponies?'"
"You've never heard of them?" Ditzy frowned. "They're like pegasi, but they have bat-wings instead of real wings. They were once Nightmare Moon's guard. When she was banished to the moon, they were cursed to wander Equestria. They stalk the night—especially when there's a full moon—looking for pegasi. When they find one, they bite her, and she becomes one of them, forever a creature of the darkness, cursed to serve a Princess who is no longer there."
"I've never seen one," Cherry declared, "so they can't be real. The Everfree forest is full of strange creatures, but there aren't any batponies there."
"Just because you haven't seen one doesn't mean they don't exist," Ditzy insisted.
"I've never seen the Princess, but I know she exists."
"I have," Ditzy said. "She was in Las Pegasus for the Summer Sun Celebration five years ago." She sighed. "The Princess is so beautiful. Her coat glows like a pearl, and Her mane is like a pool of liquid rainbow, but prettier."
"She'll never come here," Cherry said sadly. "Ponyville is just too small."
• • •
When Ditzy finally arrived home, it was well after dark—she'd been unpleasantly surprised when she had left Cherry Berry's house at how dark it was.
"You'd better have a good excuse," her mom had growled.
"I was doing homework with Cherry Berry, one of the mares in my class," Ditzy explained. "Division."
"Math, huh?" Ditzy's mom pulled a plate off the stove and set it on the table. "I don't want you hanging out with these earth ponies. They'll put bad ideas in your head." She set the plate in front of Ditzy. "Cherry Berry better not be a stallion."
"She isn't."
"Well, who can tell with the dumb names they have?"
A Gift from Celestia Chapter 2: Winter Wrap-Up Admiral Biscuit
Ditzy lay her head down on her desk in defeat. She’d given up taking notes ten minutes ago, when her mouth had cramped up. Her final attempt at alertness had failed as Pencils droned on and on and on about the Ponic wars. Even the visual aid had failed to elicit any excitement, and had instead turned the chalkboard into an incomprehensible scrawl of arrows and small triangular formation markings. It was all ancient history, no more exciting than Mother’s endless repetition of the Doo family’s glorious past.
It isn’t fair, she thought for the thousandth time. I should be in Las Pegasus where I belong, not here.
“—which is when Commander Steel Shoes lead the third reserve platoon through the fog bank and—” Got to keep my eyes open. If I close them she’ll know.
SMACK!
Ditzy’s head shot up at the noise. She found herself eye-to-eye with Pencils.
“Perhaps you could recap Commander Steel Shoe’s desperate counterattack, since I seem to be doing such a poor job of it?”
“I—”
“Feel free to use your notes,” Pencils suggested sarcastically, pointing a hoof towards the soggy paper Ditzy had been drooling on. “The whole class would love to know what you think.”
She glanced around at the sea of expectant faces. Some were sympathetic—Cherry Berry was mouthing the answer—while Blue Bonnet had a smug smirk plastered across his muzzle.
“You don’t know, do you?” Ditzy had never noticed how much Pencils’ grin looked like a shark’s. “But you will know. Because you will write me a neat essay on Commander Steel Shoe’s counteroffensive, and it will be five pages long. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Ms. Wright,” Ditzy muttered weakly. Five pages! I was going to hang out with the girls at Sugarcube Corner after class.
“The mayor will have the library open this afternoon. I suggest you hurry over there after school.” She turned and stomped back to the front, continuing where she’d left off. “The city was under siege by naval forces, who were attempting to starve the beleaguered townsponies. . . .”
Ditzy sighed and slumped back in her desk. She looked out the window at the tiresome snow. It was a lot less pleasant when she had to walk through it—this was her first winter in a snowbound village, and the novelty had worn off fairly quickly. No wonder ponies were angry when the pegasi brought more snow.
She shifted in her seat as a sudden flush of warmth spread through her body. She’d been feeling antsy for almost a week. There were two more days of school before Winter Wrap-Up, and she couldn’t wait. It was a chance to spend a day or two with her fellow pegasi. Already Cloudsdale was crowded with extra fillies and colts—the sons and daughters of the pegasus influx that travelled through Equestria every year to help prepare spring, covering one region per day until they finally reached the northern border of Equestria. Ditzy had been practicing cloudbusting over Whitetail Wood. Sometimes, when she was free, Cherry Berry would accompany Ditzy—she liked watching the pegasus work the weather.
Ditzy flicked her forelock out of her eyes. Her mane and tail felt heavy, and she was starting to sweat, despite the cool temperature of the classroom. She wrinkled her nose in distaste and tried to focus her attention back on the blackboard, but her eyes kept being drawn towards the clock. It will all be over soon, she thought.
• • •
When Ditzy woke up, it was so early the light in the sky was more imagination than illumination, but she was as hyper as a filly on Hearth's Warming: it was Winter Wrap-Up day, and that meant a whole day of busting clouds for real, under the eyes of a real weatherpony. Maybe even a Wonderbolt; even they helped out with important weather duties.
She skipped the shower—no point, she'd be in the clouds all day—and eagerly soared into the kitchen on trembling wings. Mother had left a bowl of dry oats out for her, but nopony was there to see if she ate them, so she poured the bowl out the window and refilled it with kale and timothy, dousing the mix with a generous dollop of sweet relish. A quick glance in the cupboard netted her a tin of anchovies, which she dumped on top of her salad: she'd need the energy later. Mother probably wouldn't notice it was gone, as long as she remembered to take the empty can with her.
I remember the first time I brought a fish sandwich to school, she thought, grinning at the memory. Of all the ponies who had been shocked or appalled by it, Rarity—a stuck-up white unicorn who she never talked to—had come to her defense. Who would have imagined that her father liked fishing, or that she occasionally tried her hoof at it? Ditzy had even been given an open invitation to one of Magnum’s fish fry picnics later in the summer.
Ditzy bolted down her breakfast, rinsed out her bowl, and grabbed the empty can off the counter before eagerly trotting to the front door. She paused at the threshold just long enough to take a deep breath of the pre-dawn air, and then she took flight, swooping down towards Ponyville.
Already, ponies were beginning to fill the streets. She'd heard from her classmates that Ponyville never managed to wrap up winter in time, which was a real burr in the mayor's tail. The townsponies got up early, Cherry had told her, in the hopes of getting a good start on it. She hadn’t believed it, but the evidence was hard to ignore: plows were out in the streets, and Mr. Breezy was up on a ladder, pushing snow off his roof into a waiting cart.
She glided over Sweet Apple Acres, waving at Mr. Apple. He was helping McIntosh into a plow harness, while Applejack held a lantern in her mouth. McIntosh waved back, sending a rush of adrenaline through Ditzy. She flagged her tail and circled the barn before flapping her wings and gaining altitude as she passed over the rows of apple trees. As she passed them a second time, she glanced down: McIntosh was gaping at her, but Mr. Apple hadn’t noticed—he was too busy adjusting the lazy strap. Three months ago, I wouldn’t have known what that was called.
Ditzy pushed him out of her mind. She'd ascended into the base of the clouds, and it was time to focus on flying. The last thing I want is to bump into another pegasus in the clouds and get pulled from weather duty because of an injury. She slowed down and flicked her ears back and forth, listening to the whispers of air in the clouds. She should have flown through one of the many holes punched in the cloud cover, but that would have slowed her down.
She made it through unscathed, and burst through the cloudtop into a different world: the stars were shimmering overhead in the crisp air, and the moon was casting its soft glow over the fluffy sea under her belly. She let out a triumphant yell and did a quick roll, before leveling off again.
A half hour later, she finally made it to Cloudsdale, and immediately trotted to the weather office, flexing her wings as she went. The weather maps and team assignments had been posted on the front wall of the office, and she wanted to make sure that she got to her assigned sector in time.
The weather office was vacant. She scanned down the rolls, looking for her cutie mark, finally locating it midway down the lists for the Everfree border. Not her first choice of assignments, but it was cloud duty. Some pegasi got stuck rounding up birds or cleaning rooftops, and she wanted nothing to do with that. Eagerly, she pushed open the door and made her way to the bins of vests.
Five minutes later, she was back in the air, setting a course for the Everfree boundary. Cloudtops had already been marked with temporary pennants, so it didn’t take her too long to find her assigned spot. Nopony else was there yet, of course, so she settled down on a cloud to wait.
• • •
“All right, everypony. Listen up.”
Ditzy turned forward, ears focused on the lead weathermare. It wasn’t her mother, which was good. Sometimes that happened—a filly would get assigned with her mother. Last spring, she’d heard Blossomforth’s tale of woe, and had prayed the same fate would never befall her.
“My name’s Parasol, and I’m going to be your team leader. Is this everypony’s first time cloudbusting?”
“Yeah!” Ditzy looked around herself in dismay, suddenly realizing that all the other pegasi were several years younger than she was. How had she gotten stuck in a beginner’s class?
Because I couldn’t take the cloudbusting class with everypony else in Las Pegasus, that’s why. And the sign-up sheets for the extra spots on the good teams were filled out yesterday morning, when I was in school.
“Sorry I’m late!” With a soft poomf, a yellow pegasus dropped to the cloud next to Ditzy. “Hey Ditz!”
“Raindrops?” Ditzy jumped to her hooves and tackled Raindrops in a bear hug.
“Yeah. Betcha missed me, huh? It took some asking around to find out what team you were gonna be on.” She snickered. “I was lurking around the weather office all day.”
Ditzy smiled. It was going to be an all right day after all.
“We’re following the lead team on the Everfree border.” Parasol continued. “They’ll clear a path, and we have to wrangle loose clouds behind them. We’re just going to push them across the clear line, got it? That’s all.” She pointed a hoof towards a path of open sky that cut through the thick clouds like a river before looking back towards her map.
“Now I want everypony to—” She looked back up at the vacant cloud, then the receding tails of over-eager fillies and colts. “Aw, nuts.”
• • •
To nopony's surprise, the first half of the day was utter chaos. Even with Parasol's increasingly frantic shouts, fillies shoved clouds wherever they thought they ought to go, with no regard to the master plan. Ditzy and Raindrops, as the oldest mares on the team, quickly found themselves promoted to Parasol's unofficial assistants and stuck pegasus wranglers. Although she wouldn’t admit it, it was a relief. Ditzy could only imagine the looks Raindrops would have given her if she’d screwed up busting clouds, but anypony her age could move them singlehoofedly.
They were pulling a colt out of a cloudpile when a pair of stallions wearing auxiliary guard vests came by with a food wagon. Parasol flew around like a mother duck, rounding up her charges, while the older stallion passed out baskets of food. The younger ponies quickly scarfed down their lunches before returning to the sky in a ragged formation and began randomly pushing around clouds again.
Meanwhile, Ditzy and Raindrops kept up a more controlled pace. “I made distance champion this year,” Raindrops said quietly. She scanned the sky, where the fillies and colts had finally figured out enough teamwork to not get stuck anymore.
“I’m not surprised.” Ditzy stopped pushing her cloud. “Honestly, I spent so much time doing extra homework in the library, it’s a wonder I can still fly.” She stuck her tongue out. “Still . . . I can tell you anything you wanted to know about the second offensive in the Ponic Wars or the history of the Isle of White.”
“Who cares about all that? Aren’t you going to work weather?”
“Probably.” Ditzy sighed. “Of course, my mother wants me to apply to the Guard.” She rolled her eyes. “As if. They’d wash me out of basic, just ‘cause of my eyes.”
“Yeah.” Raindrops looked at her glumly. “My mom’s pushing me to get into the Wonderbolts. She’s filled out the application for the Academy every year, but the waiting list’s, like, a mile long. My fur will be gray before I—”
“Doctor Philly says a gray coat is a sign of maturity and sophistication,” Ditzy interrupted, sticking her muzzle in the air. The two mares exchanged a glance and burst out laughing.
“Looks like our quadrant’s finally clear,” Ditzy remarked.
“Might as well take a break while Parasol rounds up the stragglers.” Raindrops pulled a clump of cloud loose and dragged it over the clear area. She beat the top flat and dropped onto it with a sigh; Ditzy joined her a second later.
“You know, I’ve learned a lot from watching all those earth ponies,” Ditzy mused. “I’m still mad that we had to move out here, though.”
“Ah, they’re nothing special. You’ll forget all about ‘em if you go to summer flight camp.”
Ditzy rolled her eyes. “They’re pretty strong. I got beat in a fight by a colt my first day in school.”
“You? No way.”
“Yeah.” She scuffed a hoof across the cloud. “He bit my wing.”
“Ooh! When’s the wedding?”
Ditzy punched Raindrops in the withers. “Shut up. It wasn’t like that at all. I had him pinned, and he bit my wing and pulled. Hurt like Tartarus.” She giggled. “We still don’t get along. He’s a jerk.”
“Is that him?” Raindrops pointed at a big red pony tugging a snowplow across a field.
“That? No, that’s McIntosh. His little sister goes to school with me. She talks funny.” Ditzy looked around the fields, failing to find her nemesis. Instead, her eyes were drawn to a steel-blue unicorn stallion gamely tugging a wagonload of snow towards the weather reservoir. “Huh. That’s something you don’t see every day.”
“Yeah. A unicorn actually getting his hooves dirty doing work?” Raindrops snorted. “Is he in your class, too?”
“I’ve never seen him before.” Ditzy’s eyes stayed locked on the stallion as he struggled up a slippery hill.
“Is there anypony cool in your class?”
“Nah. Not really. I’ve only made one close friend there. She’s kind of weird. She wants to fly.” Ditzy chuckled. “She wants to know, like, everything about flight camp. She has this idea to build a balloon that can carry her.”
“Sounds like she’s crazy.”
“I dunno.” Why can’t I stop looking at that unicorn? “I went over to her house, and she had all these drawings . . . I’m not sure how some of them find time to do anything. Her parents gave her a small homestead last year, and she’s already planted a cherry orchard and built a small house. It’s pretty simple—just a one-room cabin, really. She’s got a shed out back, and she had a couple of baskets for her balloon she’d weaved over the winter. She works part-time in town pulling a garbage wagon to pay for all the fabric she needs for her balloon.” Ditzy grinned. “You’d be amazed how handy earth ponies are with their hooves.”
Raindrops shook her head. “Sounds like you’ve been spending too much time with mudponies. I know just the cure. We're staying at the cadet’s dorm by the weather factory, 'cause we don't have to move north until tomorrow morning. Do you think your mom will let you stay over?”
“She’d be glad of it.” Ditzy forced herself to look at Raindrops. “My mom says I shouldn’t spend so much time grounded, anyway. Keeps muttering that she’s going to have to buy me horseshoes at this rate. I mean, it’s not like I wanted to go to school in Ponyville. I just don’t have much of a choice. Cloudsdale’s curriculum isn’t up to Ponyville educational standards." She emphasized her displeasure by making air quotes with her hooves.
Raindrops waved a hoof dismissively. “Who cares? You’ll be out this summer. Besides, it’ll probably look good when you apply for weather patrol if you have a diploma. Maybe you can get a supervisor’s job.”
“Not with no practical experience, besides this," Ditzy moaned. “Heck, I’ll be lucky to get a beginner’s job in the weather factory—you’ve got hooves-on weather experience, I’ve got essays on the Ponic War.”
“Ah, don’t worry about that. Three-time distance champ counts for a lot, you know.”
“It’d be four if my mom hadn’t taken this stupid job in Ponyville. I coulda got a patron at the weather factory if I’d stayed in Las Pegasus, but who the hay’s gonna be looking out here in Ponyville?”
"Yeah." Raindrops fell silent and looked off into the distance where Parasol was breaking up a fight.
Ditzy grinned. “Race ya to Cloudsdale when we’re done.”
Raindrops clapped her hooves together. “Oh, you’re on.”
• • •
“You smell funny,” Raindrops opined as the pair walked through the crowded dormitory.
“It’s the soap they make in Ponyville." Ditzy bent her head back and sniffed her sweat-soaked barrel. “Mostly just the lye stuff. It works pretty well, but it burns like Tartarus if you get it in your eyes or under your tail. I keep telling Mother to just buy some other kind, but she hates to spend a minute longer with the salesponies in the marketplace than she has to. I think she’s afraid that their un-pegasusness will rub off on her or something. We went a week without any alfalfa, and you know why? Because she got in a fight with the salesmare.”
“Because it wasn't good enough for her?”
“No.” Ditzy chuckled and began speaking in a whining falsetto. " This alfalfa isn't cloudy enough. It has dirt on it." She rolled her eyes. “I mean, I could see her saying that. I wouldn’t have known what she did, but her daughter’s in my class. I guess Mother would just grab the first bale she saw and pass over her bits without a word. Finally, the salespony got so insulted that Mom wouldn’t even look over her bales before choosing one that she asked her if she even knew how to shop.”
“Huh? I don't get it—what's wrong with just picking the bale that you like and buying it?”
“Oh.” Ditzy scrunched up her muzzle. “It's not the way that earth ponies do business. You've gotta barter for something . . . the salespony names a price, you make a lower offer, and so on—you can't just take the first offer, it isn't polite.”
“That's weird. How the hay does anypony have time to buy anything with all that going on?”
“It doesn't take too long,” Ditzy said defensively. “An' it's only the rule at the market. Stores work like normal. I thought it was strange, but the farmers want ponies to take the time to appreciate what they grew, you know? Golden Harvest taught me that when I spent an afternoon with her at her mom’s stall.”
“Golden Harvest?” Raindrops giggled. “Mudponies have the weirdest names. What does she grow, wheat?”
“Carrots. Did you know that carrots can be kept in the ground during the winter if they're kept warm by compost?”
Raindrops stuck out her tongue as she walked through the archway into the dorm. “You're starting to sound like a farmer yourself.”
“Everypony oughta know this stuff! Don't you care where your food comes from?”
“I let Mom and Dad worry about that.” Raindrops turned down a side hallway and stuck out a wing, gently brushing it against the cloud material. “Speaking of your mom and food. . . .”
“It was Papa who finally talked the salespony down. Mom doesn’t know about that, and she’d pluck him if she found out.”
“Your mom’s a little strong-willed.” Raindrops reached a hoof towards the shower room door.
“Yeah, like a buffalo.”
The showers were just like Ditzy had remembered them. There wasn’t anything like it in Ponyville. There was a spa, which had massage rooms and a giant soaking tub—she'd even heard that it had mudbaths, but who the hay would want to take a bath in mud? Here, a vast room big enough for a hundred ponies was filled with the vapors from warm, sun-heated water running through a clever system of channels, where it filled stationary rainclouds. A quick kick made the rain fall, and as long as they were kept under the spouts, they would keep flowing until the reservoir emptied.
The room was filled with a gaggle of pegasi, happily relaxing after a long day’s work. Conversations began with a recap of the day’s weather duty, and quickly turned to the more interesting subjects of hoofball and stallions—the latter subject causing some discomfort for the few stallions who were huddling under their own clouds, trying to ignore the mares.
"Who's that?" Ditzy whispered, pointing to a dark-coated stallion with a mohawked mane.
"Huh?" Raindrops turned from the alcove in the wall where shampoos and conditioners were kept, a bottle clamped in her teeth. "Oh, if's jift Funderlane." She tilted her head towards a vacant cloud. Ditzy snagged her own bottle of shampoo and followed her.
While Raindrops got the cloud going, Ditzy set the shampoo on the floor, nesting it in a lump of cloud. "I've never seen him before. He's cute." She started swishing her tail back and forth, like a cat about to pounce.
"Total hottie," Raindrops confirmed. "Out of my league." She sighed dramatically. "Still worth looking at. Rumor has it that Cloudchaser and Flitter are all exclusive with him."
Ditzy stuck her head under the cloud, humming happily as the warm water sluiced across her coat. "Well, I wouldn't kick him off a cloud for eating crackers." She looked up as a blast of cold air washed through the room from the open door. Blaze—one of Ditzy's former classmates—came into the room, with a vaguely familiar light-blue stallion trailing behind her.
“Is that Soarin?”
“Blaze’s got him wrapped around her hoof,” Raindrops muttered, soaping her mane.
“What does she see in him, anyway?”
“A ticket to the Wonderbolts. He was at the Academy last year and smashed all their records. He’s already in officer’s training.”
“Soarin? No way.”
“Yeah.” Raindrops let out a happy sigh as the warm water washed the lather out of her mane. “The galoot’s got the grace of a hummingbird. You’d never have guessed it. I suppose it runs in the family—his dad’s a flight leader in the Guard, and his mom’s a retired Wonderbolt.”
“Huh.” Ditzy looked at him thoughtfully. “I almost feel bad for making fun of him at flight camp last year.” She shook her mane out of her eyes. “But really, he started flagging halfway through the course.”
“Everypony knows stallions haven’t got any endurance. Like, thirty seconds—maybe a minute—and bam! They’re done.”
“I dunno. Some of them in Ponyville—”
Raindrops laughed. “Well, you’d be the one to know.”
Ditzy’s cheeks turned bright pink. “No, I mean plowing!" She put a hoof to her head as she realized what she'd just said. “That really didn’t sound any better, did it?”
“No, not at all.” Raindrops kicked the cloud off and shook out her mane. “Come on. We don’t want to miss dinner. After that, it’s mare’s night in the dorm. Just—whatever you do, if Cloud Kicker asks you to play Truth or Dare, for Celestia’s sake, say no.”
A Gift from Celestia Chapter 3—Winter Wrap-Up, Day Two Admiral Biscuit
“You going to flight camp again this summer?” Raindrops asked.
“Huh?” Ditzy flicked a small bit of cloud loose and watched it slowly drift away in the gentle breeze. “No, I’m going to go to weather camp.” She wrinkled her muzzle. “At least, that’s what Mom calls it. I’m gonna apprenticeship to some weather pony and learn all about clouds and stuff.” She jumped up to her full height on the cloud, placed her right hoof on an imaginary cloud-pile and puffed out her chest. “‘Since you’ll never make the Guard, you ought to learn all about weather so that you can get a job as a supervisor like me.'” With a dramatic sigh, she flopped back down on the cloud.
“Your mom said that? Wow, that’s kinda harsh. What’d your dad say?”
“Nothing, like always. Papa never goes against her. Aargh.” She stomped the cloud. It wasn’t a very good stress outlet; the cloud sank down a little and sprang right back up. “She’s right, though. Everypony wants to be in the Wonderbolts, so they can pick and choose the best of the best. I’m good at endurance flying, so I’d be a good supervisor. It wouldn’t be so bad, either—they get to go all over Equestria. Ha! Maybe next year I’ll be your boss.”
Raindrops rolled her eyes. “As if. After I graduate, I’m gonna enroll in the junior Guard summer camp. That way, I can see if I like it before I sign papers at the Academy.” She looked down at the lights slowly coming on in Ponyville. “I kinda feel bad for all those ponies stuck down there on the ground. They don’t know what they’re missing.”
“Maybe that’s why Cherry’s building a balloon.” Ditzy waved her forehooves dramatically. “Up, up, up it goes. She’ll be floating throughout the clouds with us pegasi.” She looked down at the ground. “She’s pretty cool. Maybe I’ll see if I can go with her when she launches the balloon. I can tell her all about air currents and clouds and stuff.”
“You’re gonna turn into a mudpony if you stay in this hick town too long.” Raindrops lifted a hoof. “What’s next, shoes?”
“Nope. Not for me.” Ditzy kissed a hoof. “These babies are staying free. Let the earth ponies and unicorns keep them.” She sighed deeply. “I’m gonna miss you.” Ditzy threw her hooves around Raindrop’s neck. “Don’t forget to write, okay?”
“I won’t.” She sniffled. “I’ll miss you, too. School wasn’t the same without you. Take care and keep away from those mudponies.” Raindrops gave her friend a quick nuzzle on the cheek before she took wing.
Ditzy kept waving until Raindrops was lost in the cluster of northbound pegasi, then she shook her head in irritation as a sudden wave of heat passed through her body. I just didn't get enough sleep last night, that's all. She flicked her tail in annoyance. Too many ponies.
The dorm had been overcrowded, and even though most of the beds were shared, she'd still had to camp out with Raindrops and Crescent Moon in the center of the room—which was just as well; some of the more remote corners had been commandeered for amorous activities. Of course, just because she couldn't see it didn't mean she couldn't hear and smell it. Having Crescent Moon lying against her side didn't make it any better, either, especially since she'd had a bit of a crush on him back in Las Pegasus.
Still, she probably wouldn’t have gotten much sleep anyways. Raindrops and Crescent had practically gossiped her ears off, getting her caught up on every little thing that was going on in Las Pegasus and across the rest of Equestria.
That one green stallion was pretty hot, she thought. If Raindrops hadn't been with me, I'd've liked to get a lot closer to him. She set her hoof back down on the cloud again as another wave of heat passed through her loins.
All right. Enough thinking about stallions. Time to head back to Ponyville and see what they've got us doing today. Probably roofs and trees—those have barely been touched yet. At least they let me eat breakfast here, so I won't have to go back home to eat.
She tensed her wings and wiggled her rump, before jumping off the edge of the cloud. Unable to resist, she did a quick series of wing rolls as she dropped towards the earth, ending with a loop. She hung inverted at the top for a short distance before arching her back and completing the maneuver.
Back at Las Pegasus, that'd've just been the start of my warm-up routine. She fixed her sight on the town hall, trying to keep an even bearing on it without flapping her wings. The sun had hardly crested the horizon, so the air was fairly still. There were ponies moving around in the streets below, but they looked a lot less enthusiastic than they had the day before.
Well, who cares? It's already shaping up to be a nice day. A few more hours of hard work and we'll have this place ready for spring!
She spotted Cherry Berry and Golden Harvest making their way to town with a pair of two-axle wagons behind them. Giving up on her earlier goal of gliding all the way into town, Ditzy began flapping, constantly re-adjusting her target to make up for their forward motion. She came in high, dropping as she was nearly above them. She aimed for Cherry's wagon, because she knew that Golden Harvest was often grumpy in the morning.
“'I wish I had a lantern,' he says. 'Me, too,' replies the mare. 'You've been eating grass for the last fifteen minutes!'” Cherry looked over at Golden Harvest expectantly after delivering the punchline.
“What's so funny about grazing? I—“
Ditzy dropped into Cherry's wagon. “Hi, girls!”
“Oh hey, Ditz! How was cloud patrol yesterday?”
“Wait, now I get it.” Golden Harvest snorted.
“It was all right. We spent more time pulling fillies and colts out of clouds than getting anything done.”
“Tell me about it.” Golden Harvest rolled her eyes. “I had to pick up after a buncha them that were trying to help clear snow in the park. And then one of the colts cried when I busted up his snow fort to toss it in the back of the wagon.”
“Whatcha doing today?" Cherry asked. "All the clouds are cleared.”
“I dunno.” Ditzy hopped out of the wagon and trotted up between the two mares. “Probably roof duty, I guess. Isn't there a roster at the town hall?”
“Pfft, no chance. Even if there was nopony'd follow it. The farmers usually recruit extra help early, just to make sure their fields are ready for planting. Who cares if the buildings in town don't get cleared until a day or two late?”
“Oh.” Ditzy tucked in her wings. “I guess that makes sense. So where are you going?”
“Berry's.”
“Yeah, she went to the hospital last night, so we're gonna get her place cleaned up and planted.” Cherry nodded her head towards the basket of seeds in Golden Harvest's wagon.
“Hospital? What happened?”
“She got drunk two nights ago and fell off her roof. Broke her leg.”
“What?” Ditzy looked over at Cherry. “What the hay was she doing on her roof?”
“Singing winter wrap-up songs,” Golden Harvest offered with a toss of her mane.
“Is she gonna be okay? Is her—” Ditzy narrowed her eyes as the two earth ponies began laughing.
“She's just having her foal. Can't believe you fell for that.”
“Jerks.” Ditzy whacked them both with her wings.
“Hey, it was believable. She did jump off her roof last year, claiming she was a pegasus and could fly. It was just a little while after she got her cutie mark. She was lucky not to break anything, but she hurt her knee and cracked a couple of ribs.”
“Why didn't Cormano talk her down?”
“Talk her down? He was right up there with her, telling her to flap faster.” Golden Harvest giggled. “Oh, I wish I'd seen it.”
“So you wanna help us?” Cherry looked at Ditzy eagerly. “Three'll make the work go faster than two, and if you're with us, we won't have to climb on her roof or in the trees.”
“Sure.”
• • •
Ditzy deftly knocked the snow off the final tree on Berry's property, into Golden Harvest's waiting wagon. It landed with a satisfying fwoomp, a few stray bits falling onto the ground. Golden Harvest looked at them, and shook her head, then began carting the load off to the low ground at the back of Berry's property where they'd been dumping all the snow. To Ditzy, it looked the same as everyplace else, but Cherry assured her that was the right spot, and she trusted that the mare would know.
“I gotta use the sandbox,” Cherry announced, pulling the pins to the wagon shafts loose. “Ditz, you wanna help Goldie drop that snow? You saw how the pins on the tailgate worked, right?”
“I'm on it.” Ditzy flew with her hooves a couple feet off the ground, following the wagon ruts as if she were a famous detective, like Sherclop Hooves. Had she looked forward, the wagon was less than fifty yards away and plainly visible, but sometimes it was fun playing pretend. It made tedious jobs go faster.
She kept clear as Golden Harvest turned the wagon around and expertly backed it into position, then dropped the tailgate and began pushing the snow out. “Next year, I'll have a wagon that tilts,” the earth pony said. “I've been putting aside some bits for it. Apple Honey over at the supply store sells kits, and the wainwright knows how to put them on.”
“How come you gotta pay for it? Isn't it your parents' wagon?”
“It's my nana's, actually. Been in the family for three generations now.” Golden Harvest looked fondly at the well-varnished wood. “It's 'cause one day I'm gonna be running the farm, and a two-axle wagon that tilts will save me some time when I've got to haul a lotta stuff.”
“What about Carrot?”
“What about him? He's already making doe-eyes at the baker; he's not gonna stay at the farm. Stallions shouldn't own farms, anyways—that's a mare's job.” She shifted on her hooves. “You almost done?”
“Almost.” Ditzy worked the shovel into the corners, getting the snow away from the sideboards.
Golden Harvest yawned. “Can't wait to get some food in me. I wonder what Berry's got in her pantry?”
“All done!”
“Okay. Don't forget to pin the tailgate back up.”
Ditzy nodded, forgetting that Golden Harvest couldn't see her, and lifted the gate into place, balancing it on a hoof while she dropped the pins in with her teeth. “Ready to go.”
“Thanks! It's handy having somepony not attached to a wagon helping. Meet you back at the house. We're done, unless the mayor comes by and makes us do something else.” She reached back and released the brake, then gave a tug against the harness. The wagon lurched forward as she leaned into the harness, and quickly picked up speed.
Ditzy nodded and took to the air. She wanted to get a quick view around town, and see how things were progressing.
It was a changed world from the day before. There were still snowpiles, but they were neatly placed in out-of-the-way places, where they'd drain into ponds, streams, or ditches as they melted. All the main roads were clear, and she could hear the chirping of the birds which a team of pegasi had brought back the day before. The air was warmer than it had been yesterday, and the sky was nearly cloudless—a cluster of pegasi was dealing with the few stray clouds that drifted across the Everfree boundary.
As she dropped towards Berry's farmhouse, she glanced at her forelegs. They were splattered in mud, and a look at her barrel revealed a thin coat of lather. She sighed. Pegasi weren't really built for heavy moving, and she'd likely have thrown in the towel if she hadn't had a fair bit of residual strength left over from all her endurance training. Still, her legs ached; she'd never really done as much work on her hooves. How do the earth ponies handle it?
Ditzy kept her altitude when she caught a glimpse of the same steel-blue unicorn she'd seen the day before. It was weird how he wasn't using his magic to do stuff. When she'd first come to Ponyville, levitation magic had been a novelty, but it had quickly turned mundane . . . until now, when the lack of magic from the unicorns seemed remarkable.
I'd be so embarrassed if he saw me like this, she thought, shaking her forelock out of her eyes. She kept glancing at him as she covered the short distance to the house.
• • •
Cherry was in the kitchen, a pot of soup already cooking on the stove. She had eight slices of bread spread around the pot, slowly toasting on the warm cooktop. Ditzy took a deep breath, letting the savory aroma of the hot soup fill her nostrils.
“It's stone soup,” Cherry said. “Good spring tradition.”
“Stone soup?” Ditzy furrowed her brows. “What's stone soup? Earth ponies don't eat rocks, do they?"
“Well, you start off by putting a stone in a pot of water,” Cherry explained. “Once the water's hot, you dump in whatever vegetables you can find in the root cellar, no matter what they are. Spices, too, if there are any left. Once it's cooked down nice, you eat it, reminding yourself that it's a lot better than it was before the vegetables were added.” She lifted the ladle out of the stock pot and took a sniff. “Maybe I shouldn't have put in so much straw. Oh well; I've got a good appetizer.” She stirred the soup and then pulled the ladle out. “How do you like your bread? Toasted or not?”
“I guess toasted's all right,” Ditzy said. “How come you're still wearing your harness?”
“Takes too long to get it off. Mine isn't as nice as Goldie's. It's more of a hand-me-down.” Her cheeks colored slightly. “There's a lot that goes into running an orchard, you know, and it takes a long time before it becomes profitable. Goldie can plant more than half the year; I get one harvest. I can't afford all the nice things, so I make due with what I can.”
Ditzy crossed the kitchen and wrapped Cherry in a hug. “You've got a house and land, and you can do whatever you want with them. All I've got is my bedroom.” She nuzzled Cherry's cheek. “I can help you out of it, if you want. Just tell me what to do.”
Cherry shook her head and stepped back from the stove. “It's fine; I'll take it off later.”
Ditzy shook her head. “I can see how it's chafing a little bit, and it can't be comfortable with your sweat drying on it. All you've got to do is tell me what order to remove stuff. I don't know much about wagon harnesses.”
“It's not that.” Cherry glanced over at an open bottle and grabbed it in her teeth, taking a swig before continuing. “It's just . . . um, intimate. There's the breeching strap and the crupper. . . .”
“Oh.” Ditzy's face fell, and she scuffed a hoof against the floorboards. “Well, a lot of us pegasi on the team would preen each other, 'cause that was quicker, so . . . I don't mean nothing by it, but you've been working hard all day and you look uncomfortable.”
Cherry looked back over at the soup and bit her lip. The harness was hurting, although she was too much of a mare to admit it. And it would be nice to get it off; she'd enjoy lunch a lot more without having to constantly shift the straps. They were soaked, too; her coat wouldn't dry under them for hours if she still kept it on.
“Do you want a drink?” she asked, in lieu of making a decision.
Ditzy nodded. “I am kind of thirsty.”
Cherry handed over the bottle. “Now take it slow, this is powerful stuff.”
She tilted her head back like she'd seen Cherry do. Her mouth went numb and a trail of fire burned its way down her throat; it was all she could do to keep from coughing and dropping the bottle. Ditzy set it back on the counter before shaking her head in the hopes that that would help reduce the burning sensation that was now suffusing her whole body.
“What the hay?”
“Jacked plum wine.” Cherry took another drink. “About eighty proof, maybe ninety. Berry's been toying with it all winter.” She let out a long breath. “Okay, I . . . I guess if you really want to help me get this thing off, you're welcome to help. I . . . it just seems odd, y'know? A pegasus helping with a harness.”
“We're friends,” Ditzy said. “Isn't that the kind of things friends will do for each other?”
“I just hope Golden Harvest takes her time coming in,” Cherry muttered. “I'd hate to have her see this. I'd never live it down.” Cherry took another drink to fortify herself, then, with a slight air of resignation, stepped away from the stove. “Okay. Let me get the breeching chains loose, and then you're going to have to lift the whole breeching strap and crupper loose.”“I don't know what those are,” Ditzy said as Cherry leaned back and unclipped a chain from the belly band.
“The crupper runs across my back, and loops around my tail. It's the piece on top.” She turned her head to get the other chain loose. “And the breeching strap runs across my rump. It's usually easiest to kind of pull my tail through the crupper dock, and then you can flop the whole thing up.” She paused as a thought occurred to her. “You know, you could probably just unstrap the belly band and the breast band, and I could kind of wiggle out of it.”
“It'd get all tangled up,” Ditzy said. "Plus, how would you get it back on?" Without any further warning, she ducked behind Cherry and grabbed the ring on the crupper, making sure she didn't have any of Cherry's tail in her grip. She used a hoof to hold her tail in place as she carefully raised her head, lifting the whole strap assembly over Cherry's back.
Cherry gritted her teeth and kept her hooves firmly planted on the ground, although she instinctively pinned her ears back. The urge to kick—especially as Ditzy stuck her muzzle under her tail—was almost irrepressible; instead she closed her eyes and took deep breaths of the soothing scent of the soup. Unfortunately, they were also laced with Ditzy's pheromones, and didn't have the calming effect she wanted. But a polite mare didn't bring that up, so she kept her mouth shut and endured. She's on her first cycle early—must be because she came up from Las Pegasus.
Cherry let out a sigh of relief as her tail was freed of the crupper dock, and when she felt the harness land on her back, she untensed her hind leg. “All right. Just hold it there, and I'll unfasten the girth strap. Then I'm gonna lean my head down, and you'll carry the whole thing over my head—you stay in place, and I'll back up.”
“Got it.” Ditzy grabbed the straps in her teeth again, and lifted slightly off the ground as Cherry was undoing the clasp under her belly.
Once it was free, Cherry walked back while Ditzy held her position. As the saddle slid up her mane and against her ears, she twitched her head in annoyance, but then she was free. Already, she could feel her sides cooling.
“”What oo I oo wif all of ifs?”
“There's pegs in the mudroom; you can hang it on one of those.” Cherry pointed down the hall. “I usually loop the breastband over a peg and let it trail down that way, but it might be easier for you to put it the other way, 'cause of how you're holding it. Doesn't really matter, so long as it doesn't get tangled up.”
Ditzy flew off, and Cherry returned her attention to the soup before any of it burned on the bottom of the pot, then slid the toasted bread off the stovetop and onto a stoneware plate. She carried it over to the table and began buttering the slices, all the while keeping an eye on the stove.
She was halfway done when she heard Golden Harvest scraping her shoes off. “Smells good,” the carrot farmer said.
“Stone soup,” Cherry replied. “Almost done.” She began opening cupboards, looking for the bowls. Berry's housekeeping skills were severely lacking; it was obvious she wasn't much of a chef and put things wherever it seemed convenient, rather than having an order to things. She finally found them in a cupboard that was also well-stocked with nails and twine.
“We'd better bring her some pantry,” Golden Harvest suggested as she walked into the kitchen. “If you're making stone soup. Cormano's too dumb to go to market, and she's likely as not going to hit the bottle as soon as she gets home.”
“I know.” Cherry lowered her ears. “Does alcohol come out in mare's milk? For the foal's sake, I hope not.”
“We could just take her bottles.”
“And put her out of a job?” Cherry sighed. “She stayed sober for her whole pregnancy. Maybe she's turned a new leaf. Okay, it's not likely, but it could happen. You hear all the time about mares who change when they're pregnant; well, maybe she's done it, too. And if she's got something good to eat, it'll probably distract her from her sales stock.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you know I found moldy bales down in the pantry? And the icebox was out of ice. In the winter. How do you mess that up?” She pointed at the pot. “I had to scrub that like you wouldn't believe. I don't even want to know what was in it. And you think I found a clean knife?"
“I knew this was going to happen. For all her talk about how this was gonna be . . . I just knew it. But, you know what they say: you can lead a pony to water, but you can't make her drink. Let's just make sure that we keep an eye on her, and help out whenever we can.” Golden Harvest frowned. “Where's Ditzy? Did she go home?”
“I'm here.” The pegasus walked back into the kitchen. “I kinda got the straps all tangled up, 'cause I wanted to hang the harness up the right way. I think I got them sorted out right.”
“Don't worry about it.” Cherry glanced over at Golden Harvest, who'd raised an eyebrow, before turning back to Ditzy. “Um, lunch is ready.” She cleared her throat and began talking with a fake Prench accent. “For ze appetizer, we have oat bread, gently toasted and lightly buttered. Zen for ze main course, we have a fine pot of stone soup. Our wine list is ze raspberry wine and ze jacked plum wine. For dessert, we have a coeur à la crème wiz caramelized sweet cherries."
“Really?” Ditzy looked at the stove hopefully at the mention of dessert.
Cherry dropped her fake accent. “No, not really. I found some shortbread, but it smelled off, so I threw it away. There isn't enough stuff in the kitchen to make dessert, so I guess it's Sugarcube Corner if you want any.”
“Oh.” Ditzy's ears fell. “Too bad. I like dessert.”
“The raspberry wine's pretty sweet; that might make a passable dessert.” Cherry set the stockpot on a trivet. “Serve yourself however much you want, and help yourself to either bottle.”
A Gift from Celestia Chapter 4: Spring Admiral BiscuitDitzy waved cheerily to Cherry Berry and Golden Harvest before taking wing in front of Berry Punch's house. She circled once as she gained altitude, before heading off towards the lake on the outskirts of Ponyville. Instead of taking a straight path, she decided to follow the meandering streets of town and see what other ponies were up to.
She gave a friendly wave as she passed over the mayor, who was carting a small wagon full of sprouts towards the town hall.
Ditzy began humming a happy tune, banking slightly side to side to the beat of the chorus. She couldn't quite remember the lyrics, but she'd heard a cluster of pegasi singing it last night.
A loud whistle interrupted the melody, and she bent her neck to see who it was. At first, she didn't spot anypony, but when she bent her head down, she saw a tan stallion on his hind legs on a stool, reaching up into a tree.
Ditzy hovered next to him, finding her eyes wandering down his belly before he cleared his throat.
"Hey—do you have a couple minutes to help me?"
She grinned. "Yeah."
"Each of these trees needs a couple nests in the crotch of the branches."
"I thought the birds already came back."
"They did. But the nest-making team got behind, and I had to help clear a field at Sweet Apple Acres, and it was supposed to have been done yesterday."
Ditzy jerked her eyes back up to his face. "Sure. I'd love to help."
"Great!" He stepped back on the wobbly stool, and Ditzy stuck a hoof on his withers to help steady him. "Whoo! Guess I should have made sure it was level. Thanks!"
"No problem!" She let her hoof linger as she looked over at the wagon. "How many trees have got nests?"
"Just this one," he said sheepishly.
"Okay." She reluctantly broke contact and flew over to the wagon. She picked up a nest, cradling it in her forehooves, while he began moving his stool to the next tree.
The pair worked in relative silence. Ditzy cautiously flew under each canopy, being careful to not get entangled in the branches, while the stallion continued using his stepstool.
She kept glancing at him when he wasn't looking, running her eyes over the smooth curve of his belly and the tight muscles in his flanks. She began to feel a strange hunger growing in her belly, which was odd because she'd just eaten lunch. When they were both at the cart together, she had a sudden urge to lean over and sniff his mane, but she didn't—instead, she quickly flew to the farthest tree to catch her breath. I bet he smells good, she thought as she slipped the next into place, gently adjusting it with her hoof.
Ditzy'd never thought of approaching a stallion before, but as she watched a pair of blue jays land in their new nest with appreciative chirps, the idea suddenly seemed very appealing. She was thinking how she might frame the question as she flew back to the center of the grove. To her dismay, he was already hitched back to the wagon.
"Hey, thanks for the help!"
DItzy's ears fell. "We're done?"
"Yeah—now I've gotta go back to Sweet Apple Acres and help Mrs. Apple with her garden."
"I could go, too," she said eagerly. "To help you."
"Pegasi aren't so good at gardening," he reminded her. "But I bet there's still a bunch of nests than need to be put in trees. If you go over to Carousel Boutique—you know where that is, right?—there's a bunch of mares still working on 'em and they'd be happy for some help."
First Cherry Berry and Golden Harvest won't let me plant at Berry's, and now a stallion's rejecting my help. It isn't fair.
• • •
“That's the last one,” Sea Swirl told her, as she put a check mark on her list.
“Oh, thank Celestia.” Ditzy gave the unicorn a high-hoof. “I'm gonna head to the lake—get washed off, and then relax.”
“Maybe I'll see you there.” Sea Swirl looked over her shoulder as she carefully backed her cart between a pair of tree trunks. “Coco got me a new diving mask for Hearth's Warming, and I can't wait to try it out. Even if the water is chilly.” She looked back, but the pegasus was already gone. She shrugged. It had been nice to have a winged helper—Caramel did his best, he really did, but every time she saw him on a stool she was afraid he was going to fall off. It was great that he'd recruited a new helper who could fly.
• • •
Ditzy landed on the beach and flexed her wings. They were aching, which she attributed to her long periods of flight yesterday. It still seemed odd, since she spent a lot of time in the air. Papa told me that if I want to be a good flier that I have to practice all the time—but my teacher told me that working clouds drew on a pegasus’ magic, so maybe that's why I'm so tired. She felt hot and achy, too. Maybe I'm coming down with feather flu.
There were dozens of fillies and colts sunning themselves on the beach under the watchful eyes of their mothers, and a few brave souls splashed each other in the shallows. She wondered why there weren’t more ponies in the water—until she belly-flopped in herself. Too late, she remembered that the lake had been covered in ice until yesterday, and the water had hardly warmed above the freezing point. With a startled yelp, she jumped back out of the water, earning her a few chuckles from the crowd on the beach.
Ditzy flopped down on the sand, holding her wings out to dry, and settled on ponywatching. She was unsurprised to feel the eyes of the other ponies on her—there weren’t any other pegasi on the beach. In fact, it seemed an exclusive earth pony enclave. Seeing a couple of adults whispering to each other after her show, her ears reddened, but she didn’t let that stop her from preening. Let them gossip. They might as well get used to pegasi. I’m going to spend a lot of my free time at this beach.
Finally, off to the side, she noticed a trio of unicorns come down to the beach. The mare looked kind of familiar—she was a bright lemon-yellow with three blue gems as a cutie mark. Ditzy was sure she’d seen her around town before.
She was accompanied by two unicorn stallions, one walking right next to her, while the second—the one she’d been watching off and on for the last two days—trailed behind. He was a beautiful steel blue color. A gloriously curly grey and white mane flowed down his neck, like foam on a wave. She couldn’t help watching as he moved around the beach, the muscles in his rump and withers flexing as he walked. It was the closest she'd seen him, and she savored the view.
The couple sat down on the beach side-by-side and began rubbing noses, while her unicorn paced around, trying to ignore the other two. He said something to the other stallion, and then slowly trudged off the beach, back in the direction of Ponyville. She watched him slowly walk away—and it was a sight worth seeing. She’d never really paid attention to how a stallion’s hindquarters swayed when he walked, with the tail swishing in a countermotion. She licked her lips. She was getting really hot on the beach and needed to find some shade, or something.
She followed him towards town. Normally, she would have been admiring the newly-budding trees, or listening to the birds—spirit cousins to the pegasi. Not today. Ditzy found herself wondering where the unicorn lived, what he did, what his name was. He had an hourglass cutie mark, but what did that mean?
Lost in her thoughts, she went around a bend in the road and discovered he had vanished.
Frustrated, she took wing, searching for a sign of the stallion. There weren’t any houses around her, so where had he gone?
• • •
She finally found him standing beside a willow tree. Ditzy circled around before landing behind him. He tilted his muzzle up in the air as she approached, flicking an ear in her direction. When he turned and saw her up close, he looked quite interested.
"Hi, my names Ditzy," she began, before all the things she'd planned on saying jumbled together in her head. "I, uh, saw you plowing a field a couple of days ago and then I saw you at the beach." She paused in thought, trying to come up with a good continuation. "I haven't seen too many unicorns plowing." Smooth, you're starting to sound like a fangirl who's never been outside Ponyville.
He wrinkled his nose back, revealing his top teeth. When one of the older stallions had done that at a school competition, Raindrops had told her it meant that he liked the smell of one of the mares. At the time, it hadn't been important—she'd been more worried about her competitors than what a stallion might be thinking—but now it was useful to know.
"Are you—"
"I was heading into town," she said. "It was too hot at the beach, which is funny because it's hardly spring." She shifted around on her hooves. Her skin felt all tingly, like when she got too close to a cloud that had lightning in it. "You were there, too, but then you left and I found you here. What are you doing here?"“I—um—I came here to relax.” He looked at her flank curiously. She proudly wiggled it for him, showing off her relatively new cutie mark. It had appeared just before her last growth spurt. She’d come up with a clever explanation to her parents—which she’d since forgotten—but the truth was she had just been soaring around on thermals, feeling the gentle play of air currents around her, when she suddenly felt a warm sensation on her hips, and there it was. Too many ponies put too much faith in them anyways, thinking they were some kind of destiny or something. Who cared if she had bubbles on her butt, or something else? She was who she was, and no mark was going to change that.
“Mmm, me too.” She moved closer to him. There was something about him that was almost magnetic. Maybe it was the way that his eyes kept running over her body. Nopony had ever looked at her with such—such interest before.
“You’re cute.” Ditzy nuzzled his cheek, which earned a slight cough from him. He seemed tense. “You smell nice, too,” she added.
He shifted away from her, moving a few steps back. “Don’t you think you’re being a little forward?”
She swished her tail back and forth impatiently. “Nope, I don’t think so.” Celestia, it was hot. She was burning up. She wondered if she should fly back to the lake again to cool off. Still, she’d rather stay here. With him. He was sweating a little, too, she noticed. “Are you all right?”
“I—maybe I should—I don’t know if now is a good time.” He was awkwardly backing away from her, which was not what she wanted.
“It does seem hot,” Ditzy conceded, moving towards him. “But I like being here with you. I like it a lot.”
“It’s just—I . . . ” his voice trailed off, and she noticed that he was blushing.
“There’s nothing to be scared of.” She reached a wing out and gently bumped the tip of his nose. “I won’t hurt you.”
“That’s not what . . . oh, to Tartarus with it.” He leaned forward and kissed her.
Ditzy felt her face flush. She hadn’t kissed a stallion before, but it felt . . . really good. It felt like such a perfect thing to be doing, out here in the woods, where they were all alone. The touch of his lips sent an electric jolt through her. His scent was intoxicating, more powerful than all the drinks she'd had with lunch. Those had clouded her head, but now she was seeing everything with a new clarity. She knew what she wanted, and she wasn't going to leave until she got it.
He took a step back when she broke the kiss, but she moved back close, turning slightly so she could brush a wigtip up his cheek and over his ear. "You're pretty strong for a unicorn. I saw you yesterday, hard at work with all the other ponies."
"My mom wanted me to participate in an old-fashioned winter wrap-up." He shifted around on his hooves. "Before I go to University. She said it'd be good for me."
"I know what else would be good for you." Ditzy ran a hoof down his side. "Come on—sit down. You've been working hard; you deserve a bit of a rest."
"I'm not sure that I want to. I, um, might get my . . . coat dirty."
You can lie on my back, she almost said, but stopped herself and began pacing, flicking her tail impatiently. "Well, let's go under that weeping willow. It's more . . . private." Without waiting for a response, she led the way, deliberately flagging her tail and putting an extra saunter in her walk.
For a heart-stopping moment, Ditzy thought she'd gone too far and scared him off, but then she heard his hooffalls across the grass.
She paused at the curtain of branches, turning and holding them wide, which gave her an ample opportunity to gauge his interest.
As she'd suspected, while his mind might still be uncertain, his body wasn't. She brushed him with a wingtip as he walked past, letting it trail along his side and across his cutie mark.
"It's like our own private nest," she whispered.
"I thought the branches would be . . . more concealing," he mumbled. "Somepony could see us."
"Nopony's gonna," she told him. Ditzy brushed her hoof against his side, slowly moving it back and under. She watched his face closely—she thought she could see a need there. He drew in a sharp breath when her hoof found its target, but he didn't move away and she knew she had him.
Ditzy woke up long after sunset. The moon was high in the cloudless sky. There was a warm weight pressing up against her left side, and for a moment she wondered what—or who—it was, but it all came back to her in a flash.
She bounded to her hooves, feeling more alive than ever before. Normally, she’d have been scared waking up after dark in an unfamiliar place, but this time everything seemed just perfect. She looked over at the sleeping stallion and smiled. There was something right about the scene. The mare in the moon looked serenely down upon the two lovers, casting everything in a gentle half-light. While the actual act hadn’t been what she’d imagined, this post-coital scene was so right, she couldn’t disturb it. Instead, she watched the slow rise and fall of his barrel as he slept.
He was stretched out on the grass, a stray curl hanging over his closed eye. Ditzy brushed it back, and smiled as he reached out with his forehooves. She watched him for a while longer, and considered leaving him there, but it wouldn’t be polite. She prodded him with her nose, then kissted his poll before speaking. "Wake up, sleepyhead."
He jerked awake and looked around guiltily.
“Do you want me to walk you home? Do you live in Ponyville?”
He shook his head. “I’m from Canterlot. I’m staying with my older brother for the week. My parents wanted . . . um, I can find my own way home. I’ll be—it’s less—I mean, I won’t, er, I’ll be fine on my own. Just fine.”
“Ok,” she said cheerfully. “I’ll see you around maybe?”
“Um, yeah. Sure, I’ll be around.” He half-heartedly waved a hoof at her, before walking back towards the path.
Ditzy watched him leave, deep in thought. She wondered why he was acting so weird. Were all stallions like that after sex, or was it just unicorns? She should probably ask an older mare who knew stuff like that. Still, it didn’t spoil her earlier mood.
She stretched her wings and looked up at the sky. She was going to have to get home and get cleaned up. At least both her parents were on night duty, so they’d never know when she got back home. She giggled. They’d never know what she’d been up to.
• • •
Ditzy held a hoof up to cover a yawn. While the post-coital nap had been nice, it was no substitute for a real night's sleep. She took one last breath before leaping into the air.
She took her time flying home, hardly noticing the spread of stars above her head which looked so much colder than the soft glow of the lights in Ponyville. Night was weird; all the colors were wrong, and the moonshadows threw everything into a new light. But, she often thought she did her best thinking at night, whether it was relaxing on a cloud or just looking through the window in her bedroom. If I kept a diary, I'd want to write down all the details to keep them fresh in my memory. I could start one, but I don't know the right words to describe how it felt—how he felt.
Unconsciously, she kept her altitude low as she flew over Ponyville. There was an unusually large number of ponies gathered in the streets, and in the patios and outside the tavern, celebrating the return of spring. I wonder if Cherry Berry is back from the hospital yet. Probably. I could go visit her, but her house is on the other end of town and I'd hafta use her shower and she'd ask why . . . and maybe she isn’t home. . . . Ditzy wavered before she changed course back to her house.
She circled cautiously, making certain that no lights were on that shouldn't be. If it came down to it, she could probably come up with an excuse which would be good enough for Papa, but Mother was a different story. She'd never get past the overbearing mare; she'd probably fold under the weight of her mother's rant against all the mudponies who were filling her head with wrong ideas.
The home was deserted; as soon as she pushed the front door shut, she leaned against the wall to collect her wits. Ditzy hadn't realized how tense she'd gotten as she closed in on her home. But she was free and clear, now. Even Mother wouldn't bother her when she was in the shower, and once she was out, the powerful scent of the lye soap would cover up her indiscretions.
But first, she had to stop in the kitchen. She’d been distracted, and forgotten to eat any dinner—her stallion had taken priority. Now her stomach was grumbling at her, and she hoped there would be something edible in the pantry. She smiled when a note in her father’s sloppy mouthwriting caught her eye. I remember my first Winter Wrap-Up, it said, and I bet tha forgot to eat. I got sommat from the bakery.
It took her no time at all to find the plate in the icebox. She eagerly pulled the parchment paper off the top and bolted down the buttered sourdough bread without even tasting it. She thought about making herself a salad, but she couldn’t afford to wait too long. Her parents could be home any time, now.
Ditzy practically galloped up the stairs, bucking the showercloud into action as soon as she was in the bathroom. She impatiently tapped her hoof on the floor while the water warmed, jumping into the cubicle as soon as the first wisps of steam began coming out.
She let the water sluice across her back as she fiddled with the temperature, trying to get it right where she liked it. Within a minute, she'd lathered most of her body, paying particular attention to her back, where the stallion had left a parting gift when he’d slipped out before he was all the way done.
The most difficult part of the shower was cleaning under her tail—not only did the soap cause the usual painful twinges, but everything felt hypersensitive, which caused nearly uncontrollable twitches as she scrubbed herself clean. She sucked a breath through her teeth and contemplated her predicament. There was no chance to fly back to Ponyville and get a gentler soap—even if she had the bits to spare, the market was closed, and she didn’t have time, either. I’m stuck with this stuff, and try as I might I can still smell him just a little bit. She looked around the bathroom, hoping to find a solution.
Her salvation came in the form of a bottle of mane and tail conditioner. That’ll work. She squeezed some onto her dock, and worked it in with a hoof. Mother’s leaving for work early all next week, so I can just stay in my room until she’s in the shower. And Papa won’t wonder about it at all. He keeps his tail short, anyway.
Once she was satisfied with her cleanliness, she stopped the flow from the cloud and shook herself off in the stall, before rubbing herself down. She left it wrapped around her mane, in the hopes that the soggy terry towel would soak up more of the water before she climbed into bed, but any benefit which it was providing was probably purely psychological.
I wonder what it would be like to share the shower with him? She licked her lips, an image of running the bar of soap over his body forming in her mind. We’d have to do it at his house. He couldn’t get up here—what do their showers look like? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. Would they fit two ponies? Cloudhouses usually had spacious rooms, since pegasi hated feeling confined, but a lot of the homes on the ground had small rooms. Cherry’s house was tiny, and even Berry’s was pretty crowded.
Don't think about him, think about how you have to go to work tomorrow. She glanced in the mirror, trying to imagine how she'd looked to him. It didn’t work like she'd planned; her coat color was boring and her forelock was plastered against her head. Even when her eyes weren’t being weird, they were a mundane color. Plus, everypony said she had her father’s face, which didn’t seem like a good thing.
Pushing those thoughts aside, she adjusted her towel and walked down the hall to her bedroom. As she shoved the door open, for a moment she imagined that her mother was waiting on the other side, but her bedroom was completely lacking in the 'other pony' department.
Ditzy climbed into bed, lying on her side with her hooves around an extra pillow. She felt another wave of heat pass through her body as she imagined that it was her stallion, before she closed her eyes. She didn’t think she’d be able to fall asleep at all—her mind kept replaying the scene under the willow tree—yet within five minutes of getting into bed, she was sound asleep, a serene smile on her face.
A Gift From Celestia II Chapter 5: Weathermare Admiral Biscuit
Ditzy's ears perked as she heard the shower turn on. Despite her late return home the previous night, she felt full of energy. She wasn't sure if it was the memories of the night before, or if it was the anticipation of the first day at her first real job.
She rolled out of bed and got on her hooves, stretching her wings out to their full span for one, two, three seconds before snapping them back in. She lightly bounced on her the tips of her hooves, resisting the urge to jump out the window and do a few loops in the cool spring air.
"Ditzy Doo, are you awake?" Even through a wall and over the dull roar of the shower, her mother's accusing voice was enough to pin her ears back.
"Yeah, Mom, I'm up."
"Today's your first day, you know."
"Yes, Mom, I know." Ditzy grabbed a brush off her nightstand and made a few cursory passes through her mane. It's not normally this neat in the morning, she thought. Maybe I should take showers at night from now on. A small smile formed at the corners of her mouth as she remembered how good it had felt to have a stallion inside her. I wonder if he's still in town? We could—
“Have you got your bag packed?” Her mother's voice unceremoniously yanked her back to the present.
“Yes, Mom.”
“It’s important to make a good first impression.”
“Yes, Mom.” You've told me that, like, a zillion times.
“I packed a lunch for you. Do you have a notebook and pencils?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Okay.” The roar of the shower cut off. “I have to go to work early, so I won’t be able to see you off. Eat a good breakfast.”
Ditzy rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mom. I will.”
She bounded down the stairs in the cloudominium, half-flying and half hopping. She hadn’t wanted to admit it to Raindrops, but she was kind of looking forward to this. Working with feral clouds had been more fun than the Las Pegasus weather lab, and she envied the older pegasi that could just take one look at a cloud and know right where to knock it apart, or how to set it in the wind just so.
“Hey Papa.” Ditzy reached into a cubby and pulled out a bag of oats.
“Mornin', lass.” He set down his newspaper and watched her start to eat breakfast. One ear was bent back and up, while the other was focused on Ditzy. He took small sips of his coffee every now and then. Finally, he turned both ears forward.
“Mother’s gone t'work.” He reached a hoof under the table and pulled out a well-worn drawstring purse. “Listen—I want tha t'do well. There’s goin' t'be a lot comin' all at once, an' tha knows it’s hard t'focus. I know tha can—Mother mebbe doesn't realize, but I've allus known." He dropped the purse on the table.
“Tha knows t'nice baker that made a cake for tha last year? Once tha finishes wi' work, I want tha t'go an buy summat. A reward for a good day's work, tha knows." He slid a single coin out. “Don’t tell Mother.”
Ditzy nodded.
“I'll give tha coin every day tha goes t'work. An every day when tha's done workin', afore tha comes 'ome, get sommat at the bakery.”
“Thanks Papa!” She reached for the bit coin but he stopped her.
"Make me proud, lass.”
“I will. I’ll work hard, you’ll see.”
Before long, Ditzy’s words were coming back to haunt her.
She’d covered theory in school—every pegasus did. Las Pegasus had a marvelous weather lab, and a practice field where teams of pegasi would set out cloud arrangements. Ditzy had even taken an advanced weather planning class. And in her few months here, she’d been around most of Ponyville either in the air or on the ground, so she was reasonably familiar with the territory. Mom had even given her an old copy of the regional planning map and insisted she memorize it, so she'd be prepared for her first day.
Her first inkling that all was not as it should be was the weather office itself. Their large map had been completely covered with pinups of stallions in various compromising poses. When nopony was looking, she edged closer to one, making the startling discovery that it was scented. She felt a warm flush in her loins, and studied the pinup for a moment longer: this stallion was bigger than her unicorn; how might he have felt? She shifted her hind legs and backed away, hoping nopony would notice the slight blush on her cheeks.
When the briefing began, it got even worse. The supervisor didn't use the accepted terms for the clouds, instead substituting her own nicknames for them. The best she could get out of the briefing was that the teams were supposed to move a cluster of white fluffies over the tall-house section of Ponyville, slow grays over the Apples' farm, and switch out the fast grays that were over the leafy woods.
Ditzy had quickly given up on taking notes. Besides the lack of an appropriate desk, her supervisor didn't seem interested in repeating herself. While neither of those things by themselves would have been deal-breakers, it was the odd looks on the faces of the other weather pegasi that finally caused her to open her mouth and drop her pencil.
As her supervisor began handing out team assignments, Ditzy shifted around on her hooves. She'd gotten a good look at all the other pegasi as they'd trudged into the weather office, and already imagined who'd make the best partner. First and foremost was one of the stallions—dozens of novels had prepared her for the inevitable whirlwind romance a mixed-gender team invariably brought about. WIth her newfound experience, that was very appealing. Her second tier of choices were young mares, although it was tough to beat a seasoned veteran for a partner as well. On the other hoof, were she to be paired with a lazy slacker, her work would look that much better by comparison, and she might be able to—
“You’ll be with Lightning Bolt,” the foremare said, pointing to Ditzy. “Gonna be over by Cob’s Mill.” She pointed to a white mare with a blue mane.
“Cob’s Mill?” Ditzy repeated dumbly. It wasn't on her map, and she hadn't heard anypony ever mention it.
“Yeah. Burned down ten years ago.” She pointed to Lightning Bolt. “She knows where it is.”
So it was that Ditzy and Lightning Bolt found themselves on the southern end of Ponyville, hovering over a tomato field. A small creek ran along one edge of the land, and she noticed a few mossy foundation stones poking out of the weeds—no doubt all that remained of Cob’s Mill. Overhead, just west of the tomato fields, a large bundle of starter clouds were waiting for them.
“She could have just said Roma’s field." Ditzy griped as Lightning inspected the clouds. "I know where that is.”
“Look,” Lightning pulled a bundle of cloud-material loose and began fluffing it with her hooves. “What you learned in school isn’t how it happens out here. We haven’t got the budget for all the fancy things you had at Las Pegasus.” She quickly hoofed it into shape and shoved it towards Ditzy. “You’ll catch on—think about how chaotic it would be if we changed the names of every zone each time a new pony moved in or built a new house or something.”
“But why keep the name if the thing that was there is gone?” Ditzy pushed the cloud into place. “Roma’s probably going to be here for years, and her foals will be running the farm after she’s too old—isn’t that how the earth ponies do it? Or you could just use the actual regional map coordinates.”
Lightning shrugged. “I dunno. Who’s gonna remember sector J-8? Besides, most of those boundaries were drawn before anypony lived here. The Apple farm is through five different sectors—do you think they want five different kinds of weather? We’ve got to adapt to farm borders, or else nopony will eat.” She reached over and helped Ditzy tug a cloud into shape. “Watch the edges. If you taper them into the wind, they don’t blow away as fast. It makes for less work.”
• • •
When the sun was fully overhead, Ditzy was more than ready for a break. She’d struggled forming the clouds—in the lab at Las Pegasus, there hadn’t been wind to consider, and the raw material had been easier to work with. Am I that out of practice?
"What the hay is wrong with this stupid cloud?" Ditzy muttered as she tried in vain to get it to hold an approved shape.
"Inclusions," Lightning replied.
Ditzy looked at her blankly.
"Stuff that doesn't belong in a cloud." Lightning reached into her cloud and plucked out a small bit of down. "Like this. The cloud stuff doesn't form quite right around . . . well, non-cloud stuff."
Ditzy reached a hoof into the unformed section of her cloud to see what she could find. "Don't they inspect them? Our teacher said that all clouds went through a rigorous inspection process . . . and when we took a tour of the Las Pegasus Cloud Factory, there were like a dozen inspectors watching over every step of the process!"
"And they probably marched right back to their desks in accounting when the tour was over, complaining about how much it would cost to hire actual inspectors," Lightning muttered as she smoothed over the hole in her cloud. "This material probably failed quality control the first time around, and so they sent it to us as seconds." She flew over next to Ditzy and began piling it with her hooves. "No big deal, you've just got to work around them. Try to keep the defects away from the outside. Nopony will know if the cloud's got a void in the center."
Ditzy eyed the cloud suspiciously. "Aren't you supposed to reject any cloud that can't be properly formed? Because it's unpredictable?"
"Just gotta work around the flaws in the seed," Lightning repeated, turning it around so the defective side faced north. "Then it's good enough."
"But. . . ."
"Look, it's not a raincloud." Lightning set it free and reached for another starter cloud. "And it's not like anypony's gonna be up here with gauges measuring it. Roma knows it's supposed to be partially cloudy, and that's all she cares about. And if a pegasus or a bird needs someplace to land, it'll work."
"Sure," Ditzy said, "But it's not right. The whole batch is off."
"You haven't ever visited a weather factory during a normal shift, have you?" Lighting shoved a cloud at Ditzy. "My sister works at the one in Cloudsdale, on the liquid rainbow line, and the stuff she sees . . . I bet there's better earth ponies when it comes to making clouds. Maybe even a unicorn could do it. 'Cause the only way they can keep the pay 'competitive' is to hire the worst pegasi ever to make the clouds. And they've got a quota, so it's not in QC's best interest to reject subpar clouds." Lightning kicked a cloud free before turning back to Ditzy. "And nopony on the ground cares."
"They ought to."
"Sure, kid." Lightning pulled another clump of cloud free. "Tell me, how many earth ponies ever look up, unless their crops are parched or flooded? They've got their muzzles to the dirt, watching every little sprout as if it was their foal. If the almanac calls for a partially cloudy sky, all they care is that they see clouds." She expertly shaped the starter and watched as it drifted free. "And it's not like the tomato vines care. A little shade is what they want, so that’s what we’re delivering." She hoofed a cloud over to Ditzy who began clumsily shaping it. "Close is good enough.”
“But my weather instructor said—”
“I know.” Lightning turned to face Ditzy. “See, ‘cause they don’t work weather, either. So they fill your head with all kinds of stuff, and when you young pegasi get out in the field, first thing we’ve got to do is empty all that stuff back out, and teach you how it’s really done.
“Look, don’t get me wrong—working weather’s not a bad job,” Lightning concluded. “Well, there’s problems with management, but that’s normal. Most of them never worked in the field before. They’ve got their fancy degrees, but they’ve never busted a cloud for a living.”
Ditzy almost mentioned that her mom was a manager, but bit her tongue in time. There was no sense in antagonizing her . . . well, co-workerwas maybe too grand a term. Trainer fit better, or maybe coach. She twitched her ears as the distant peals of the Ponyville clock reached them.
“Sounds like it’s lunchtime,” Lightning muttered. “I’m gonna go down to the Oatfield Cafe and grab some food. You want anything?”
Ditzy thought about the single coin in her saddlebags. She could buy a sandwich with it, or a hot bowl of soup. Many of her ground-bound friends believed that pegasi couldn’t feel cold, which was a total lie. They could, and did. They just dealt with it—but her hooves were soggy and her fetlocks were soaked. A nice bowl of barley soup would warm her up from the inside out. . . .
“A reward for a good day’s work, if you will.”
“No, I’ve got lunch.” The thought of barley soup was overwhelming. The broth would be buttery and warm, the vegetables would still be just a bit crispy . . . or maybe she could get a bowl of Prench onion soup. A little more salty, and with a nice piece of mostly-melted cheese floating on the top.
“Okay. Keep an eye on that pile of starter clouds.” Lightning shot off towards Ponyville, leaving Ditzy fluttering beside another mis-formed cloud. With a sigh, she jumped up on the edge, adjusting her balance as the windward side shifted dangerously. Such a condition would be intolerable in a raincloud, but Lightning insisted it was acceptable in a so-called “white fluffy.”
She peered down at the ground below, looking for the tree where she’d hung her saddlebags. The gentle breeze had moved them eastward from their starting point, and it took her almost a minute to find the oak, much further away than she’d thought. Ditzy’s graceful jump off the cloud was ruined as a piece of the edge folded downward over her weight. As she soared towards the ground, she thought of how satisfying it would be to buck the cloud apart—but when Lightning returned, she’d probably have to put it back together again.
Ditzy shifted her weight as she hit a thermal, eventually dropping low enough to just skim a few ponylengths above Roma’s fields as she approached the oak tree. She flared her wings and twisted her body into a vertical stance, checking her forward momentum before she crashed into the tree’s canopy. She carefully flew in and grabbed the backstrap of her saddlebags with her teeth, then dropped and turned to clear the tree.
As Ditzy headed back to the sky, she took advantage of the thermal she’d found on the way in, letting it carry her back up to the clouds. I wonder if there’s a map of all the thermals around Ponyville, or if the weather teams just know where they form? They’d had those maps at Las Pegasus, and the Sky and Cloud coach insisted the team memorize them before each race. A pony who could use them well had a huge advantage over her competition.
Ditzy landed in the center of the starter clouds and dug into her saddlebag for the small bag her mother had packed the sandwiches in. They were squashed and soggy; totally unappealing. If her stomach hadn’t been growling at her, she’d have tossed them to the ground. It was the same lunch she’d endured throughout her entire school career: spinach, daisy, cucumber and timothy on thick slices of whole-grain bread. A healthy, boring meal.
She’d always secretly envied her classmates who had the fancy lunches. Sassaflash had been the talk of the school for two days after she’d revealed her Neighponese sushi lunch one memorable afternoon, complete with tiny disposable sticks which were meant to be used to eat the seaweed-wrapped rolls. While dozens of eyes watched, the sticks were pressed into service, tenuously held in her hooves. The food had wavered on its way to Sassaflash’s mouth, but it had made it intact. A collective sigh of relief had passed through the lunchroom crowd. It was almost as exciting as the gossip that Sassaflash had spent the entire afternoon in the bathroom; the description of those events varied based on one’s clique. Regardless, she had never again brought Neighponese food to lunch.
Ditzy flopped into a booth in Sugarcube Corner with all the drama of Private Pansy confronting a particularly nasty stormcloud in the Hearth's Warming Eve pageant. It was a performance worthy of an acting award, but nopony saw it except for Mr. Wattles, who raised an eyebrow before returning to his determined study of the Ponyville Express. Ditzy sighed deeply—earning her another raised eyebrow—and glanced around the bakery for a friendly face. Unfortunately, both Golden Harvest and Cherry Berry were either working in their fields, or up at the hospital fawning over Berry Punch's new foal, which meant she had no outlet for her frustration.
The afternoon had developed into a frantic disaster. Lightning’s patient explanation of technique had dissolved into vague commands by mid-day, when it became obvious that the two mares were not going to meet the schedule. Ditzy had tried her best to keep up, but the two hour lunch break that Lightning had taken had put them hopelessly behind. The last batch of clouds they placed were just barely passable, and Ditzy knew that a few of them would be out of place in an hour, making more work for the evening shift.
She’d offered to stay late and finish, but Lightning had muttered that they wouldn’t collect overtime, and had a few colorful suggestions for what management could do with their substandard clouds—suggestions which Ditzy wholeheartedly seconded.
On the plus side, she wasn’t as tired as she’d expected. Winter Wrap-Up had been a real effort—largely because the lack of coordination between the teams had caused them to repeat the same work. Lightning, on the other hoof, had been willing to accept malformed clouds, so long as their whole pile was placed more-or-less in the right place. Ditzy was beginning to wonder if her mother’s gripes about the difficulties of getting a cloud worker to do the job properly had some merit.
Still, to be fair, the starters hadn’t been as pure as they should have been. Cloudsdale was letting product out that they shouldn’t have. Seen in that light, was it any wonder that Lightning was unconcerned about the clouds meeting specifications? Ditzy had learned in class that a bundle of impure cloud material should be rejected outright . . . but what would have happened if Lightning had rejected the clouds she’d been given? In a serial novel, they would have flown into the weather supervisor's office, pounded their hooves on the desk and demanded satisfaction, and after facing down countless challenges, fallen madly in love, ultimately gifting the Ponyvillians with flawless clouds. But the reality is a lot more complicated than that, she thought, and I haven't got a virile stallion as a partner, either. That means that the sub-plot with the illegitimate foal is a non-starter. She lifted her head off the table and twisted back to grab onto a bent feather, delicately moving it into its proper position.
It was too much to think about on her first day. Ditzy turned towards the counter. She had a bit to spend, and she felt like she’d truly earned it. The display cases were calling to her with their selections of succulent goodness. It boggled her mind how many different ways a few simple ingredients could be combined to make so many unique treats—and her mother's cooking skills provided no clues to the process. It was rare for dinner to have a dish which required more than simply putting it on a plate, possibly accompanied with two slices of bread. Her father's approach to dinner was even simpler: either combine whatever he could find into a 'salad' or 'casserole,' or treat her to dinner from a restaurant.
Ditzy eagerly walked over to the case, paying little mind to the young mare trotting between the register and the ovens. Her attention was wholly reserved for the confections, and Cherry had once jokingly told her that watching her study the display cases was like watching a noble unicorn in Canterlot ogling jewelry in a store window. She’d stuck her tongue out at the earth pony and gone back to staring at the treats.
She passed over the breads: as tasty as they were, she wasn’t in the mood for focaccia or a Prench baguette, although an oat and date bread did look appealing. She mentally marked that to consider as she moved on to the display of cookies, licking her lips at the thought of a nice moist molasses cookie or a savory butter cookie.
Right about now, Cherry would start teasing me, she thought, but she isn’t here, so I’m gonna take my time choosing. She moved on to the selection of muffins, squinting at the little cards in front of each tray which showed a drawing of the ingredients. There were blueberry, banana nut, apple, chocolate chip, oat and timothy, and even lemon. In her opinion, they were superior to cupcakes, because once you licked the frosting off, the rest of the cupcake was just boring dough, while the flavor of the muffin went through the whole thing, top to bottom.
Still, it wouldn’t be fair to skip over the display of cakes—they were, after all, the baker’s specialty—but none of the flavors they were offering today appealed to her. Once she reached the end of the display, she tapped her hoof. I have enough for both a muffin and a piece of the oat and date bread, but maybe I shouldn’t spend all my money.
Ditzy finally settled on a lemon muffin and a glass of milk. It would leave her with a little brass as change; maybe she could save that up and buy lunch for Lightning some day. It might be a nice gesture, something the mare would appreciate. True, it would be a small token in the grand scheme of things, but it might gain her a little respect on the crew, and that was important.
After her second distance race, her coach had taken her aside and presented her with a small pewter necklace of a pegasus in flight. It was a simple thing—really no more complex than a filly might make in jewelry class. But the act of presenting the gift had stayed with her, and every time she looked at the necklace it reminded her of the happy times she’d had as the undisputed champion of the marethon. If her coach had believed in her, she had no choice but to work just a little bit harder to justify that trust.
She leaned over the table and took a small bite out of the muffin. Miss Cake had warmed it up in the oven for her, and it was delicious.
A Gift from Celestia Chapter 6: Early Summer Admiral Biscuit
Day thirty of my imprisonment. Conditions are harsh. Food is limited, and the guards are suspicious of the slightest hint of resistance. I will—
“Ditzy? Are you paying attention?” Lightning Bolt looked over at her in concern.
“Uh, yeah. Kind of.”
The weathermare shook her head. “Rainclouds. We’re going to position them on the west end of the Apple’s orchard, buck them to get the rain going, and then let them drift east. We’ll want to corral them at the other end of the field, ‘cause this is a special order.”
Ditzy sighed. What had started out as kind of fun had become—over the course of a month—a job. How could somepony do the same thing, day in and day out, every day for the rest of her life? At least this was a change from wrangling the so-called ‘white fluffies,’ which had been her main chore to date.
“You’ve got to watch the clouds carefully. There might be some with lightning in them, and we don’t want to use those. They could hurt the trees, or burn down the barn.”
“How come they even make them with lightning?” Ditzy looked at her sheepishly. "I left Las Pegasus before we got to advanced cloudwork."
“There’s always a difference in thaumatic energy potential between the sky and the ground. In regions mostly populated by pegasi, the field tends to rise, while the opposite happens in unicorn-dense areas. Only exclusively earth ponie settlements are largely neutral, because of the nature of their hooves.
“If left unattended, the potential would become so unbalanced, lightning would form on its own, and strike from the sky to the ground—or vice-versa—and somepony could get hurt. With small lightning clouds, we can control the strikes and keep them small.”
Ditzy looked at Lightning in surprise. It made sense that she would know that, with her cutie mark and all, but it was the most intelligent thing she’d ever heard Lightning say. Normally, their conversations had been limited to a recap of the hoofball scores, which actors were the most attractive, or bitter tirades against incompetent ponies.
“How do you know which ones have lightning in them? They all look the same.”
“It’ll have a kind of bristly feel, or maybe be clingy on your hooves. If you’re not sure, just set it aside and try a different cloud. I’ll double-check. It’s not something we want to get wrong. The Apples have a lot of influence in this town.
"Now, there's going to be some rough air over the farm." Ditzy's ears perked—she loved updrafts and thermals. She waited patiently for her mentor to tell her were they were, but Lightning just gazed down at the neat rows of apple trees. "Not much, I think. It's pretty early in the day, and the ground's not warm yet. We'll set them up about mid-height and just keep an eye on them." She grabbed a cloud and pushed it into position, carefully shaping the edges with her hooves. "You work north, and I'll work south. Pay attention to your altitude."
Ditzy nodded and grabbed a cloud. She eagerly pulled it loose and shoved it right into Lightning.
“I said north!”
“Oops.” Ditzy clutched the cloud carefully. “I thought that was north.” She'd always had trouble with directions. When she stopped to think about it for a little bit, she got it right, but when she was in the heat of the moment, like as not she'd just turn to her right and assume that was the direction she was meant to go.
“Canterlot’s east.” Lightning let go of her cloud and pointed. “So, that makes that north.”
“S’okay.” Lighting grabbed her cloud back and neatly stuck it to the first one she’d placed. Ditzy watched how she did it—it had been a long time since she’d practiced back in Las Pegasus, and good rainclouds out there were hard to come by. She stretched the south end of her cloud out and started to pull it into position, only to have the face contract before it was positioned. She tried again, leaving the two closer. They barely stuck, and she had to climb on top and pull the edges together by hoof.
By her third cloud, she was beginning to get frustrated. They weren’t made right, that was obviously the problem. Any moment now, Lightning would start complaining about the low quality of clouds again—Ditzy could recite verbatim some of her more cutting remarks.
But when she went back for the fourth, she looked over and realized that Lightning was nearly a hundred pony-lengths away, sticking clouds together with a practiced efficiency. Ditzy shook her head and grabbed another.
She was rewarded with a slight tingle in her hooves and a funny little flutter in her chest. That was weird. She grabbed it loose from the pile just as Lightning flew over. “Whatcha got?”
“I—is this one a lightning cloud?”
Her mentor poked a hoof in it and quickly withdrew it. “Yup. Powerful one, at that. Set it off to the side. Over there, by the road.”
Ditzy flew it off to the side, and set it more-or-less where Lightning had suggested. The weathermare was looking up and down the road, concentrating on something. Ditzy followed her eyes, but didn’t see anything of interest. “Okay, it’s over here. What keeps it from drifting?”
“Nothing,” Lightning informed her with a sly look. “Just . . . that's why you've got to mark it, you know. So it doesn’t get mixed in by mistake.”
“I’ll just mush in the top,” Ditzy said cheerfully. She flapped up a few dozen lengths, gauged the distance, and dropped like a stone onto its curvey top. The cloud flattened under her impact, sending a few small bits scattering off. “Is that a good—”
Ka-BOOM!
It felt like nails had been driven into all four of her frogs simultaneously, and her wings painfully snapped to their full extension. She could smell something burning, and blinked spots out of her eyes, noticing that the very tips of her primaries were scorched, with thin tendrils of smoke rising from them.
Lightning was doubled over on top of a nearby raincloud, clutching her sides. For a moment, Ditzy thought she was hurt, but quickly realized she was laughing. She pulled her wings back in then lifted her hooves up one at a time and shook them off. It didn’t make the pain go away completely, but it helped.
“Oh, Celestia, that was priceless.” Lightning wiped a tear off her cheek. “The look on your face when the lightning went off. It was like, perfect. Oh, I wish I’d had a camera. Then both of your eyes rolled in opposite directions . . . how do you do that?”
“Funny.” Ditzy flew over and grabbed another cloud. “I could have been hurt.”
“Pfft. That was just a tiny little guy. Nothing but a tingle.” Lightning picked up a fresh cloud and started flying it back towards her end. “Anyway, now you know what they feel like. And you’ll remember.”
I’ll remember all right. Ditzy stuck another cloud on the row. I’ll get you back, Lightning. She stuck another cloud on. Maybe I’ll put hot peppers in your lunch some day. Her hooves still felt kind of funny, and her wings were sore, like they’d just cramped up.
By the time they’d finished placing the rainclouds, though, all thoughts of revenge had flown from Ditzy’s mind. They'd been at it continuously since the weather briefing, and her stomach was demanding sustenance, but still they worked. The pair was bouncing from cloud to cloud, getting the rain going. Once again, Lightning made it look easy, while Ditzy was struggling with each one. As much as she wanted to place the blame at her mentor’s hooves, Ditzy had chosen each one of the clouds herself, and it was unlikely that Lightning had somehow had the opportunity to sabotage them. It’s just inexperience, she thought. The older mare made it look embarrassingly easy.
“Shouldn't take more than two bounces.”
Ditzy jumped in surprise.
“Sorry. Shouldn't take more than two bounces to get the rain going.”
“Tell that to this stupid cloud.” Ditzy hopped up and down fruitlessly. “It doesn’t want to work.”
“Mmm hmm. You’re not doing it right.”
Not doing it right my pinions. “It’s just not cooperating. I'll get it eventually.”
“Yeah, they’ll do that. Move aside for a sec.” Lightning took Ditzy’s place. “Watch my hooves. I’m going to drop and stomp when I hit. It’s kind of like . . . like a counterforce.”
Ditzy watched intently. Lightning had her legs slightly bent, and as soon as they touched the top of the cloud, she straightened them hard, snapping down into the top of the cloud for a moment before it buoyed her back upwards, launching her up into the air again. Rain started pouring out of the cloud instantly.
“So, it’s like when you jump off the ground before taking flight?”
“Kinda.” Lightning moved on the to next cloud and effortlessly got it flowing. “You’ve got to do it right when you hit. It’s kind of like you’re catching the cloud by surprise.”
“That’s dumb. Shouldn’t one good kick trigger them?”
“Nah. If it did, they’d leak in shipping, and we’d get empty clouds.”
"But the rainclouds in the Las Pegasus lab—"
Lighting rolled her eyes. “Oh, Las Pegasus clouds. All they did there was take them from the student weather factory to the lab. They wouldn’t have time to leak out.”
Ditzy turned on her. “Is there something wrong with having an education at the best pegasus school in Equestria?”
“No . . . I—" Lightning dropped down on her cloud and rubbed a hoof through her mane. "Look, Dtiz, I can be . . . prickly. It’s just that nopony seems to care about these little towns. We get crap for clouds, and we’ve got a second-rate weathermare in charge. But look down there, and tell me what you see.”
“Corn? Apple trees?”
“Yeah. Corn and apple trees. Over there’s carrots, tomatoes on the other end of town, cherry orchards, and everypony’s got their own little garden, too. Who gets the good clouds? The stupid unicorns in Canterlot and Manehattan. You know what they grow there?”
“Um. . . . “ Ditzy scratched her head. Pencils had covered Equestrian agriculture in school; there had been all sorts of little maps and lists and stuff like that. She’d had to write a report on barley, of all things. That didn’t grow in Canterlot, she was sure. But there were all sorts of fancy gardens around the palace, she’d been told, probably like the vegetable and flower gardens around every house in Ponyville.
“Nothing but bureaucrats and nobles; that’s their crop. You’d think that the ponies who grew the food would get decent weather, but nope! Blueblood’s fancy tea-parties are more important. Sometimes I wonder if the nobles really have our best interests at heart?” She spit at a cloud, missed, and watched it disappear among the raindrops. “Ah well, what can you do? G’wan, why don’t you take a break. Get something to eat. I’ll keep an eye on these clouds.”
Ditzy nodded eagerly, and flew back in the direction of Ponyville. She kept an eye out for ponies she knew, giving an occasional wave as she passed over a friend. They usually didn't see her—most ground ponies didn't spend a lot of time looking up.
She dropped sharply when she got over the market, alighting in front of her favorite stall.
"You're later'n usual," the stallion commented.
"I know, I know." Ditzy reached into her small purse and pulled a quarter-bit out. "We had an important rain order." She tapped a hoof impatiently as the stallion reached into his cask with tongs, and pulled out a glistening pickle. He deftly wrapped it in a small square of waxed paper and passed it over to her.
"Thanks!" She turned tail and leaped into the sky, heading for her favorite lunch spot. Once she was clear of the market, she banked into a slow left turn, angling for a hilly park on the west side of Ponyville. She'd spotted it on her third day at work, and had eaten her lunch there ever since. It was a pretty nice place, with a good view from some of the benches. Her favorite was under a spreading chestnut tree, which gave her good shade, a commanding view, and was close enough to the center of the park that she usually got serenaded by the buskers—but was far enough away from everypony else she was rarely besieged by playful fillies.
As she dug into her bag for a sandwich, she waved a hoof at Mr. Apple, who was towing a wagon through town. He sometimes gave her a free apple. “We’ve put some rain out at your place,” she shouted.
“Trees’ve been needin’ it,” he boomed back. “Got some nice Red Galas comin’ in tomorrow; why don’t ya come by the stand when you’re offa work? You an’ Lightning?”
“Thanks!” She watched him thoughtfully as he continued through town. Her mother always looked down her muzzle at earth ponies, but they weren’t bad when you got used to them. Their coats were always kind of mucky, though.
She tore into her sandwich and devoured it in moments. She’d been eating more than usual lately, probably because of all the weather work she’d been doing. It seemed easy enough in class, but ten hours of it a day was starting to wear her down. Last weekend, she’d slept in so late she missed lunch. She was still hungry, so she walked over to a patch of flowers. Looking to make sure nopony was watching, she stuck her head down and bit the heads off half the patch.
• • •
“How was work today?”
“Meh.” Ditzy reached across the table and grabbed a bowl of pickle relish. “It went okay. I got to work with rainclouds.”
“Your maternal grandmare was a raincloud specialist. She started off in a factory, you know. She figured out how to improve the water intakes on the inlet end of the factory. Before that—”
The pegasi had to take the clouds all the way down to the reservoir to fill them, Ditzy mouthed. “I know, Mom. She met Grandpa Do there.”
“And she swept him off his hooves.” Unconcerned with the interruption, she continued. “The two of them went on to work out a new shape of raincloud, which had a fifteen-percent greater water capacity, while still being easy to manufacture using existing equipment. It—are you going to have any salad with your relish?”
“What?” Ditzy muttered around the serving spoon. “I really like relish.”
“You didn’t used to. You used to scrape it off your plate, or give it to your father. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”
“All t'work she’s doing. Allus flyin'—big change from sittin' in school all day, tha knows.”
“Hmm. Could be.” Her mother fixed her with a glare. “She’s a young mare now, I guess tastes change. You know, I ought to tell you about growing up. Your body’s changing, and soon enough you’ll—”
“Mom! Not at dinner, please. We covered all this stuff in school.”
Ditzy glanced nervously around the classroom, where all her classmates were looking at the chalkboard with interest and unease. The drawings were nothing they hadn't seen before, but to have a teacher explain it somehow made it both official and awkward. Most of the mares rapidly adapted a feigned familiarity, while the colts shifted around in their seats, hoping to not be the first to show an obvious interest.
For once, she had an unfair advantage, since she could blame any glances or stares on the vagaries of her eyes; nopony could challenge that. And the first part of the class was such a waste of time, as the teacher gave the proper names for anatomical features that were plain to anypony with eyes. The second half of the class was more technical, as the teacher began describing in detail just how the sex act worked, to barely-concealed whispers and snickers.
When he wasn't looking, Raindrops made lewd motions with her hooves, adopting an attentive look any time she saw his ears turn back.
Ditzy mostly ignored her friend and doodled in her notebook instead, occasionally casting sidelong glances over at the gangly colt who sat next to her. It was difficult to imagine how such a clinical description could be in any way arousing, especially when compared to the magazines some of the older mares had passed around in the locker room—yet the colt next to her didn't seem to think so. His desk was poor cover, and she found herself wondering how he'd react if she just presented to him then and there. And then it occurred to her that her parents had done the very same thing the teacher was describing to make her, which was a disturbing thought that quickly shut down her nascent libido.
Ditzy’s face reddened. “All the . . . stuff, and junk.”
“Well, I certainly hope your teacher used a more technical vocabulary than ‘stuff and junk.’
“She did.” Ditzy pushed her plate away. “I think I lost my appetite.”
“Eat the rest of your dinner!” Her mother pushed the plate back. “I slaved over it. There are starving zebras that would love to eat what you’re getting.”
Why don’t you give it to them, then? She poked at the limp asparagus on her plate, finally picking one up and gamely chewing on it. “I hate asparagus. It makes my pee stink.”
“That’s the price you pay for a healthy body,” her mother said flatly.
• • •
Ditzy stood in the shower, letting the water clean the mess off the floor. She’d been sick again, for the fourth day in a row. It was weird; she hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, and she felt all right for the rest of the day. Maybe a little tired, but that was all.
Is it altitude sickness? She’d heard of it, but it wasn’t the kind of thing a pegasus normally got. Still, she’d spent a lot of time on the ground through the winter. Maybe it took a while before it caught up to a pony. She stretched out her wings and let the water drum off them, wondering if that would settle the nausea. Maybe I should see if we have any ginger root in the house.
She kicked the cloud to stop the flow and stepped out of the shower. She shook herself off, flapping her wings a couple times for good measure, before flipping a towel over her back. Yawning, she looked into the mirror at her disheveled mane. I should really run a brush through that.
As she slipped the brush on her hoof, her stomach grumbled again, and then clenched. She leaned over the sink until the waves of nausea passed, thankful that nothing had come up this time.
Five minutes later, she was at the breakfast table, pouring a bowl of oats out. She dumped a little water in them and idly stirred it with a spoon
“Is tha feelin' okay, lass?”
“Yes, Papa.” Ditzy began eating her breakfast.
“Didn't sound like it t'me,” he replied, setting down his coffee and tilting his head upward.
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
The two of them ate in silence. Ditzy tried to ignore her father, who was watching her with a thoughtful expression. She concentrated on eating each spoonful in a nice, normal manner. Just two normal ponies having a normal breakfast together.
“Tha looks a little . . . different.”
“It’s just all the weather work,” she said quickly. “That's all. It’s stressful, you know.”
“Is tha gettin' enough sleep?”
“Yes, Papa.” Ditzy took her bowl to the sink and rinsed it out. “I’ve got to go. Lightning said something about a special order today, ‘cause they’re gearing up for the Summer Sun Celebration. I think we’re gonna work in the warehouse today. Maybe all day. I don’t want to be late.”
“Uh-huh.” He pulled out his coin purse and slid a bit across the table. “Take care of thissen out there, lass.”
“I will! I’m—I might be a little late getting home. I wanna write a letter to Raindrops after work.” She walked over to his desk and started opening drawers. “Where’s the stamps?”
“With t'envelopes., where they've allus been.”
“Ok, thanks.” She stuffed everything in her bag. “Gotta run!”
• • •
Dear Raindrops:
Hey, it’s almost time for the Summer Sun Celebration! Are they giving you time off from camp to go? We’re going. Mom got us tickets on the train. I don’t know why we aren’t just flying, but I’ve never been on the train before, so that’s kind of cool. Although I don't know if Mom will like it, cause there will be lots of earth ponies and unicorns on the train I bet and she doesn’t get along with them too well.
So remember my mentor? Turns out she’s kind of a—well, you know—but she’s teaching me lots of stuff that we never covered in class. It’s funny how they do weather around here, but it’s all for the farmers. Some of them actually have rain gauges on their property, and they complain if we don’t drop enough water. I guess that makes sense. I’ve met a couple of really cool ponies in town, too. There’s a nice mare that runs a pastry shop. She’s got a kind of funny accent, it sounds like she comes from up north somewhere. Like Vanhoover, or something. She’s got her eyes on this gangly stallion, can you imagine? It’s pretty funny. And I found a pony in town who sells pickles! We never had those in Las Pegasus. They’re really good. I’ve been buying one for lunch every day, from what little I make on weather patrol.
Mother’s pretty much the same as always, but Papa’s been a little off, I think. Maybe he’s going stir-crazy. Maybe he’s allergic to the smell of crops. Speaking of which, I’ve been feeling a little sick in the mornings. I don’t know what’s up with that. Maybe it’s altitude sickness, or it could be because of all the earth ponies, messing up the field. There’s weird currents here; the forest around the town is a wild zone. Not even clouds work right over it, can you imagine?
Well, I’ve got to get back to work. If you’re in Canterlot for the Summer Sun Celebration, look for me. I can’t wait to catch up with you.
—Ditzy D.
Oh—I need to get back to long-distance flying. I think I’m getting fat. You’d think that working in the clouds all day would keep me skinny, but I kid you not, I think my tummy’s bigger.
A Gift from Celestia Chapter 7: Midsummer Admiral Biscuit
Early summer was just a promise of what would come. Cloud usage was watched carefully, to prevent a shortage later in the year. Inspectors gauged the depths of the weather reservoirs all around Equestria to make certain that there would be enough to fill clouds in the fall. In the air, patrolling around Ponyville was beginning to be unpleasant. Pegasi could stay above the weather easily enough, but there was no flying above heat. Ditzy was grateful for her light grey coat; she could only imagine how some of the darker-colored ponies suffered in the heat. She’d seen McIntosh straining in the field one particularly sunny day, his sides darkened with sweat.
Pegasi did have one advantage: one thing their ground-bound cousins couldn’t do was generate a good breeze. Ditzy let go of the cloud she was pushing and flew straight up, until she was a hundred feet above the cloud. She held her wings out straight and dropped, slowly transitioning to a more level flight. When she was about halfway back to where Lightning Bolt was working, she twisted her wings slightly, banking upwards. She reached the apex of her ascent as she came alongside her mentor, and gently flapped her wings to stay in place, all her speed bled off.
Lightning shook her head. “You’re using more energy than you’re saving. A straight flight is more efficient.”
“Not if there’s thermals to ride,” Ditzy countered. “Even when there’s not, it’s worth it for the cooling.” She grabbed another cloud. “Trust me, I was three-time distance champ at Las Pegasus.”
“Marathoning’s not the same as working weather,” Lightning protested.
“Endurance is endurance,” Ditzy called back as she whisked another cloud into position. She was really starting to get the hang of this. She could tell Lightning was impressed, even if she didn’t really show it much. I’m gonna be a lead weathermare soon.
A sudden twist in her belly made a mockery of her thoughts. She dropped the cloud and clutched her stomach, willing the nausea to go away. Deep breaths. Deep breaths of clean air.
“Ditzy?” Lightning was hovering right next to her, a concerned look on her face. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she managed through clenched teeth. “Just give me a moment. Pulled up too quick last time. Heat’s getting to me.”
“It’s not that hot,” Lightning commented. “I—why don’t you take your lunch early? Maybe splash around in the pond, or at least lie on a cloud pile. I can get the rest of these.”
“I'll be okay.”
“Ditzy, do it.”
Ditzy looked pleadingly at Lightning, but the mare's face was set. She sighed and slumped her head. I don't want to have to leave work early, she thought. I'll never be a weather lead if I can't make a full day's shift in the summer.
“Ugh, fine.” She rolled to the edge of the cloud and looked at the ground below, where her lunch was stashed. Maybe Lightning was right; maybe a bit of shade and some water would do the trick. I might be pushing myself too hard—that's what's happening. I can glide down easy enough. She snapped her wings open and flipped off the cloud, already feeling relief as her speed made the air rush past her face.
She kept an eye on her target as she came down in a broad arc. Too steep a dive and she'd spend a lot of effort at the bottom losing speed; too shallow and she'd have to make multiple circles. By banking just right, she could lose lots of altitude without picking up excessive speed. In essence, she was taking what made a good, long glide, and doing the opposite.
As she neared the ground, Ditzy flared her wings further, letting the air do most of the braking for her. There was a trick to this—some of the precision fliers were much better then her, but even though it wasn't a terribly useful skill for marathon flying, it came in handy for cloud-to-cloud or cloud-to-ground flights.
She didn't quite get her timing right, and had to flap a few times to complete the braking maneuver before she crashed into a tree, but it was close enough. She touched down lightly and trotted to the shade of the tree where she'd stored her lunch.
Ditzy glanced up at the sun's position and gritted her teeth. It was not even noon yet. Lightning probably won't want to give me another break, since we've got to get our work done and I'm not up there pulling my weight. Her lunch was unappetizing, but she forced it down anyway, ignoring the feeling of nausea. It was all she was going to get until dinner. She didn't feel like flying into town and getting a pickle—or anything else—from market.
Instead, she shoved her empty sandwich wrapper back in her bag and walked to the edge of a reflecting pool and stuck her snout in the water, greedily lapping it up. Then, throwing caution to the wind, she waded into the pond and lay down in the shallow water, stretching her wings out over the surface. It would have been nice to relax them completely, but flying with soaking feathers was a lot of effort.
She watched small fish swim over to examine the intruder in their midst; when some of them got too bold, she stuck her mouth in the water and blew a stream of bubbles their direction, causing them to dart away in a silvery flash.
Ditzy could have stayed there for the rest of the day, but she knew that she had to get back to work before Lightning came down and dragged her back into the clouds. If she got a reputation for being lazy, she’d never work her way up the ranks. Reluctantly, she climbed out of the pool and shook herself off on shore, scraped a particularly clingy strand of seaweed off her leg, and took to the sky again.
Once she'd gotten to altitude, Lightning eyed her critically. “You feel any better?”
Ditzy nodded eagerly. She didn't, not really, but she wasn't a quitter.
“Hmm. All right, we're going to change things up a little bit here. It'll be more efficient if you stay by the shipment and pull them loose, shape them, and then shove them in my direction.”
“Are you sure? That sounds like a lot of extra work for you,” Ditzy protested.
“You need practice shaping clouds,” Lightning said gruffly. “We both know that.”
“I should be in the sky.”
“Look,” Lightning said. “I . . . uh, we both know you can fly pretty good. But I've got to teach you everything about cloudmaking, and that includes shaping them. You still haven't got that down right.”
Well, it won't be so bad to be by the cloud pile all day, she thought. “Okay.”
• • •
The next couple of hours passed in a blur. At first, Ditzy was slowing Lightning down as she fumbled with the clouds, but by the time Lightning called a break, she was getting the knack of it.
While her mentor went off for lunch, Ditzy laid back on the pile of starter cloud, pounding out a small hollow with her wings. She cocked her head back and closed her eyes, letting the sun warm her belly while the clouds cooled her back.
She would have sworn that she hadn’t dozed off, but the next thing she knew, Lightning was poking her in the ribs. “Come on, kid, time to get back at it.”
Ditzy groaned and tumbled out of her little nest, fluttering her wings to get the circulation back. She nodded and returned to the open air, then grabbed another piece and began shaping it, doubling over as another cramp hit her.
• • •
Amazingly, they finished their sector on time. Ditzy looked over at Lightning's sweat-soaked barrel and felt a twinge of guilt. I hardly did any work. Stupid cramps. For the hundredth time, she wondered if it was something she'd eaten, but she'd had the same breakfast as usual.
“You want me to fly home with you?”
Ditzy looked at Lightning in surprise. The mare had never made that offer before.
“No, I'll be okay.”
“You sure?” Lightning looked at her with an unusually concerned look. “I mean, you've got a cloudhouse, right?”
“I can get home on my own,” Ditzy insisted. “I promise.”
“Get a good night's sleep and drink lots of fluids,” Lightning instructed. “Maybe take a hot bath.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Ditzy stuck her tongue out and twisted toward Ponyville. Her parting shot would have been perfect if she hadn't been seized by another cramp just as she needed to be leveling off, and she faltered before finding an unsteady new course.
As a result, her descent came up short, even with finding a friendly thermal over a field of rye. As soon as it became obvious she wasn't going to clear the ridge between herself and Ponyville, she turned to the road, keeping her glide as long as she could before she had to slow herself and land, then walk her way to the top of the ridge before she took flight again.
Her wings were drooping as she made her way into town and trotted into the market. She could smell the enticing aromas of Sugarcube Corner, and was already licking her lips at the thought of a nice chocolate malt, when she remembered that her saddlebags—and her bits—were still hanging out where they'd been working.
Ditzy groaned, and shifted on her hooves in indecision. Should I go back and get them, or just pick them up tomorrow morning? I can ask one of the girls to loan me some money—I'm sure they will.
I hate to beg, though. Maybe I can run a tab with Ms. Cake. I come in there all the time; surely she'll let me. She turned to look back the way she'd come. It wouldn't take that long to go back and get my bag, though. Or, I could—
“Earth to Ditzy.”
She turned to find herself muzzle-to-muzzle with Berry Punch, who had a huge grin on her face. “Wow, Ditz, you had your heads way up in the clouds. I've been calling out your name for, like, a couple of minutes. You coming to Sugarcube Corner?”
“Yeah.” Ditzy looked down at the sling around Berry's neck. “Is that—“
“Pinchy. Figured it was time to get her out of the house.” She proudly pulled the blanket back, revealing her foal. “Let her meet up with the rest of the girls, all in one place, you know. Plus, I've got something special for us in my saddlebag, but I can't tell you what it is until later.”
Ditzy didn't pay her any mind; instead she leaned toward the infant, which regarded her with unblinking blue eyes. “Aww, who's a cute little filly?”
Berry Pinch responded by latching onto her nose.
Her ears jerked up as she heard Lightning mutter, "Cute kid." She pulled herself free from Berry Pinch's grasp and turned to face her mentor.
“Lightning? What are you doing here?”
“You forgot your saddlebags. I was headed this way, so I figured I ought to bring them to you.” She tossed them over to Ditzy before turning her attention back to Berry. “How old is she?”
“Almost three moons,” Berry said proudly. “Pinch was born on the second day of Winter Wrap-Up. She's already crawling around the house.”
“She's adorable,” Lightning said, tickling the foal with a wingtip. Pinch latched onto it and began suckling. “Aww, look at that.”
Ditzy looked at the pair in wonder. She'd never thought of Lighting as having a sentimental side, but she'd been nice to her all day long, and now she was playing with a stranger's foal. It was almost as if she'd been replaced with some complete stranger disguised as Lightning.
“Take care of your beautiful daughter, Berry. See you later, Ditz.” Lightning trotted off towards the market, an extra spring in her step.
Ditzy turned back to Berry, who was tugging her mane out of Pinchy's grasp. “She seemed nice.” Berry tucked the blanket back around her daughter. “You said she was a bitch.”
“I guess not all the time,” Ditzy replied. “Weird.”
“C’mon, the girls'll be waiting.” Berry began heading for the bakery, Ditzy in tow.
• • •
Cherry Berry and Golden Harvest were already there, and a huge tray of cupcakes was set out on the table in front of them.
“Cause I'm gonna be a big sister,” Golden Harvest announced proudly. “Mom's having another foal!”
“I brought a bottle for us to celebrate with,” Berry said. She grabbed it out of her saddlebags and set it on the table, then began unwrapping her daughter from her sling. “Ditz, can you slide over? Pinchy's hungry.”
“Sure.” Ditzy made some room, and Berry stretched out on the bench.
“Does she know what kind it is yet?” Berry finished her positioning and gently lifted her daughter towards her hind legs.
“Earth pony, natch. Filly.” Golden Harvest opened the bottle and began to pour out glasses. “Doctor did the tests.”
“There's a test?” Ditzy looked at her in confusion.
“Yeah. Berry, is it okay for you to drink?” Golden Harvest whispered.
“I'm not pregnant any more,” she said. “So yes.”
“But . . . your milk. That can't be good for a baby.”
She waved a hoof dismissively. “It's fine. The alcohol's like, filtered out by my kidneys or something before it gets to my nipples.”
“Wouldn't want a foal to drop out of the clouds.” Cherry explained, making a wobbly flailing motion with her forehooves. “That's why there's a test. It's be a pretty lousy spring if foals were splatting to the ground.”
“You're one to talk—you're building your crazy balloon. One day it's going to be you falling out of the sky and going splat,” Berry replied.
“What happens if you get the wrong kind of foal?”
Golden Harvest shook her head. “There is no 'wrong' kind of foal, Ditz. Haven't you ever seen the Hearth's Warming Eve pageant?”
“Yeah,” Berry added. “You've been listening to your Mom too much.”
“So when's the foal due?” Cherry leaned across the table. “Do you know?”
“Uh . . . around late spring, probably. They started trying—“ her face reddened and she took another drink— “after we got our first carrots planted, you know?”
“You wanna plant the seed at the right time so you can harvest it—“
“Thank you for that, Berryshine. Honestly. Like you and Cormano were thinking about timing.” Cherry punched her lightly on the withers. “That's probably going to put your mom out of commission next year, unless the foal comes early.”
“Dad says Mom's pretty regular,” Golden said. “I can't believe we're having this conversation. Anyways, when she missed her second cycle, they were sure, so they went to the doctors—if that hadn't been enough of a sign, she's had morning sickness the past seven days.”
“My aunt had it terrible,” Cherry replied. “Just one morning, boom, there it was. Six weeks straight, and then it was gone, just like that. She got kind of mean, too. Especially towards the end, you know, before the foal was due. Bit my uncle a couple of times.”
“I started eating weird stuff. Like, really salty stuff.” Berry reached a hoof down and absently ran it through Pinch’s mane. “And I got hornier, but since I was pregnant, I had to let Cormano—”
Ditzy shoved a cupcake in Berry’s mouth. “Nopony wants to know what you and Cormano do.”
“I bet that took care of some of the salt craving,” Cherry muttered under her breath.
"No, he—"
“Supposedly, Mom gets cuddly, too.” Golden Harvest said loudly, and made a face. “I hope Dad's lying. Ugh, I don't want to have to deal with that, especially when we're cooped up in the same house.” She leaned back in her chair. “Hey, Carrot, get your scrawny flanks over here.”
“What's up, sis?”
“Did Mom get all cuddly before I was born?”
He rolled his eyes. “You called me over here for that? I should be working. And is that wine? Does Mom know—”
Golden Harvest rolled her eyes. “I’m a big pony; I can drink with my friends if I want to.”
“Sis?” Ditzy looked at them in amazement.
“You didn't know Carrot was Goldie's big brother?” Berry grinned, then winced. “Fuck! Don't bite Mama, Pinchy.”
Ditzy waited until Carrot had gone back to the counter before regarding Golden Harvest. “How come you don't have the same name?”
“If we had the same name, how would anypony call for us?”
“No, I mean—“
“She means how come you don't have a family name, like me or her,” Cherry said.
“What's the point? Everypony in town knows we're related.”
“I didn't,” Ditzy admitted. “How did you get your name anyhow?”
“Cause I was born in the barn,” she said. “Right after Mom got done tending the fields, or so she says. Dad was pulling the wagon, and she was following along with Carrot. Went to the barn to unload, and Mom couldn’t make it back to the house, and there I was. There’s a picture in the barn where I was born—Carrot thought he was going to get his cutie mark as a photographer back then, and took a picture right afterward.”
“Who wants to play with a foal?” Berry looked around the table. “Come on, Goldie, it'll be good practice for having a little sister.” Berry lifted her daughter up onto the table, keeping her hooves around Pinch so that she couldn't scramble away. Everypony chuckled as Pinch made for a cupcake, then stumbled and fell face-first onto the platter. While her tongue was licking frosting off her muzzle, Cherry helpfully wiped down her cheeks.
Ditzy trotted out of Sugarcube Corner, a happy warm feeling in her belly that almost made her forget about the earlier part of her day. Summer was the best time of the year; the days were long and ponies stayed out in the street longer.
She'd excused herself when some more of Golden Harvest's friends had stopped by, including a few who she had no particular interest in dealing with—Blue Bonnet in particular. After her first day at school, they'd had numerous other scuffles which never quite served to establish dominance.
Cherry left with her—the earth pony didn't like Blue Bonnet either. They walked together to the park, and sat down on a bench, where they could listen to a unicorn who was playing a lyre. Ditzy had seen her around town before, usually in the company of an off-white earth pony.
The unicorn didn't pay them any attention; her eyes were closed as she leaned back on the bench in what looked to be a very awkward position, her hooves gently brushing over the strings.
“How come she doesn't play that with her magic?” Ditzy asked.
“It doesn't sound right,” Cherry told her. “I dunno why, but most ponies learn to play musical instruments with their hooves. Somepony told me once—maybe it was Lyra—about how their field interferes with the music, unless they're playing an instrument especially designed for a unicorn.”
“Ah.” Ditzy focused her attention back on the unicorn. She'd never learned how to play an instrument. Sometimes she wished she had. It would be nice to relax in the park and just make beautiful music for everypony to enjoy.
“Is it true that there isn't going to be any rain for the next week?”
“Yeah. I don't mind. Working with rainclouds sucks.”
Cherry sighed. “I guess I'm going to have to irrigate my saplings by hoof. How come you can't bring enough water to prevent that?”
“Cloudsdale's short again. Last tornado duty didn't get enough water up to them, and they're rationing it for later in the year. We need bigger reservoirs, and larger teams of pegasi to get the water up, but there aren't enough around here. My Mom complains about that all the time. We do the best we can, but it's hard. This isn't a popular post for pegasi, but it's still better than Appleoosa or Dodge Junction.”
“It's still frustrating,” Cherry admitted. “Oh well, what can you do? Just—if you have some extra rainclouds, maybe push one over my grove?” Cherry slid off the bench. “I've got to go—I'll have to get up early and water my saplings before it gets too hot. I'll see you tomorrow.”
• • •
After Cherry left, Ditzy sat a while longer, listening to the music, before she finally got off the bench. A brief cramp in her belly caused her to wince, but it passed quickly and she began walking through town, waving a hoof at the ponies she knew.
When she was abreast of the library, she saw that it was open. Although she wasn't normally one for reading, it occurred to her that there might be a book that would give her an idea why she felt sick.
Of course, she didn't know where to look. She stood in the main room of the library, surrounded by bookshelves, and felt just as intimidated as when Pencils gave them research assignments.
“Can I help you find something?” Mayor Mare appeared behind her shoulder.
“I'm . . . um, I'm looking for a book about . . . well, I've got cramps from overworking myself. That's never happened before, and I was wondering if I was sick with something, or if it's just the heat.” Her ears flattened—would the mayor blab to everypony that she was sick?
“Oh. Where are they? In your legs, or your wings?”
“In my belly.” Ditzy pointed with a hoof. “I've never had them before.”
“How long ago did you get your cutie mark?”
“Last fall. Why?”
The mayor brightened. “I've got just the book for you. I get a lot of call for it each spring.” She trotted over to a bookcase and pulled a thin book off the shelf, where it had been arranged with several other identical books. “I'm sure that a lot of stuff in here you already learned, but it's a good reference for young mares who don't want to discuss those things with their parents.” She carried it over to the checkout desk and opened the front cover, stamped a card and slid it into a pocket on the flyleaf. Then she put on a pair of half-glasses and wrote a note in the library ledger. “It's due back in two weeks; if you want to keep it longer, you'll have to renew it. If the library isn't open, you can put the book in the mailbox, or you can leave a note that you want to keep it longer.” She slid the book over the counter. “Oh, and try some mint tea. It helps with the cramps.”
“Thanks!” Ditzy tucked it into her saddlebags, and headed out the door. Once back in the park, she found a spot under a gaslight and pulled the book out. “'A Mare's Body,'” she read.
She skimmed through the first few chapters, her face red. It was almost indecent to be reading about a mare's sexual organs in public, she thought, and she occasionally looked up guiltily to make sure that nopony was near enough to see just what book she had. Once she got to the section on estrus, though, her eyes were glued to the page. From her class she'd had a vague notion about puberty, but the teacher had glossed it over, only explaining in the broadest terms what the book took pages to explain in detail.
Maybe I'm in my first off-cycle, she thought, thinking back to the week before. I might not have felt the . . . desire, because I wasn't feeling good.
She almost stopped reading at the end of the chapter, but the book was very well written, and it was full of helpful information. She'd found a particularly comfortable position on the bench and didn't feel up to flying home, and on top of that, an impromptu trio had begun playing folk songs across the park. She could finish the book, return it to the library tonight so she wouldn't have to worry about losing it or having her mother find it, and then fly home. She flipped ahead to the chapter about pregnancy, briefly considered skipping it, and then thought it might be worth knowing what Golden Harvest's mom was going to be going through, and what Berry already had.
At least I finished work yesterday. That counts for something, right? Ditzy was lying on the shower floor, letting the lukewarm cloudwater rain on her back and outstretched wings. She’d already been sick, so that was out of the way. By now it was routine—wake up, vomit, pee, vomit again, and then dry heaves while taking a shower. If what Cherry had said was right, she’d be done with that bit of unpleasantness in about a week, by her best reckoning. The sudden addition of fever and chills had been an unpleasant surprise—was that because she was coming down with something, or was it just because of . . . that? She didn’t know.
She reluctantly reached up and bucked the shower-cloud. She shook herself off and walked out on the balcony to preen. The sunlight would dry her off while she cared for her wings.
Ten minutes later, she finally made her way downstairs. “Morning, Papa.”
“Tha doesn't have ta go ta work today,” he said.
“That’s good. I—what?”
“Lightnin' came by while tha was in t'shower. Said there's nowt on t'schedule.” He looked up at her. “Said tha ought t'rest. Told me tha cramped up while handlin' clouds.”
“It was just the heat,” Ditzy protested. “That’s all. I rested for a few minutes, and I was okay after that. Worked for the rest of the shift.” What appetite she’d had when she came down for breakfast had disappeared completely. “That happened sometimes at Las Pegasus during racing season, too. Remember?”
“Aye.” He got up and put his cup in the sink. “But tha wasn't sick every morn for weeks on end. Might be sommat here that wasn't in Las Pegasus, and tha might've caught it. We're goin' ta t'nurse.”
Ditzy froze. “The . . . nurse?”
“Tha needs ta be in good fettle,” he said bluntly. “Won't be so bad. Tha had ta do it for racin' season, tha knows.”
“But—but that was for sports. And it was a pegasus doctor! They don’t have any pegasus doctors in Ponyville. We’re going to Cloudsdale next week; I could just go see the plant doctor then.”
“Is tha?”
“Me and Lightning, yeah. To . . . to look at clouds, and stuff. At the factory.”
“Nay.” He put on his hat. “Not waitin' a week. We'll go now. Never thought tha'd share Mother's opinions—a nurse is a nurse. She c'n diagnose any equine.”
“But—”
“Tha's goin'. End of discussion. Tha gonna fly, or am I gonna drag tha?”
Ditzy glanced over at the window. I can fly faster and further than he can. If I get a head start, he won’t be able to catch me. Then I can just lay low until . . . until . . . until what? Reluctantly, she walked over to the door, heart pounding in her chest. Maybe the doctor won’t notice. Maybe she won’t tell.
A Gift from Celestia Chapter 8: Nurse Tenderheart Admiral Biscuit
The pair glided over town, Ditzy for once trailing her father. She’d wracked her brain the whole flight to think of a way to get out of seeing the doctor, but as they landed in the street, her options dwindled to zero. She hung her head as her father marched up to the half-timbered house, checked one more time to make sure it had a doctor’s shingle hanging above the entry, and boldly pushed the door open.
The harsh smell of ether stung Ditzy’s nose, and she took a step back from the doorway. Her father glared at her, and she dropped her ears and moved forward.
The waiting room was empty. The two of them stood uncomfortably on the well-worn throw rug, looking around at the outdated benches and wilted plants. Finally, Ditzy spoke. “I guess the doctor isn’t in,” she said hopefully. “Maybe we’ll have to come back—”
“Sorry about that, folks!” A cheerful-looking earth pony of about Ditzy’s age stepped around a corner. She wore a small white cap pinned to her green mane. “I was just re-stocking the exam rooms. Did you have an appointment?”
“Nay,” Ditzy’s father said. “But I’d like ta make one for my daughter. As soon as tha can. She’s feelin’ off.”
“Let me look at the schedule book.” She trotted over to an overburdened desk and began rummaging through papers. Triumphantly, she pulled up a blotter with small squares of paper jammed into the corners. She sorted through them, looked at the calendar on the wall, and smiled at the duo. Ditzy’s hopes vanished as she spoke. “Looks like I can get you in right now!” She stuck out a hoof. “I’m Nurse Tenderheart. What’s your name?”
“Ditzy Doo.”
“And what seems to be the problem, Miss Ditzy?”
“I’m fine,” she muttered. “I just had a cramp on weather patrol, that’s all.”
“She’s been vomitin’ every mornin’ for t’past three weeks,” her father said quietly. “And her appetite’s . . . off.”
“I see. Are—”
“We just moved here from Las Pegasus,” Ditzy hastily added. “So it’s just ‘cause it’s a new place, that’s all. I’ll get better.”
“Tha knows the nurse’ll decide that.”
“I’ve seen you around,” Tenderheart said. “Working with Lightning Bolt. Well, come on, let’s head to the exam room.” She looked at Ditzy’s father. “Will you be joining us?”
“Ah.” He lowered his eyes. “I’d rather—tha’s a big lass, tha doesn’t need Papa to hold a hoof. . . .”
“I’ll be fine, Papa.” Her reassurance fell flat. He knows. The realization wasn’t a relief; instead, a sudden sorrow coursed through her. “I’ll be fine.”
He nodded and sat on one of the benches, staring blankly at the wall. Numbly, Ditzy followed the nurse down a narrow hallway into a brightly-lit room with an open window facing a large garden. A clothesline draped with stained, threadbare sheets ran diagonally across the garden; one look at the examining table in the center of the room gave her a good idea what those sheets were used for.
“You can stand, or get up on the table and lie down. Whatever makes you more comfortable.”
“I’ll stay standing for now,” Ditzy said, glancing out the window. Maybe I can fly out the window, and go around front and tell Papa that the nurse is done.
“Okay, let’s start with the basics.” Tenderheart grabbed a clipboard and tossed it on the table. She picked up a short stub of pencil with her lips. “How old are you?”
Ditzy told her.
“How recently did you get your cutie mark?”
“Last autumn, before we moved here.”
Tenderheart nodded. “Your father says you’re vomiting in the mornings—is that the only time, or are you ill throughout the day?”
“Just the morning, and then I feel fine.”
“And your eyes—forgive me for asking, but you’ve always had strabismus—that isn’t a new symptom?”
Ditzy shook her head, and shifted her weight around. The athletics doctor had only asked a couple of questions and given a quick exam, and then she’d been done. This was already shaping up to be an all-morning affair. Why did the nurse need to know so much stuff?
“Mm-hm. Have you been in estrus recently?”
Ditzy gave her a quizzical look. “No, I don’t think so.”
As the nurse continued her inquires, Ditzy began tapping her hoof impatiently. This barrage of questions was too much like a quiz for her liking, and a few were downright silly. And what about the ones she didn’t know the answers to? Would she be graded on those?
After what seemed like an eternity, the scratching of pencil on paper finally stopped. “Okay, you can get up on the table now. Lie down on your side and scooch you belly right up against the edge, if you can. That’s the easiest way for me to look at you.” Ditzy complied, worming herself to the edge. She felt a bit silly with her legs hanging over the side; this wasn’t something her sports doctor had ever had her do.
Tenderheart tilted her head and stuck an ear against Ditzy’s barrel.
“What are you—”
“Listening to your heart and lungs. Ssh.” The nurse kept her head there for a full minute before pulling it away. She moved on to Ditzy’s hooves, examing them intently before touching each one with her own. That brought on an odd tingling sensation that she hadn’t felt in a stranger since her Las Pegasus days. She suddenly realized that unlike most of her groundbound classmates, the nurse also wasn’t wearing shoes. “Okay, that feels good. Go ahead and lie on your belly, or you can stand back on the floor if you’d prefer.”
“I don’t mind the table. Us pegasi are used to heights.” She slid herself towards the center of the table and rolled onto her stomach, using a wing to aid in the motion. Meanwhile, Tenderheart was writing on her clipboard again.
“Wings out, please. This is going to feel a little odd, and I’m sorry.” The nurse gently raked a hoof across her primaries. Ditzy jerked her wing back in surprise. “Hold it steady, if you can.”
“The pegasus doctor didn’t do that,” Ditzy protested. “She just ran a crystal over them.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t have one, so I have to do it the old-fashioned way. Please hold your wings steady.”
Ditzy grit her teeth and tried again. The nurse’s touch sent an electric surge through her sensitive feathers, like a painful tickle. It was even worse when she reached for the other wing, because Ditzy already knew what to expect. After a thorough inspection of her feathers and a less-tingly examination of the leading edge of her wings, the nurse finally let her fold them in.
“All right, that’s good. Let’s get your temperature. Lift your tail, please.”
“Did you put that on ice before you stuck it in?” Ditzy glared at her.
“Turn your head towards me. Ears forward.” Ignoring Ditzy’s displeasure at the thermometer, the nurse quickly examined her nose, eyes, and ears with an otoscope. “Can you turn your ears back? Okay, to the side? Everything looks good so far. Open your mouth, please.”
“There’s still a thermometer in my butt,” Ditzy reminded her flatly.
“Just let me look at your teeth first, then I’ll get the reading.” She made quick work of the dental exam. “All your teeth look healthy, with even wear. Have you considered having your canines filed down?”
“No.” Ditzy looked at her in confusion. “Why would I want to do that?”
“A lot of mares do,” Tenderheart explained. “They’re not common in earth ponies, and most mares that have them don’t have a full set.”
“That’s dumb.”
“Well, if you change your mind, I can do it—and I’ve heard they do a nice job at the spa, too. Tail up.” The nurse leaned down to read the thermometer, and Ditzy flicked her ears in annoyance as she felt Tenderheart’s breath against her skin. The thermometer slid uncomfortably out, and she lowered her tail and shifted on the table. A moment later, she heard a pencil scritching across paper again.
“Okay.” The nurse looked down at the clipboard. “Well, you’re in good shape for a mare of your age. I’ve got a couple more tests I need to do, and then we’ll be done. But I’ve got a few more questions for you first, okay?
“Right when we began, I asked you if you were sexually active. You said ‘no,’ remember?”
“I don’t have a coltfriend—or a fillyfriend,” she added at the nurse’s raised eyebrow.
“But you have had sex with a colt or stallion before—recently.”
Ditzy lowered her head and whispered, “yes.”
“And you were in estrus then.” Not a question, but a statement of fact.
“I didn’t know! It was the first time! Everypony says you can’t get pregnant the first time!”
“Everypony? Go on, get down from the table. Let’s go into my office—it’ll be more comfortable to talk there. Would you like some tea or cocoa?”
“No.” Ditzy jumped off the table, tangling her hooves in the sheet and dragging it off behind her. “Oops.”
She kicked it off and let the nurse lead her through a small bathroom and into a spacious office, which obviously doubled as her sleeping quarters, judging by the unmade bed in the corner. Rather than lead her over to the desk, the nurse motioned her to a bench under the window.
“Look, I’ll be blunt. You’re pregnant. You’re not the first mare I’ve seen this year, and you won’t be the last. I can do a blood test, but I don’t really have to.” She pointed a hoof to her nose. “I could smell it. Do you live in a cloudhome?”
Ditzy nodded.
“Was the sire a pegasus?”
“What’s a sire?”
“The father? Stallion?”
Ditzy shook her head. “Unicorn,” she muttered
“So, we’ll have to do a test to see if the foal’s going to be a pegasus or something else. Nearly all pegasus couples produce a pegasus foal, but the odds aren’t so good for a mixed pair. Remind me before we leave—I’ve got a pamphlet on pregnancy I should give to you. Were you using any kind of contraceptive? I need to put it in your file.”
“Of what?”
“Protection? Birth control? Any charms or potions to keep you from becoming pregnant?”
“What are those?”
Tenderheart leaned forward. “Didn’t you have a class on reproduction? It’s mandatory for all public schools.”
“Yes . . . kind of. But there was a lot of stuff that I heard we didn’t cover.”
“Oh?” The nurse frowned. “Like what?”
“Well, there was stuff about what all the . . . parts were called, and a little bit about how a foal was made. But they left a bunch out. The girls talked about it in the showers a lot. Raindrops said that some of the parents didn’t want their foals to learn about certain things, ‘cause it would encourage them to . . . you know. So we didn’t learn about that. I remember we had books with sections taken out of them.”
Tenderheart grimaced. For something that was a normal part of a pony’s life, so many parents seemed terrified of their foals having the slightest idea about sex, even though they themselves were obviously guilty of it. She’d always thought that a city-educated pony would have a better grasp on the concept, since the schools were better. To her surprise, she’d discovered that foals who lived in the country had a better understanding of sex—something she attributed wholly to animal husbandry.
“Well.” Tenderheart tapped her forehooves together. “I’d like to see you once a month for the rest of your term, just to make sure things are going along well. You shouldn’t drink alcohol, and should avoid strenuous activity. Normal flight is okay, and you can keep working on weather patrol until about a month before you’re due. Vaginal intercourse is out of the question—that can cause the foal to miscarry. Make sure to eat a healthy, balanced diet. You can take ginger to help with the nausea, but it should pass in another week or so.” She walked over and grabbed a pamphlet off her desk. “I get these out right after Winter Wrap-Up every year. Read through it and tell me if you have any questions. But first, I’ve got to draw some blood—unless you need to pee.”
Ditzy sighed and stood up. She tilted her neck towards the nurse, who efficiently swabbed it with an alcohol-soaked cloth. In no time, Tenderheart had drawn off a sample and spread a salve across the small puncture.
She took the syringe over to her desk and pulled out a small marble dish. She slowly squirted the contents into the dish, taking care to not splash any out. Once she’d finished, she reached for a large bottle of blue liquid. “I keep this handy during the early summer,” she explained. She dumped a little of it into the dish and stirred it around with a wooden stick.
At first, the viscous liquid turned purple, but then it began changing to a mustardy yellow. “Would you like to know? Some mares like it to be a surprise.”
“It’s already enough of a surprise,” Ditzy mumbled. “Sure, why not.”
“Unicorn filly.”
Ditzy moaned. “A unicorn? I can’t have a unicorn . . . where’s she gonna live?”
Tenderheart sighed. Every single summer went like this. “There are options available,” she said quietly. “Would you like me to discuss them with you now, or with you and your father together?”
“No! You can’t tell him!” Ditzy looked around the room to make sure that they were alone. “I . . . he can’t—what’s he going to think?”
“I don’t know,” Tenderheart admitted. “But he’s your father. He’ll love you no matter what.” The words felt like a lie as she said them. She wasn’t foalish enough to believe that all parents loved their children no matter what.
“What about my friends? What will I tell them? They’ll all hate me!” Ditzy slid out of her chair and paced across the floor, her wings twitching slightly.
Tenderheart shook her head. “Calm down, Miss Ditzy. First, your friends will love you no matter what.” That, at least, rang true.
“And my mother—she’ll flay me! I’ll lose my job!” Ditzy jumped on the desk, sending papers and medical equipment flying. “You’re wrong! It’s not a unicorn—it can’t be a unicorn! I’m not pregnant, I’m not!”
Tenderheart jumped up on her chair, putting her muzzle right against Ditzy’s. “You are.”
Ditzy swung a hoof at her.
Tenderheart dodged the wild punch and grabbed Ditzy by the barrel, pulling her off the desk and pinning her to the floor. “You are pregnant, and don’t take it out on me, you dumb mule. I’m not the one who got knocked up because I didn’t think to use a contraceptive. Now just calm down for a minute, would you? Or should I get your father in here and explain it all to him? Because I will, if you’re going to continue to be irrational and combative.”
She kept her grip as Ditzy struggled, then broke down into soft sobs. Still Tenderheart held the pegasus, her grip now more comforting than restraining. Finally, Ditzy took a few hiccoughing breaths and hugged the nurse back.
“Would you like a tissue?”
Ditzy nodded.
• • •
While Ditzy was composing herself, the nurse tidied her office. She motioned for Ditzy to sit on the bed, and then sat next to her.
“Ok, let’s pretend that little dust-up didn’t happen and start again.” Tenderheart brushed a lock of hair out of Ditzy’s eyes. “First, you’re pregnant. Your daughter is a unicorn, which means you can’t raise her in a cloudhouse without making suitable modifications. I don’t know anything about that, but I know it can be done. I’ll be honest, though, it’s not fair to the foal in the long-term. When she’s old enough to socialize, she should be with other ponies with whom she can interact, not stuck up in a cloudhome all alone.
“At this point, you have a few options. You can carry your foal to term, and then you can either keep her, or give her up for adoption. A lot of earth pony families will keep their daughters’, um, unexpected foals, even if the mother doesn’t live on the farm anymore. I don’t know what pegasus families usually do.” Tenderheart took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The final option is to terminate the pregnancy.”
“Terminate? Doesn’t that mean ‘end’?”
“Yes, it does. There are spells . . . the doctor at the Ponyville hospital could do it.”
“And that’s it?” Ditzy looked at the nurse hopefully. “No foal?”
Tenderheart gritted her teeth. “Yes, essentially, that’s it.”
Ditzy smiled brightly. “That sounds simple enough. Is it expensive?”
“About a hundred bits, but if you can’t afford it, the Crown will help.” Tenderheart lowered her head. She had to do this every year, too. She hated it with all her heart. Intellectually, she knew that sometimes it really was the best option, but whenever she went to market, she saw mothers with their foals . . . and some young mares who just had a vacant space around them.
Woodenly, she trudged across the room and riffled through the stack of papers on her desk until she found the form. She began copying all the pertinent information from Ditzy’s file.
“Does it hurt?” Ditzy asked quietly.
Tenderheart almost bit the pencil in half. “Physically, no. Not much.”
When she was finished, she handed the form to Ditzy. “Here you go. I set you an appointment for a week from today, okay?”
Ditzy frowned. “How come I can’t do it now?”
“Because the Crown requires a one-week waiting period, that’s why. If next week isn’t convenient for you, you can reschedule the appointment for later.”
“But, why?”
Tenderheart sighed. Another one of . . . these. Why can’t they just cover this in sex ed? “Because it’s a big decision. You need to consider your options carefully before just—” She paused to give her brain time to catch up with her mouth. “Look, I can’t tell you what to do. I’m sorry, but I can’t. This isn’t a medical decision, it’s a personal decision.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No. I’m mad at a bunch of stupid unicorns up in Canterlot who make these ridiculous laws and leave us to deal with the consequences. How do they expect you to make an informed decision when nopony tells you in school? Do they believe that everypony’s family talks about these things beforehoof? You need to talk it over with your family, and with your friends. Most importantly, you need to honestly think it over yourself, and then do what your heart says is right.” Tenderheart thumped her on the chest. “Got it? Follow your heart.
“Please, for the love of Celestia, take these pamphlets and read them.” The nurse held up a stack of booklets, as well as the form that was Ditzy’s get-out-of-jail-free card. Ditzy looked at them, and then at her lack of saddlebags.
“I can’t just carry them out of here in my mouth,” she protested. “Papa . . . he’ll see them.”
Tenderheart rolled her eyes. “I’ll keep them here, then. But make sure you come by in the next day or two and get them.”
“What will I tell Papa? He’ll want to know what’s wrong with me . . . you can’t tell him I’m pregnant. Can you lie to him? It’ll only be for a week, and then I’ll have the procedure and then everything will be okay again.”
“No.”
Derpy’s shoulders slumped. “But . . . what good is leaving the pamphlets behind if you tell him?”
Tenderheart sighed. “How long have you had morning sickness?”
“A . . . couple of weeks.”
“If you promise to come back here tomorrow morning and sit in the waiting room, read through all the pamphlets I gave you, then take them home to read again. I’ll tell him that you have a common affliction for this time of year, that it is not life-threatening or contagious, and that the vomiting will pass in a week or two. I will tell him that you should take ginger root for the nausea.” She tapped the stack of papers with her hoof. “If you do not come back here tomorrow morning, I’ll tear up the form, go find your father, and tell him exactly what affliction you have, and let you deal with the consequences. Got it?”
A Gift from Celestia Chapter 9: Lightning and Cherry Admiral Biscuit
True to her word, Ditzy had come by the nurse’s office the next morning on her way to work. Tenderheart had given her the stack of pamphlets, and most importantly, the form which would serve as her reprieve. She’d jammed them into her saddlebags alongside her lunch, and flown off to work.
Now she was sitting under a tree, the pamphlets in front of her, puzzling her way through them. There were a lot of big, important-sounding words, words that she probably should have known, but they hadn’t been covered in school. She could have gone back to the clinic, but Tenderheart had seemed kind of disappointed in her. She wasn’t sure why—she’d kept her promise, so why was Tenderheart grumpy?
It's the best thing, she thought, taking a nibble out of her sandwich. I'll do it, and it'll be over. That's it. I can make the appointment tonight, wait out the week and not tell anypony, and then things will go back to normal. She looked up at the sky briefly. I'll be able to do a day's work without getting sick, I won't wake up needing to puke—it'll be like nothing ever happened. Mother won't get mad, Papa will think the ginger root did the trick, and things will go back to like they were before.
She took another bite of her sandwich, closed the pamphlet, and grabbed another one the nurse had given her. This one was all about birthing, something she really didn't need to know about, but she was kind of curious. She hadn’t read that far in the book she’d gotten from the library.
She was struggling through the mechanics of lactation when Lightning landed beside her. “Hey, kid, I wondered where you went. Lunch break’s over.”
“Oh, horseapples! Sorry, sorry, I got distracted.”
Lightning looked around at Ditzy’s half-eaten lunch and the pamphlets in front of her. A broad smile broke out on her face. “Hey, congratulations! No wonder you’re distracted.” She tapped her hoof on the grass, before sitting down beside Ditzy. “When’s the foal due?”
“There won’t be one,” Ditzy said. “The nurse said that I could have a procedure that would make it go away.”
Lightning blinked and looked at Ditzy’s guileless face. She pinned her ears back and jerked to her hooves, kicking a divot behind her. Her head dropped and she snorted before snapping her wings out. Wordlessly, Lightning backed away from Ditzy before she turned tail and leapt into the air.
Ditzy watched her leave with a mild sense of alarm. She hastily stuffed the pamphlets in her bag before leaping into the air and giving chase. Her sandwich was a casualty of war, left to be discovered and eaten by the small animals that roamed the park.
Even with the head start Lightning had gotten, it was no contest. It wasn’t for nothing that Ditzy had been three-time distance champion in Los Pegasus, and after months of working on weather patrol, she knew the air currents around Ponyville like the back of her hoof. She might not have been the fastest pegasus in Ponyville, but she knew all the tricks to boost her speed, and Lightning didn’t. Ditzy caught up with her co-worker before she was even halfway back to their work area.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Ditzy asked. “How come you just flew off like that?”
Lightning didn’t answer; she just skirted a cloud and bucked it towards Ditzy, who had to pull up sharply to avoid crashing.
Her forward momentum gone, she watched Lightning blaze off into the distance, but the race wasn’t over yet. There were good updrafts this time of day along the hills, and Lightning was headed right towards them. Ditzy rolled over on her back and dove, picking up airspeed as fast as she could.
Her eyes locked on a tree. It was about the right distance away . . . using it as a reference point, she continued her upside-down dive, keeping her wings and hooves tucked in tight. Her mane was billowing by her face as she cannonballed towards the ground. When she judged she’d picked up enough speed, she flared her wings open again, gently tilting them to pull out of her dive without losing too much airspeed.
She rolled back upright and shot over the top of the tree, yanking her hooves up to avoid stripping the crown or tangling up in the branches. She was still picking up speed, and she knew the updraft was close—as soon as she felt the buffeting on her wings, she headed up, letting the wind do the work for her.
As soon as she crowned the hill, she began flapping furiously. keeping as much speed as she could. She saw Lightning coming, glancing behind her—she’d never think to check in front and below for Ditzy.
Her timing was perfect—she rolled on her back under a low cloud and kicked it upwards hard. Lightning slammed into it and tumbled to a halt on the top, and Ditzy was on her before she could move, pinning her on her back.
“What the hay, Lightning? What’s gotten into you? You coulda just said that we had a lot of work to do.”
“You really don’t know.” Lightning spit at her.
“I’m not gonna know unless you tell me, okay? You got a knot in your tail, huh? I thought we got along better than that, but if you want to scrap to settle this thing, we can do that.”
“You wanna know why I’m upset? Is that it?”
“Yes!” Ditzy let her up, and the two mares stood muzzle-to-muzzle.
“Because you’re dumb and selfish! All you do is think of yourself, not anypony else.” She leaned in towards Ditzy and began to advance as Ditzy started backing on the cloud. “You didn’t learn anything at school, except how to be a spoiled mule who won’t even take responsibility for her own actions!”
“It’s gonna be a unicorn,” Ditzy whined. “I can’t have a unicorn.”
Lightning blinked, then clouted Ditzy in the head, knocking her over. Without another word, Lightning glanced over the side of the cloud and backflipped off before Ditzy could get to her hooves, dropping sideways towards the ground.
Ditzy jumped behind her. She guessed that Lightning was going to head for the grove of trees and try and lose her in there, so she kept more altitude, not wanting to commit herself until she saw what Lightning was up to. However, instead of doing what she’d expected, the white pegasus banked the other way, heading for Sweet Apple Acres. Too late, Ditzy realized her misjudgement, and dove after Lightning.
Lightning banked hard, skimming over a fallow field before blasting into a cornfield, Ditzy hot on her hooves. Lightning dropped lower, aiming for the split-rail fence that delineated the edge of the field. Ditzy drew in a sharp breath as Lightning banked dangerously sharply, grabbing a corn plant in her teeth before yanking her wing clear of the ground.
Instead of continuing her flight, Lightning pulled up hard, the corn still in her teeth. Ditzy could see her sides heaving as she panted around the stalk.
Without a word, Lightning landed, walking to a flat rock that jutted up over the tall grass beside the field. She set the corn on top of the rock, and began stomping it into oblivion.
“What the hay is wrong with you?” Ditzy glared at her boss.
She leaned down and bit the immature ear in half, then began grinding it to a paste under her hoof. “You see this plant? It was alive—it was going to be something. Now? Now it’s nothing but garbage.”
Lightning jumped off the rock and advanced on Ditzy. “And you want to do the same thing to your foal, huh? And you’re asking me what’s wrong with me?” She jabbed a hoof in Ditzy shoulder. “What’s wrong with you?”
“It’s a procedure,” Ditzy said. “Just a procedure.”
“That’s your procedure,” Lightning spat, pointing to the pathetic remains of the corn plant. “You stay away from me, you monster. Fly home, and don’t come back.”
Without another word, she took to the sky, racing off to the east.
Ditzy walked over and looked at the obliterated corn plant. It had largely been reduced to a green stain on the rock.
She looked back over at the field where it had been planted. There were hundreds of other corn plants, maybe thousands. The field didn’t look any emptier because it was missing. She trotted up to the fence, looking at the neat rows of corn until she found a hole with a spray of dark-colored soil fanning away from it.
It was unmistakably an empty spot in the field.
“Lightning shouldn’t have done that,” she said quietly. “The Apples work so hard to make sure everypony’s fed.” She knew that their youngest daughter did farm chores every day before she came to school, and did more when she got home. Throughout the summer, she’d seen her working in the fields and groves, making sure that every one of their plants got the nurturing it needed to thrive.
And one reckless move from a pegasus had ended that corn plant forever.
Sooner or later, one of the Apples would come along, and would see the empty hole in the field. They wouldn’t know what had happened, or why. Her heart beat fast. If they came along while she was still hanging out by the field, they might think she’d done it.
Ditzy looked around guiltily before making a beeline towards town. She glanced down at the field as she flew—she could see the empty spot for much longer than she thought she should be able to.
She kept low, just skirting the treetops. Her flight was wavering and unfocused as her adrenaline burned off and she worked through her tiff with Lightning. It wasn't like the doctor would take the foal out of her and smash it against a rock, and ponies weren't plants.
But Lightning had been very angry. Like she was making a wrong choice, somewhere. She couldn't raise a foal, especially not a unicorn. She'd never seen a unicorn in the clouds.
Without consciously realizing where she'd been going, she found herself at Cherry's small orchard. Ditzy glided down to a landing between the rows of cherry trees, reached under her barrel for the buckle on her saddlebag, and stripped it off. She breathed a sigh of relief as her sweat-stained coat was exposed to the air.
She rolled over on her back, twisting against the soft grass, letting it soothe and cool her.
A minute later, Cherry leaned over her. “The grass in the east pasture is softer,” the earth pony said. “What's with the lather?”
“Me and Lightning got in a fight,” Ditzy said. “I chased her halfway around Ponyville. And then—“ Her ears slumped and she dropped her head on the ground.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Ditzy nodded, looked down at a sprig of grass in front of her nose, and took a deep breath.
“Papa made me go to the nurse 'cause I was sick in the morning and he was worried about me and I tried to get out of it, but he insisted I go. She said I was—was pregnant but that I could have a procedure which would make the foal go away and I have enough bits saved up and then mother wouldn't know and couldn't get mad at me for fooling around with a mudpony. And papa wouldn't be disappointed, but when Lightning found out she was mad and said I was a monster and now I don't know what to do.”
“I . . . um, okay.” Cherry frantically tried to sort through her thoughts. “Alright. So you went to the nurse, and she confirmed that you're pregnant.”
“I sorta guessed before.” Ditzy sniffled. “I started putting on weight, and I was sick in the morning, and Goldie said that her mom had morning sickness and mood swings.” She rolled on her side, away from Cherry. “But I could have hid it.”
That never works, Cherry thought.
“The nurse said I could have a procedure, and I was going to do that as soon as I could, but I don't know why Lightning thinks it's a bad thing. Princess Celestia wouldn't let the doctors do it if it's bad, right?”
“No, she wouldn't.” Cherry nuzzled Ditzy's wing. “You have to make the best choice for yourself, Ditzy. It's your body, and you get the final say—not me, not your parents, not the nurse.”
“That's what Nurse Tenderheart said, too.” Ditzy said glumly. “But what if I don't know? I don't want Lightning mad at me. How come she doesn't understand why I have to?”
“Because . . . maybe she's not thinking of it logically?”
Ditzy chuckled. “Yeah. Us pegasi are impulsive.”
“See, I think of it like, well, it's kind of like an unwanted tree.” Cherry motioned to the neat row of trees in the orchard. “Like, maybe a maple tree that got in here by mistake. Sometimes a tree starts growing where I don't want it to, and I have to decide if I want to transplant it, or just chop it down before it gets too big.”
“Transplanting is like where you dig it up, and then move it somewhere else, right?”
Cherry nodded. “It's a lot of work, and sometimes the tree doesn't do well in its new place, especially if it's a few seasons old. It's kind of like—well, if you have the abortion, that’s it. It's done. If you keep the foal until it's born, and then give it up for adoption, then it's like you did a lot of work and didn't get anything out of it in the end. And maybe the new home isn’t good for it.
“The point is, just 'cause you've got a foal in your belly doesn't mean you have to keep it there. Sometimes it's best if you don't. Berry Punch probably shouldn't've—or she could have given Pinch up for adoption."
“Pinch is cute.”
“I know, but Berry . . . she's not really a good mother.”
Ditzy turned onto her belly and looked at Cherry. “That's a mean thing to say about your friend.”
“Well, it's true.” Cherry shrugged. “I guess she might wind up surprising us, but I don't see it. Probably Pinch's first word's gonna be a swear. Anyway, I think Lightning was mad 'cause she pictures a foal in there, and thinks you're gonna hurt it.” She poked Ditzy in the side.
“Isn't that what's in my tummy?”
“It's more like a seedling right now. Just a little sprout.”
“What do they do with it, anyway?” Ditzy looked up at her saddlebags. “The pamphlet didn't say—just that the doctor takes it out. He's got to put it somewhere, right?”
“I dunno. I guess they just bury it behind the hospital, in the cemetery.”
“Ew.” Ditzy looked back at her barrel. “I don't know how it'd feel, to know that something that was in me—was a part of me—is in a cemetery. It'd be like I cut off a hoof or something.”
Cherry lay down on the grass next to Ditzy. “It's just like getting your mane trimmed, or your hooves filed.”
“I guess.” Ditzy rolled one eye upward to look at her ragged forelock. “The pamphlet says that they put you to sleep for the procedure.”
“So you won't know anything.”
“I'm kind of scared of that.”
“It's a little weird,” Cherry said. “They put a little mask on you, and it smells really funny, and then the next thing you know you're waking up in a hospital bed.”
“Did you have one? Is that how you know about it?”
“No, I broke my left fore coffin bone when I was a filly. Playing around, landed on a rock. Cracked my hoof, too. I had to wear a special shoe on that hoof the rest of the summer.” She smiled faintly. “Everypony at school called me peg-leg the next year, but then I had my growth spurt, and after a few little scuffles, nopony called me that anymore.”
“How long were you there?”
“Just a day. But I wasn't allowed to use that leg for two weeks, and I had to go back for a couple of exams, to make sure it was healing right.” She twisted her hoof around, and then held it close to Ditzy. “You can still see a little scar in my coat, from where they had to cut me open to fix it.”
Ditzy flattened her ears. “They had to cut you open to fix a bone? Some of the mares in Las Pegasus got broken wings, and they just had casts. Are they gonna have to cut me open to get the foal out?”
“I think the doctor just goes in under your tail. Doesn't it say in the pamphlet?”
Ditzy shook her head. “They don't say how the procedure works, just that a doctor does it.”
“Well, it makes sense. That's where a foal would normally come out.” She rubbed her hoof against Ditzy's withers. “Kind of weird to think that you fit out your mom's vagina once, isn't it? And now you're big enough to have your own foal.” She looked up at the rows of trees thoughtfully. “Each one of those trees started off as just a cherry pit, and now look at them.” Cherry stood up and nudged Ditzy. “Come on. Let's go to the house. Maybe have a drink—we can talk some more over a drink.”
“The nurse says I'm not supposed to drink.”
“Well, if you're planning on getting rid of the foal, it won't matter, right?”
Ditzy nodded, and got to her hooves. “You're probably right . . . but maybe I shouldn't, just in case. Shouldn't have the drink, that is. Not until I'm really, really sure.”
“You're not thinking—okay, listen. Friend to friend.” Cherry turned and looked her in the eye. “Whatever you decide, Ditz, I'll be there for you, whether I think you made the right choice or not. I've got my opinion; I know what I'd do if I was in your shoes.”
Ditzy lifted a hoof. “I don't wear shoes.”
“Not my point. I know what I'd do. I'm not ready for a foal, not yet. I'll know when the time comes—I'll know deep inside that it's time. You need to be sure for yourself, okay? Don't go doing or not doing something you'll regret later on. Come on inside; I’ll make you a cup of herb tea”
• • •
After they’d had a drink, Ditzy went outside and flew up to the porch roof, and just lay there, trying to clear her mind. Everything had seemed so simple this morning. Have the procedure, and things would go back to how they had been before.
Now she knew that wasn't the case. For starters, she wouldn't be able to work with Lightning Bolt any more—and maybe not with anypony. Surely Lightning would tell their supervisor why Ditzy couldn't be her partner anymore, and word would get around.
She could lie—she could pretend that she hadn't had it done—and that would work for a while, but then she'd have to come up with some reason why she'd lost the foal. She vaguely remembered from her sex ed class that miscarriages happened sometimes. The library might have books about it, and she could learn enough to come up with a good story.
But even if she did—she'd feel terrible first lying about keeping the foal, and then again lying about losing it. When the weather team found out about those lies, they'd want nothing more to do with her. Not ever.
Plus, there was no way to compartmentalize. While Mother preferred that the three tribes stick to themselves, there were too many ponies here that were loosely related to each other, and when they got together they gossiped. It might take a while for her lies to be revealed, but eventually everypony would know.
The more she thought about it, the more she came to understand that at best she'd be postponing her parents' inevitable discovery by a few months, and maybe not even that long.
She looked down at her belly regretfully. If only I'd known before that there were safe ways to prevent foals. It was too late now—the clouds were out of the factory.
Ditzy looked up at the sky, and thought back to all the things Lightning had taught her. Things about making the best of what you were given. The cloud metaphor was apt, she decided. They didn't always get what they wanted, but they could deal with whatever they were given. Hadn't they done it time and time again?
I'm not old enough to raise a foal, she thought. I don't know how.
I don't even have a house.
I don't even know how to live by myself.
She looked at the thatching under her. Cherry knew. She was down in the yard, her muzzle in the dirt, working in her garden. They'd never learned anything like that in school. Cherry had probably been in her family's garden as soon as she was out of diapers, and she'd been working on their farm every single day of her life since then. She knew all about plants and trees and weeds and things like that. She knew how to fix stuff—all Ditzy knew was how to form clouds, and how to fly marathons. Neither of those skills seemed terribly useful at present. She was coming to realize that school hadn't prepared her for life.
Ditzy stood up and extended her wings for the short trip back to the ground. She was good at gliding, at least—another skill which didn’t help with her current predicament—and she landed right next to Cherry.
“Hey.”
Cherry spit a mouthful of weeds out. “Hey, Ditz.”
“I was thinking.”
Cherry nodded.
“You said,” she paused, choosing her words with care. “You said that you don't think Berry Punch is a good mother.”
Cherry nodded again.
“But you and Golden Harvest both went over to her house to get it ready for spring. And visited her in the hospital, and stuff like that. So you weren't mad at her. You're willing to help her out, even if you don't agree with her raising the foal.”
“Look, I'm going to speak my mind, but don't tell Berry I said this.”
Ditzy nodded. “Cross my heart and hope to fly.”
“If she had a stable family, I think she'd do all right. But Cormano's useless. I doubt he'll last a year, and he won't motivate her to do anything. He's going to see that it's a lot of work raising a foal, and she's not putting out like she used to, and there are greener pastures. It wouldn't be the first time for him, not from what I've heard.” She picked the weeds back up and carried them over to a basket. “For what it's worth, Goldie doesn't agree with me. I hope she's right, and I'm wrong. Because she is my friend, and I don’t want to see her get hurt."
Ditzy grabbed a mouthful of weeds and headed over towards the basket. For a while, the two mares worked in silence. For the pegasus, it was a new experience. She'd never done any gardening before.
After each basket got full, they carried them off to Cherry's compost heap and dumped them on top of the pile. When they were all done, Cherry showed her how to turn the pile so that the new plants would start decomposing more quickly.
It was a different kind of work from clouds, and the feeling of mud in her coat was sort of refreshing. It felt like she'd accomplished something worthy.
“When you got your homestead, did you ever think you weren't ready?”
“All the time,” Cherry admitted. “The first year, especially. I was afraid that the trees weren't going to make it through the winter. I had to do a lot of stuff I didn't want to in order to get by, but my parents said if it didn't work out I could—“ She gave Ditzy a suspicious look. “I could give it up and move back with them.” She sighed. “Look, Ditz, it's getting late, and if you want to make it home without your mom asking too many questions, you'd probably ought to head that way. No matter what you do, I'll stand with you as a friend.”
“You won't tell anypony, will you?”
“Not until you say so.” Cherry motioned with her hoof. “Come on, let's get the mud off your fetlocks.”
• • •
Once she was clean, Ditzy bade her goodbye and flew off, circling Cherry's farm once before heading towards town. Rather than fly directly home, though, she took a path towards the hospital.
She landed on the roof and stared at the neat rows of stones behind the hospital.
