Getting anything done with Pinkie Pie around was downright impossible. Sumac knew that the enormous cluster of balloons was a terrible mistake, but here he was, here she was, and he was committed. This prototype wasn’t going to build itself and he had to find out if his idea worked. But Pinkie Pie was attracted to big colourful balloons in the same way that Pebble was attracted to piles of her grandmother Cloudy’s rock hard fudge.
“Whatcha doing?” Pinkie Pie asked in the annoying manner of Pinkie Pies everywhere.
Wrapping copper wire around a stiff, sturdy frame, Sumac continued to rebuild his dynamo, determined to make a better one than the previous attempt. “Working,” he replied while he kept his eyes on his work and not on Pinkie Pie, who was pronking in circles around his balloons.
“But you could be playing!” Pinkie Pie paused, mid-pronk, and while suspended in the air she let out a gleeful giggle-snort. “You have the balloons, so you’re halfway to a party! It’s summer, Sumac. You should be playing!” Pinkie landed in the grass, giggle-snorted again, then again, and overcome with party pony glee, she began pronking once more.
Four hundred wire wraps seemed like a good round number, with two hundred, he had managed to get a small light bulb to flicker, right before everything had gone up in smoke—literal smoke, with fire and everything, all because friction had to have the last laugh. At the moment, he was approaching three hundred wire wraps, and he had a ways to go. Good thing he had plenty of copper wire.
“Sumac… you have a funny way of playing. You built a kite flying machine and it caught on fire. Why not just fly a kite yourself? Why build a machine to fly a kite for you? Doesn’t that take the fun out of it? You know, if you’d stop working and spend some time playing, you’d have more time to fly kites and you wouldn’t need to build a machine to fly a kite for you.”
“Pinkie, it wasn’t a kite flying machine—”
“Yes it was!” Pinkie’s voice was shrill from her over excited enthusiasm. “Yes it was! I saw it! You made a machine and that machine flew a kite! So it was a kite flying machine by definition!”
At this, Sumac sighed and did his best to keep count of how many times he had wrapped the thin copper wire around the frame for his dynamo. There was no point in arguing with her—no way to win, so to speak—but Sumac was now annoyed because Pinkie was just plain wrong, and wrong things had to be sorted out, lest his head explode.
“Starlight Glimmer likes kites, you know.”
“I got my idea from Starlight Glimmer—”
“To make a kite flying machine to fly your kites for you?”
The sigh that escaped from Sumac was one of exasperation and resignation, the sort of sound one made right before their head might explode from encountering wrong in the world. How did Applejack deal with it? Sumac wanted to know how anything got done at Sweet Apple Acres when Pinkie Pie showed up for a surprise visit. A new appreciation for Applejack took root and Sumac kept wrapping wire—performing the same task—while trying to keep his cool in the summer sun.
“Are you going to make a machine to play with your balloons for you?”
Cringing, Sumac almost dropped his partially-completed dynamo and he felt something in his spine kink while his left eye began twitching. Before he could say anything, before he could respond, Pinkie Pie swept him up in a hug and crushed the wind out of him. This was super-awkward, like, awkward squared even, and Pinkie was giving him a full-body snuggle hug that was truly terrible to endure in the summer heat.
“Play with me!” Pinkie hollered while whirling the colt about, flinging him him to and fro.
His precious dynamo!
Sumac fought to keep tension on the copper coils while the horizon bobbed around him and he wiggled in a vain attempt to get free. Of all the worst possible things—why this was even worse than the time when he was foalnapped by Ahuizotl and his army of trained cipactli crocodile-toads. He was just trying to get some work done on a machine that almost certainly wouldn’t destroy Ponyville and Pinkie Pie was being a pest.
Almost like a coiled spring, the coiled copper wire sprung free, all three hundred and something wraps of it, and once in motion it was impossible to stop. Wide-eyed, Sumac watched all of his hard work come undone and he went limp in Pinkie’s over-enthusiastic embrace.
“You made a boing!” she cried while Sumac’s dynamo flew apart and the pieces scattered in the grass of the backyard.
Now completely limp, Sumac quailed at having to start over. The frame would have to be held again, the magnets, the copper wire, and at least four hundred wraps, all done with exquisite tightness while holding everything just so, until he could secure everything by slipping the housing around it. So dejected was he that his temper couldn’t even ignite.
“You okay, Sumac? Is something wrong? Are you getting motion sickness?” Standing on her hind legs, Pinkie pulled the colt close and held him snoot to snoot. “It’s like all the fun just got sucked right out of you. You know what you need? Some fun! Come play with me! We’ll go find Pebble and your friends and everything will be hunky-dory!”
“I can’t go play, Pinkie… I have to clean this up.” Sumac made another attempt to be angry, but nothing kindled, nothing happened, and he looked the bubbly mare holding him right in the eye. “I’ll get in trouble if I leave dangerous things in the yard where ponies might step on them.”
For the first time, Pinkie’s cheerfulness faltered. “Oh.” Blinking a few times, she looked around, her eyes darting about, and then her gaze returned to Sumac. “Oh. Do you need some help?”
“No, Pinkie… I just need to start over.”
Now, it seemed to sink in that something was wrong and with a huge frown that contorted her whole face, Pinkie Pie set Sumac down upon the grass. She dropped down to all fours, backed away, and appeared to deflate. A few bouncy curls in her mane went limp and her blue eyes now held a genuine sadness. “I guess I should go—”
“Yes, Pinkie, I’m never going to get anything done otherwise.” Even as he said the words, Sumac wished he hadn’t because he saw Pinkie Pie flinch. Now, he felt awful and ashamed of himself—so much so that he really wanted to be alone so that he could sort his feelings out before they got worse.
“Sorry, Sumac… I guess I got carried away. I’ll go, I guess. I didn’t mean for things to go wrong. It’s just… I’ve been real worried about you because since school was let out, you’ve been working harder than most adults I know and I thought maybe you could use a little fun.”
To avoid making things any worse, Sumac kept silent and said nothing.
“I guess I’ll be going…” And with that, Pinkie left.
Try as he might, Sumac couldn’t put the heavy gage copper wire back on the frame of the dynamo. His magic kept sputtering, he was overcome with guilt, and he couldn’t stop thinking about Pinkie Pie. If only she had shown up for a visit while he wasn’t wrapping copper wire—it wasn’t a task that he could just stop in the middle of and put down. Now he was stuck thinking about all of the things that could’ve happened, all of the things he could have done to get a different outcome, and it seemed that his concentration was beyond repair.
Magic needed concentration.
The workshop smelled of machine oil, warm wood, electricity, and the sweet, cotton candy-esque smell of Cadance~Cola. He sat on a wooden stool, sweating, the shed he called his workshop was a bit hot now that the sun neared its noontime position. All around him were his many experiments, some successes, some failures, every last one of them something he had poured his heart and soul into.
An old Wonderbolts juniour flight camp suit hung on a hook and he had undetermined plans for that. He had plans period, including a really good one where he would shoot himself out of a cannon and fly like a bird—or in this case, a pygmy tree dragon. Getting shot out of a cannon would allow him to get enough speed that he could glide, if only he could somehow replicate the membranes that Boomer had stretching from her hind legs to her front legs.
Taking a sip of his soda, Sumac wished Boomer was here, but she was off with Megara.
What might he have done differently with Pinkie?
Outside, there was the fluttering of wings and the clank of metal. Sumac tensed, wondering if he was about to be foalnapped again, because everypony wanted their very own sorcerer and he was just so tempting. Things were about to get interesting and Sumac chugged down his soda so that it wouldn’t go to waste.
When the door opened, Sumac was so startled by what he saw that he belched—no sissy belch either—but something that he liked to believe would make a dragon swoon. All of his lessons with Twinkleshine paid off at the moment and he poured his heart into his thunderous brap that made everything on his workbench rattle.
“Well, that is certainly one way to greet a princess,” Princess Celestia said while she stood in the doorway. “Your technique and form need work though, I find your effort a bit lacking. That would not be a passing grade, Sumac Apple.”
A tiny, disappointed after-burp rattled free and Sumac slumped down on his stool, crushed, destroyed, his frog-song graded by the most important schoolmarm he knew. “Hiya, Princess… what brings you here?”
“Funny you should ask,” was the princess’ reply. “I was visiting with Twilight and we were discussing an important issue about global trade policies. Things were just getting boring when all of a sudden, a crying, distraught pink pony came bursting through the door and crashed Twilight’s trade lecture just as I was about to get my well deserved nap. Suddenly, pink pony. Right out of nowhere. Would you happen to know anything about that?”
Before Sumac could respond, Princess Celestia came into his workshop proper and began to inspect him. She was close and huge and terrifying in the way that only the giant alabaster behemoth could be. When her magic wrapped around him, it tickled, and he was lifted from his stool in a bubble of tickly, fizzy feeling magic. He was lifted up to eye level, turned, and the princess folded over his ear to have a better look at a now mostly-healed injury. Then he was turned around the other way and Princess Celestia examined the left side of his neck, no doubt checking out the half-healed scratch that looked much worse than it had actually been.
“You’ve healed,” Princess Celestia said to Sumac. “You’re rather tough for being a… how is it that Pebble puts it again? A scrawny stringbean. That unexpected and unannounced trip with Ahuizotl to Las Pegasus… tell me, how are you recovering?”
“I’m fine.” Sumac was turned once more and he found himself eye to eye with the larger than life alicorn. “It was exciting… and even a little fun!”
“Sumac”—Princess Celestia sighed his name while rolling her eyes—“being foalnapped shouldn’t ever be exciting, or fun for that matter. Though I must say, having Mister Teapot, Daring Do, Rainbow Dash, and Vinyl Scratch show up to rescue you was probably a relief. A pity about that piano factory, but Mister Teapot is an excitable fellow when he’s angry, isn’t he?”
When Sumac recalled the memory of Tarnished Teapot rampaging through the piano factory, he winced and felt stabbing sympathetic pains. Pianos were hard, brutal unforgiving things, heavy, and they made a terrific sound when they fell. When a whole bunch of them fell in succession, it was almost musical, in the most horrendous way one could imagine, and Ahuizotl had been concerted upon by Mister Teapot while Vinyl had conducted the orchestration of justice.
The sound was still very real in Sumac’s ears.
“You know, Sumac… something tells me that you’re not as okay as you let on—”
“What makes you say that?” Sumac asked, interrupting.
“Well, Sumac…” Princess Celestia appeared thoughtful and her bright eyes glittered with a keen sense of wisdom. “You’ve been avoiding your friends, for one. You’ve been working almost nonstop for a while now. These are worrisome signs, Sumac. Sometimes, when things go wrong or we get hurt, some of us bury ourselves in our work, Sumac. I do it, Gosling does it, Luna most certainly does it, and from the looks of things, you’ve joined our little club. Pinkie Pie says you’ve stopped being fun and she is very, very worried that there is something wrong with you.”
Sucking in a deep breath, Sumac wanted to respond, but he wasn’t sure how. He had been trying to perform a task that couldn’t be interrupted, couldn’t be stopped, and Pinkie had come at the most inopportune time. Just like she had come at a bad time the day before, and the day before that… and… whatever words he might have said in his own defense died in his throat. How many days had it been? Honestly, he had lost track and had gone on a spree of invention.
“What are you working on, exactly?” Princess Celestia asked, her voice soft and reassuring in the most pleasant way. “Pinkie Pie kept babbling that you built a kite flying machine in between all of the things she said about you—”
“It’s not a kite flying machine!” Sumac blurted out and then he felt a powerful shudder of frustration that made him feel like crying. Or maybe it wasn’t frustration, maybe it was something else. Everything else. “I watched Starlight flying kites and I had this idea… I thought that maybe since the wind keeps blowing it could be harnessed to make mechanical force. Now I know about windmills but I thought I could do something different and I hooked a kite up to a dynamo and it powered a lightbulb and everything seemed to be working until something went wrong and the dynamo caught on fire.”
“You used a kite to produce electricity?” Princess Celestia’s eyes widened, her ears pivoted around to face forward, and stood up straight. “You harnessed the pull of the wind to make electricity?”
“Yeah.” Sumac’s own ears drooped and he hung limp in the air, suspended by the princess’ magic.
“So what is with the balloons?”
“Well, I thought that the balloons would lift and constantly pull and I wondered if I could harness that to make electricity.”
Something in Princess Celestia’s eyes twinkled and a faint smile could be seen on her muzzle. “Silly colt… those balloons don’t produce nearly enough lift. Why, you couldn’t even lift a brick with those, much less find some way to produce enough force to power a dynamo.”
“Oh.” Dejected, Sumac sighed and realised that Princess Celestia was right. What had he been thinking? It seemed so obvious now. He was going to need much bigger balloons to pull this off. He was so caught up in his own work that he had failed to notice the obvious. Now, he just felt stupid, and rightfully so.
“I want you to continue this project,” Princess Celestia said to Sumac. “But not alone. Don’t even think about arguing, Sumac. If you want to work, that’s fine. It’s good to be productive rather than to feel despair. But don’t be alone. Find a companion or a helpmate.”
“Is this why Princess Luna and Prince Gosling are almost always seen together?” Sumac asked and after a moment, he clarified, “So that Princess Luna doesn’t feel so alone?” His words caused Celestia’s ears to twitch and then lean forwards. She was thinking and Sumac knew he was on to something.
After many long seconds, there was a reply. “Yes, Sumac. Gosling helps Luna far more than he helps me, but she needs it more than I do. I have Raven, Kibitz, and others. This is very private, so I know I can trust you not to talk about it. Luna finally has somepony that meshes well with her… quirks. Gosling is her constant friend and he stays with her, even during the worst of her moods, because that is what good friends do, Sumac. Gosling is the best of friends and his patience only grows greater as he ages.”
“And Pinkie Pie was just trying to stick with me during my bad mood.”
“Yes, Sumac, that is true.”
Sumac sighed, squirmed, and thought about being alone, but being alone was the problem. He had pushed everypony away; his mothers, Boomer, his friends, everypony—but Pinkie Pie had held out the longest. She had pestered and persisted. Upon realising this, Sumac was crushed and he wanted to make things better, but how?
“Come with me, Sumac, and let us take a little stroll to Mister Teapot’s house. Perhaps we might find your master there, and maybe a few friends. I know they’ll be waiting and happy to see you.”
“Alright.” With a nod, the colt accepted his fate.
The guards kept a tight circle around Princess Celestia, but Sumac, who walked by her side, wasn’t sure if he felt safe. He supposed it didn’t matter, he was never safe, such was the curse of a sorcerer. Outside the wall of guards, ponies watched and stared, not just at Princess Celestia, but Sumac could feel eyes on him. He was Ponyville’s foal and everypony took it as a point of pride to have a sorcerer in their town.
Sometimes, it felt as though that it didn’t matter that he was Sumac, but only that he was a sorcerer. Coveted, desired, wanted, sought after, craved—he was a prize to be kept. Feeling more than a little downtrodden, Sumac wished he was working, because when he was buried in a project, these thoughts were quieted and he felt better.
“Head up… chin up,” the princess said, not only offering instruction, but providing an example as well. She trotted with an exaggerated high step and had her head held high.
Sumac was more of a loper who kept his head down. Due to his hind legs being longer than his front legs at the moment, he walked with an odd diagonal gait, something he was a bit self-conscious about. It was even worse now, because the princess beside him was a regal creature of great, perfect beauty and he was a dog-legged colt missing more than a few patches of hair. Princess Celestia too, was thin, but in an awe-inspiring way, while Sumac was aware of the fact that he just looked malnourished. Ponies tut-tutted his mothers for not feeding him enough, but Sumac was a voracious devourer with four hollow legs.
“You have the strut of a troublemaker, Sumac. A disturber of the peace. Straighten out. Head up, stop slouching, come now. What is Twilight teaching you in that school of hers?”
“Science and explosions,” Sumac remarked whilst glancing up at the big mare beside him. “I’m gifted.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Of all of the ponies that might have greeted Sumac, Vinyl was not the one he expected. She was wearing a gauzy sundress, which was rather something of a shock to see her in. Dresses or otherwise feminine clothing was a rare sight on Vinyl. But it was hot and the summer sun had no mercy. For further protection, she carried a parasol which she held over her head and he stood in the shade of it now, looking up at his master, his teacher.
“Lemon Hearts said that you’d come to your senses,” Vinyl—who stood almost nose to nose—said to Sumac. “Even Octavia said that you just needed your space and some introvert time. I was starting to worry about you. Feel better?”
For a moment, Sumac almost said something reassuring, but at the last second, he chose honesty. “No. I don’t feel better at all and I think I hurt Pinkie Pie’s feelings.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Vinyl nodded. “For the record, you hurt Pebble’s feelings too. She’s been moping around and looking sad. Sumac, if there is anything that Pebble hates, it is being ignored. Right now, Maud is trying to convince her to come out, but you have a lot of apologising to do.”
Sighing, Sumac’s neck bent, his head sagged, and his ears went limp. Turning his head, he saw Octavia chatting with Princess Celestia and there seemed to be some kind of animated discussion about something. So despondent was he that Sumac didn’t bother trying to eavesdrop, so he stood in the shade of Vinyl’s parasol feeling quite put out.
“You and Octavia were about to go and do something nice, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, Sumac, we were.” Vinyl grinned, but Sumac didn’t see it because he stared at the ground. “We were going to satisfy Octavia’s lepidoptery hobby and go butterfly hunting, but I think that’s been cancelled. You’re more important than some silly butterflies.”
“Oh, Vinyl, do come over!” Octavia lifted up her hoof and waved. “Princess Celestia must speak to you. She has instructions!”
“I’m needed.” The pale mare hesitated and her wild, poofy mane was tugged at by a playful breeze. “Okay, that’s it, mope time is over. It’s time to sort stuff out. No more pity party. I’m going to find out what the princess wants and you… you’re going to make good with Pebble. Got me?”
Sumac, who knew better than to argue at this point, nodded.
“Good, now go make things right with Pebble.”
This was going to suck, but Sumac knew that resistance would be met with insistence.
Sumac had scarcely made it into the doorway when he was glomped—then almost subsequently destroyed—by a brown dwarf moving through the universe at super-relative speeds. At some point during his short life, Sumac had been in more pain, perhaps in a crash or something, but at the moment, he could not remember such a time with any great clarity. The force of the impact completely and totally knocked the wind out of him. Bowled over, he saw stars, moons, planets, circling birdies, dancing monkeys, and the curious flock of alicorns that sometimes arrived when one hit their head too hard.
“You had that coming,” said the teeny, tiny Princess Celestia.
“Yeah,” itty-bitty Princess Luna agreed, “own it!”
“What we do in life impacts others,” Twilight remarked in a wise, knowing way. “Pebble Pie, doubly so.”
“Woohoo! She’s sitting on you right now! Score!” Swooping about, Princess Cadance pumped her hoof into the air while she grunted in triumph.
Then, as suddenly as they appeared, they were gone, along with everything else. Pebble was, indeed, sitting on him, and this might go a long way towards explaining why he couldn’t breathe. Of course, being struck hadn’t helped matters at all, but Pebble sitting on his ribs quelled any chance at recovery. Gasping, Sumac looked up at the filly sitting on him and wished that he could enjoy this, but Pebble weighed a ton.
“You made me hate you.” Pebble, her eyes narrowed, glared down at Sumac with a look that could and would make rocks roll away in shame. Squeezing her thighs together, Sumac’s attempts to draw air were terminated with extreme prejudice and she leaned down until her nose was a mere inch away from his. “You made my mother give me the talk about how sometimes, the pony you love the most in life will disappoint you, and it was awful, embarrassing, and strange, and I hated it. But don’t worry, I’ve decided that I’m going to let you live.”
When Pebble relaxed her thighs, Sumac sucked in a wheezing whine of a breath, but her weight on his ribs prevented him from getting all of the air that he needed. Almost enough air was somehow worse than no air at all, and all four of his legs flopped about while a rushing, roaring sound filled his ears.
“Right now, you’re living, but I figure that you feel just about as miserable as I was this past week. I couldn’t breathe either, my chest ached, and everything hurt. You did this to me. How does it feel?”
Sumac tried to respond, to say something, or maybe just beg to breathe, but Pebble’s thighs tightened once more around his breastbone and ribs. This felt pretty awful, and if this was what he did to Pebble, and she had existed this way for a week or more, he had this coming. Because he couldn’t do anything else, he nodded.
Pebble scrambled off and Sumac felt himself being yanked into a rough hug. With a terrific, terrible whistle, he sucked in some much needed air while Pebble held him upright. She was crying, and he could feel it when she pressed her face against his ear. His throat was dry, parched, and felt as though it was full of gritty sand. Each breath made his lungs ache and every blood vessel in his body burned like fire as oxygen permeated his blood once more.
When his higher brain functions started to return, Sumac discovered that he was rather pleased with the outcome, all things considered. Pebble had sat on him, and that was a memory that would stay with him for a while. But Pebble had also terrified him, so that memory too, was going to stick with him. The chubby earth pony that was his boon companion and best friend was only going to get bigger as well as heavier when she grew older, and this prospect filled him with stark terror.
“Please don’t send me away again,” Pebble said, mumbling the words into Sumac’s twitching ear. “We can be quiet together if that’s what you need, but don’t send me away. It causes me earth pony pain.”
Wheezing, no words came to Sumac for him to say.
“I’ve been miserable too and nopony wants anything to do with me.” The hard touch of Pebble’s teeth against the edge of Sumac’s ear caused it to slap her on the nose in response. “Nutmeg and Boomer took off. They said I wasn’t welcome, because I was a mopey dope. They went fishing.”
It felt nice sitting on the cool stone floor with Pebble, and even though it was far too warm, he welcomed her touch, even if it was a bit moist, a bit sweaty. Sumac tried to think of something to say now that he could breathe again, something kind, witty, and charming. Something meaningful. While he sat cogitating, lost in thought, Pebble snatched his spasming ear with her hoof and pressed the velvety back of it against her backed-up sniffle-snorter.
There was a brain-jellifying honk followed by a flood of gooey snot when his fillyfriend used his ear as a hanky.
Daylight was a-burning, as Applejack was fond of saying. Vinyl, still wearing her gauzy sundress, stood in front of an enormous slate chalkboard, attacking it with a piece of bluish chalk that squealed at the most inopportune times. In the corner of Vinyl’s workshop, Octavia coaxed a tune from an electric cello plugged into a bizarre-looking amplifier while Alto Clef sat on a battered wooden bench stool and watched his mother. Having a skeletal appearance, the electric cello produced the most haunting sounds, unnatural, spooky, and otherworldly.
Pebble sat in a makeshift hammock, unmoving so she wouldn’t fall over, and Sumac stood in the middle of Vinyl’s workshop, wishing that his own was this opulent. Vinyl was humming to herself while she drew a simple diagram on the chalkboard. Sumac let out a startled gasp when Vinyl turned on him with a question.
“Okay, Sumac, what was the mechanism that allowed the kite to turn the dynamo? I’m lost. I think this dress saps my intelligence, because I just want to stand in the corner and look girly while I’m trapped inside of it. Attractive mares aren’t supposed to brain because that makes them intimidating.”
From Octavia’s direction, there was a powerful snort followed by, “Oh, don’t worry, that dress is coming off later. I’ll see to that.”
The tiny presence that kept the lights on in Sumac’s head decided it was time for a lunch break, and checked out forthwith. Overcome, overwhelmed, the gatekeeper that kept all of his emotions in check chose to follow union regulations and joined the lightkeeper for lunch, leaving the gate unguarded. So began the mass exodus of Sumac’s mental facilities. Sumac laughed once, let out a hiccup, and then came a slow flood of tears.
“Oh, here we go… just as Lemon said would happen. Keep playing, Octavia.”
Stupefied, Sumac stood there, leaking, staring at Vinyl with a blank expression.
This continued for a time while Sumac felt a little bit of everything. Pinkie Pie’s visits, all of them, Princess Celestia’s unexpected arrival, his mothers’ many attempts to reach out to him, the ever-increasing feeling of isolation when he distanced himself, Pebble’s angry, aggressive affection, and now this. Reaching up with one foreleg, Sumac wiped his eyes, shuddered a bit, and surrounded by those he loved and trusted the most, allowed himself to be overwhelmed.
“I connected the kite to a lever, the lever was connected to a catch that only worked in one direction, and the catch was connected to a weighted flywheel,” Sumac said while everything in his brain went wrong all at once. “The tugging of the kite pulled the lever, which had a spring, the lever turned the catch, and the catch made the flywheel spin. The more the lever swung back and forth, the faster the flywheel spun, and this turned the dynamo. Everything worked until the fire.”
Rubbing her chin with one hoof, Vinyl nodded.
“The hardest part for me was getting the kite airborne, but once it was up there, it worked pretty good. It worked enough to make a four watt bulb turn on, but it flickered a bit, because I think I needed more wraps around the dynamo to produce enough power. I thought about using some balloons to get the lift I needed, but Princess Celestia pointed out the flaws in that line of thinking.”
“Well…” Vinyl began, “we’ll either need a bigger balloon or a balloon with more lift… maybe both. We’ll need a dynamo, an electric crank motor, a battery, a light, and probably a sturdy means of anchoring.”
Knowing that there was work to be done made Sumac feel immeasurably better, but the tears continued to flow in a slow, steady trickle. The cello music was soothing and this—all of this—was just what he needed. Why hadn’t he come to his senses sooner? Maybe it just wasn’t time.
“Hope is a rising balloon,” Vinyl said while she drew nearer to Sumac. “I think I heard Cherry Berry say that once. She’s the hot air balloon pilot. Smart mare. Now… are we ready to get things started?”
After a moment of consideration, Sumac nodded: he was ready to get better.
A curious pile of junk was turning into an even more curious machine. At the base of it all was a dynamo, a rather big one, and attached to its backend through a series of toothy gears was an electric motor. Wired to both of these was an airship-grade battery, with the dynamo’s power going into the battery, and the electric motor drawing power. A rising balloon generated the initial charge, but it was no ordinary balloon.
It was a surplus weather balloon, designed to carry a payload. Several yards around, made of heavy-duty guard-grade fabric, Vinyl had bought it with the idea of turning it into a flying photography rig for aerial shots. It already had the mechanicals to raise and lower itself with electrical current, and it depended upon Celestium for extra lift.
This would be connected via a reel and a flywheel to the front end of the dynamo, with a tether. A fine, thin, narrow wire would connect to the battery for the trickle charge needed for the Celestium. The rising of the balloon would turn the flywheel, which would pick up momentum and speed, and this would turn the dynamo, thus building a charge. Once the balloon had reached the end of the length of its tether, a switch would turn on the electric motor, which would in turn slowly pull the balloon back down, using very little electricity due to the power of efficient gearing.
If everything worked as planned, there would be a surplus of electricity, a net gain, and the system would be self-sustaining, rising and lowering on its own, generating a constant, steady amount of power. With time, tinkering, and thought, it could no doubt be improved; it might even be a viable means to generate electricity for a whole house.
There was a tremendous effort underway to find alternatives to coal and to be self-sufficient, meeting one’s own power consumption needs. Incentives were available for those who powered their homes without being connected to the grid, because electricity was needed for the war effort. Though Sumac was little, helpless, and powerless, it was through efforts like this one that he felt he was contributing, doing his part, and doing what was right for the greater herd.
“Vinyl, what do we do if the battery goes dead?” Sumac asked while his master double checked the various electrical connections.
“Hmm?”
“Well, the whole system only works because of the initial jumpstart that we’ve given it,” Sumac said, sharing what was on his mind. “It works because you had a charged airship battery to uh, prime the pump? How do we get it running if the pump isn’t primed?”
At this, Vinyl froze in place and her muzzle contorted into an intense, scrunched pucker of concentration. Octavia changed the music to something sweeping, dramatic, and mysterious. She leaned into her electric cello and played some unknown tune that Sumac had never heard before. Alto sat close to her, his eyes closed, swaying back and forth whilst he listened to his mother’s music. Meanwhile, Vinyl remained stumped, and Sumac allowed himself to feel just a smidge of smug satisfaction.
“Sod it all,” Vinyl muttered, and there was a screech when Octavia yanked her bow over the strings of her cello.
“Vinyl!” Octavia’s whine of protest caused Alto’s eyes to open and the colt cringed from his mother’s tone.
Before anything could get out of hoof, Sumac had a solution; wiping his eyes, he then looked up at his master and said, “All we need is a hoof-turned crank to generate the initial charge. Once the Celestium in the balloon has a bit of a spark, it will begin its rapid rise and at that point everything should power itself.”
“Problem solved.” Vinyl held up a wire, pulled off her dark glasses, and examined the worn out, frayed end. Tossing it away with a snort, she conjured up another section of wire and went to work replacing the discarded one. “We have a bigger problem, Sumac.”
“Oh?” Sumac wasn’t in the mood for bigger problems, because his emotions were still in a state of collapse. Just the mere mention of a bigger problem made him feel like crying again and part of him wanted to dart beneath the workbench, so he could hide.
“We’re going to have to contact that attorney I know,” Vinyl continued, “and we’re going to have to queue for hours at the patent office—”
“But I don’t wanna!” Sumac blurted out while he backed away from his master.
“Sumac, be responsible.” Octavia’s voice was now calm, prim, and reassuring. “Chin up. If you start a task, you simply must see it through from beginning to end. Vinyl is right—this is something that must be patented. You’ll make money and that money can be used for school. For your future. Queuing isn’t so bad—”
“Yes it is!” Shuddering, more tears streamed down Sumac’s cheeks and his emotions threatened to run rampant. Nothing worked right now and everything was coming out all at once, no matter what he did to hold it all in. The soothing music had stopped, he wasn’t distracted by labour, and the very prospect of queuing for hours had unhinged him—it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, whatever that meant.
“Here we go…” Vinyl spoke in a knowing way. “Here comes the rest of it.”
Very much against his will, Sumac felt himself being pulled into a hug. He kicked, he struggled, he protested, but it was to no avail; his master just overpowered him, which made things worse. Rather than a temper tantrum—which, to be honest, was exactly what Sumac expected from himself—he had a total meltdown where everything collapsed in upon itself.
Burying his face against Vinyl’s neck, Sumac gave himself over to blubbering.
Yet again, Sumac was having his face washed. Earlier, Pebble had used his ear as a hanky and he kept having episodic bouts of sobbing, which he felt ashamed about. Vinyl, who was scrubbing everything, smelled like thunderstorms, lemons, machine oil, and some kind of perfume that sort of made his nose tickle. Today, she had put on a beautiful sundress and had worn perfume—no doubt for Octavia’s sake—only to have her plans dashed by his inability to hold it all together.
Just thinking about this made everything worse, and the flow started again in earnest.
Alto, also emotional, was now secure in Pebble’s embrace. His wings fluttered against his sides and his head was buried just beneath his sister’s jaw, with her chin resting on top of his head. Seeing the two of them together, Sumac wondered where Sly was and what the little trickster was doing. Having a sibling was something that Sumac very much wanted, but every attempt so far had been met with failure—of course, this was just something else to be upset about, and it too, piled upon him, crushing him, beating him down.
“Ahuizotl is a real jerk,” Octavia said, coming dangerously close to being impolite. “Who does he think he is, arriving in Ponyville in the middle of the night with an army of mind controlled monkeys and those… those… crocodile-toad-thingies? Ooh!” Cheeks bulging, her sour mood turned the music she made aggressive, hostile, and a bit screechy. “Using Sumac’s sorcery and that cursed ancient idol, he was going to turn the whole of the world into a steaming, sweltering jungle. How awful!”
“Swamp crotch,” Pebble deadpanned while holding her brother, “forever.”
Sumac laughed: it was a sudden, unexpected sound, and even while laughing he was still a little weepy. Vinyl scrubbed at his face a bit more, and she had to hold him still because the laughter grew in force, shaking him.
“Even Princess Celestia is vulnerable to swamp crotch,” Pebble continued, “I’m sure of it. You can’t get anything done when everything is sweaty and galded back there. You just want to stand there, bowlegged, and wait for a cooling breeze of some kind. Ahuizotl had a winning plan—too bad he made Daddy angry.”
Unable to contain himself, Sumac lost it, and was overcome with riotous laughter.
The sun began to set on Ponyville after a long day of baking the soil and driving ponies to seek shade. Birds sang the evening chorus, along with frogs and crickets, with owls offering harsh critique. Swarms of bats descended upon the bugs as the twilight deepened and claimed what precious power it could before the night reigned supreme, uncontested.
A small herd of ponies sat atop a workshop roof, gathered around a curious contraption, from which an enormous balloon rose, trailing a fine wire and a thick, sturdy cable. Some blinking lights flashed on the balloon—it would rise while light retreated—and a faint, smooth clicking sound could be heard while it ascended skyward.
Sumac did not know it, but he was doing his part to usher in the new age of steam and Celestium. He was far too young, too inexperienced, too naive to understand his contribution to the world, for him, this was just an invention, a bit of science done at such a time when he was in dire need of distraction from his troubles. As he sat watching the rising balloon, he felt his own spirits lifting, buoyed by Celestium and spark; at long last, he was able to cope with his own trauma, rather than try to pretend it didn’t exist.
Alto Clef hovered in a tight circle around his mother Vinyl’s head, never straying too far from the light and safety she offered against the gathering dark. He too, watched as the big balloon rose, his wings buzzing as he flitted to and fro. The little quiet colt seemed entranced by the moment and celebrated this triumph in his own silent way. Raising one stubby foreleg, he offered a parting salute to the rising balloon.
Vinyl watched a gauge and the twitching needle showed that the battery was charging.
The spinning flywheel made a smooth, steady thrum; it was the sound of progress and Sumac found it soothing after the long, eventful day. He had finally reached some state of emotional stability—he had leveled out—and he was even starting to feel like his usual self once more. With Pebble by his side, he had found his smile again.
“Hiya, Sumac…”
Twisting his head around, Sumac turned towards the sound of the voice. A new flood of emotion coursed through him and every muscle went tight at the sight of Pinkie Pie. She stood on the edge of the roof near the stairs, hesitant, shy, and apprehensive. On her back was one of the distinctive boxes from Sugar Cube Corner.
“Feeling better?” Pinkie asked, her voice quiet, strained, and low, almost as if she feared just speaking might be somehow offensive.
“I’m sorry.” Sumac knew that the sooner he said it, the better, so it was best just to get it out of the way right now.
“I am too!” Pinkie Pie blurted out somehow as she was inhaling, filling her lungs with air so that she might say more. “You were so hurt and sad and withdrawn and I panicked! I’m not a smart pony when I panic and no matter how much I giggled at this ghosty, I couldn’t make it go away and it got under my skin and I started not being able to sleep at night and you just kept drifting further and further away from everypony and it got really, really bad this time and I just didn’t know what to do and I got scared and I just couldn’t give up on you!”
Sumac was about to say something, but before the words could leave his mouth, he found himself held tight in Pinkie’s embrace. He hadn’t even seen her move—she was at the stairs one moment and holding him the next—with the cake box now on the ground beside them. As it turned out, words weren’t needed or necessary. Gripping Pinkie, he held on for dear life as a flood of gratitude washed over him. For all of her annoyance, for all of the trying that she did to his patience at times, Pinkie Pie really was the best friend a pony could ask for or hope for.
“Some ponies are just really, really hard for me to understand but I just can’t give up on them!” Pinkie Pie pulled Sumac closer, perhaps attempting to crush him, and she redoubled her grip on the colt she squeezed in her forelegs. “I’m so sorry if I made things worse!”
A million things wanted to be said all at once, a million thoughts all raced to be expressed, and Sumac was overcome by them. Unable to speak, unable to put his thoughts into words, he did the only thing he could do: he clung to Pinkie and tried to hug her in some meaningful way that mattered.
“Sometimes ponies are grumps and you can’t hold that against them because they need help.” Reaching out, Pinkie snatched up Pebble and pulled the filly close. “The two of you are really confusing and sometimes I think I do more harm than good. I don’t know how the both of you put up with me.”
“We manage,” Pebble gasped while her aunt almost squeezed the Pie filling out of her.
“I made a pineapple-pomegranate-polkadot-puff cake.” Somehow, Pinkie snatched Alto right out of the air and the startled colt let out a terrified yelp as Pinkie lavished her over-exuberant affections upon him as well. “Who wants cake? My Pinkie Sense tells me that this is a momentous occasion in need of celebration!”
“It rather is?” Octavia seemed a bit perplexed by everything happening and her worried, maternal stare was locked on poor Alto, who was now being smooshed. Lifting one hoof, she covered her mouth and fretted while she watched her son get squeezed almost to oblivion. “Alto… darling, speak to your Mum…”
Alas, Alto said nothing.
“So”—Pinkie’s voice was chirpy and chipper—“who wants to explain to me what this contraption does and why it has a big balloon? Ponies are gonna ask questions. I’m gonna ask questions.” Her embrace ended with the same sudden abruptness that it had started with and when Alto went tumbling free, Octavia snatched him up while Pinkie gazed skywards at the rising balloon.
Though no longer held, Sumac clung to Pinkie like a drowning pony hung on to a life preserver. Thinking about the day, he sat in reflective silence, pondering great, ponderable ponderances, and wondered if this was a moment where he had grown. When he went home tonight, he would need to have a talk with his mothers, and it would probably be wise to offer up an apology just to be safe. He might have been a little too successful at pushing everypony away.
Throwing back her head, Pinkie Pie began to sing while Vinyl Scratch opened up the cake box. “‘Cause I love to make you smile, smile, smile… yes I do! It fills my heart with sunshine all the while… yes it does! 'Cause all I really need's a smile, smile, smile… from these happy friends of mine!”
Hearing Pinkie sing, Sumac couldn’t help but feel that everything was right with the world once more.
