Keenest Sense Of Duty: Sc.03&04


                                            >There is nothing in the world quite like flight.

                                            >Wheeling above the savannah treetops near your home, exalting in a muscle-burning rapid ascent, dancing between the mare-tail (hah!) cirrus clouds far above, listening to the jingle of tethered keys around your neck and morning air rushing by your face and goggles after you pull your wings in for a new dive to the canopy, nothing can compare.

                                            >Of course, being the only pegasus in a dry town has its responsibilities, but that’s why you’re out here in the first place.

                                            >Further towards the woodland boundary, the cirrus get denser.

                                            >A storm lies that way, near the local dry line, and that front has a lot of moisture the town needs.

                                            >A weathermare would dare the front, right to the edge of the storm, and punch a ball of wind through it to blow a long mass of moisture towards where it was needed, then scatter, shepherd, and rebuild the clouds at the target site.

                                            >Mares had that kind of magical control and precision, able to focus their magic enough to shove the cone of vapor without depriving the two nearby settlements of their share, each a week’s walk away, then execute the magically-complex operation of scattering moisture for faster transport without losing it.

                                            >A stallion like yourself would never be able to do that. Too clumsy, unable to focus effort. More often explodes clouds than merely scatters them.

                                            >But unlike all the caterwauling stallionists back home, you didn’t complain about the sexism of weathermare methods instead of getting the job done.

                                            >Some more competent stallions are content with walking the walk, and at least they got somewhere, like those from your current home, and that made them good company.

                                            >But you?

                                            >You flew. Higher and farther than they could imagine.

                                            >And the ‘mere’ stallionists, even the pegasi among them, didn’t know there’s nothing quite like flight.

                                            >Your rapid multi-mile ascents and descents are exhilarating, but they also let you sample the air column across its entire elevation.

                                            >That lets you judge just how much moisture is across an area, and with a little mental math with an eye towards the stormfront, you can get a pretty good estimate of what you have to work with.

                                            >Several hours before you reach the storm – visible in the distance as a dark smear across the sky – you pull up to cloud-level again, into the cirrus now growing dense enough the sky’s more white than blue.

                                            >This far should have enough density to get you the amount you need.

                                            >A mare’s precision is considered the hallmark of magical ability today. There are always more ponies who could work together for greater effects, but precision is something each must handle individually.

                                            >You can’t compete with that. Stallions aren’t built for it.

                                            >Stallions are built to apply massive amounts of brute force.

                                            >Alighting on a more substantial cloud nearby, you spread your wings and extend your ‘reach’, that ability for all pegasi to sense water and ice in the air.

                                            >An exhausting flight, fortunately, does not impact magical ability, and you’ve been resting that up and managing your diet appropriately for the past three days.

                                            >You can feel just a great expanse of water from wingtip to imaginary wingtip.

                                            >Turn that feel into a grasp, hold it.

                                            >Slowly, ever so slowly, but ever so surely, you draw your wings forward in a mile-wide wingbeat.

                                            >The aching of your muscles fade as an ache in your head surges, but you continue your magical leverage as you draw your shaking wings forward.

                                            >There’s enough ambient energy here, and you’ve a bellyfull of sugar, you got this.

                                            >Twenty seconds sees the sweep half complete, and you have to squeeze your eyes closed.

                                            >It’s nothing.

                                            >Twenty-eight seconds, and the first wave of dizziness hits you.

                                            >Push on, you can feel the cloud you stand on growing more dense.

                                            >Thirty-five seconds and your wings are close enough you’d draw them back again in a normal beat

                                            >The pressure between their magical extension is immense, like trying to swim through sap

                                            >Come on, you’re above this

                                            >Above this!

                                            >YOU FLY!

                                            >Your magical sense shorts out as your longest primaries on both wings touch their tips.

                                            >Time for a sudden, forced, but not unplanned nap.


                                            * * *


                                            >You wake up, judging by the sun’s position, almost an hour and a half later.

                                            >Not too bad, within expectations.

                                            >After wiping off your goggles, you look ahead, down the path you’d forced into existence.

                                            >A mile-wide semicircle of clouds around you has been condensed into a single line.

                                            >Fortunately, they’ve dispersed minimally while you were out cold.

                                            >Keeping this line coherent requires far less energy than the usual methods of cloud engineering, something you can manage even after your exhaustion; stuffing your face with sweets at breakfast-time has given you a day’s supply of sugar to burn, and that’ll replenish you just fast enough to keep up.

                                            >It’ll take you three times as long to move a standard volume than it should, but – thanks to a stallion’s muscular strength this time – you can move far more volume than usual using this method, and you don’t suffer the tight time tolerances of a formal weather worksite.

                                            >It’s why you devised this method, and it took two years of planning and practice to be able to execute it flawlessly.

                                            >Not that you’ll tell anypony that.

                                            >Anything short of effortless mastery is sub-par.

                                            >Your muscles stopped complaining during your nap, so you step back off the cloud, then thrust yourself forward mid-air quickly to bury yourself into it.


                                            >You spend the next seven hours pushing the column forward, keeping it lined up and pointed where you need it to go, tracking progress only by your head just barely sticking out of the top of the last cloud in line.

                                            >This is fine.

                                            >There’s joy in living inherent in doing a job well, too.


                                            >By the time the sun touches the horizon, you’ve got the column parked over a particularly dense patch of scrub a couple miles northeast of town.

                                            >Present windspeed and direction, extrapolated through the expected nightly changes in conditions, will force it to dissipate out about three times its width and fifteen percent of its length despite your magic’s lingering effects.

                                            >It’ll drift four and a half miles south-southeast throughout the night, and be clear of the southern farmland just before sunrise, to obstruct as little light for the crops as possible while it’s still cooler.

                                            >If you get up extra early, you can have everything distributed and primed to shade the fields during the peak of midday heat, and set the clouds to rain themselves dry through the following night.

                                            >Well, no if about it. You will do just that.

                                            >Another day’s work well done, but more left to do.

                                            >You pull a few lazy loops through the sky on your way back to town.

                                            >You leave behind laughter. A good day’s work is a good day’s living!

                                            >Something this town taught you quickly after you arrived.

                                            >If you pull off tomorrow without any problems, it’ll have been three years of executing this plan for the benefit of the town.

                                            >Mistral’s not here anymore to celebrate with you, but that’s fine.

                                            >You have Anon here now, the only one left in town who knows how much work your job actually requires.

                                            >And you know he works just as hard.

                                            >You land at his back door and take a key hanging from your neck up between your teeth.

                                            >Two tilts of your head has the door open, and you slip inside a room only you and he are allowed into.

                                            >You walk by rows of glass jars and metal canisters and other assorted containers, each with varying levels of various liquids.

                                            >You can smell the distillation; something’s wrong with Anon’s ventilation.

                                            >You'll check it out after dinner yourself if he hasn’t gotten to it by then.

                                            >Of all your strange mentor’s hobbies and habits, this is one you haven’t picked up yet, though you know enough to prevent the store from exploding.

                                            >Opening the door on the other end puts you in the main hallway running behind his storefront.

                                            >As soon as you close it behind you, you hear his voice.

                                            >”Over here are some carpentry supplies. We keep small packages of screws and nails but if they need a big order we gotta- aw hell, hold on. Stay right here.”

                                            >Anon appears around a corner leading to the front shortly after. “Sorry, visitor. Well, not really a visitor. Get cleaned up and I can introduce you two.”

                                            >You cup your wings in front of you, and he dumps a handful of chocolates into them before darting back out front.

                                            >Not really a visitor? What’s that mean?

                                            >You hustle up to the bathroom, close the door behind you, and unwrap as many chocolates as you can stuff in your mouth at once.

                                            >Off comes your collar with your keys then, and the goggles attached to them.

                                            >You wipe off what lather accumulated on them before putting them aside and turning on the shower, letting the chocolate melt in your mouth

                                            >Can the not-visitor hear it?

                                            >The flight back got you enough strength you can make this quick; ‘catching’ the water as it falls, gathering it around you, and washing yourself without any action from your hooves or wings.

                                            >Pegasi invented showers to emulate rain, obviously, so only you could work it as intended, but Anon seemed to prefer it as well.

                                            >Maybe it was something to do with his hands.

                                            >After your quickest of showers, you toss your collar and goggles into your bedroom and trot downstairs to the big front room that served as the store.

                                            >Anon’s there still, showing a mare around the stock

                                            >And what a strange mare she was.

                                            >You’re not a hulking brute like Iron Works, instead lean and wiry, but you’re still a stallion, so seeing a mare as tall as you is a shock.

                                            >She’s even more slender than your distance-optimized build, but that at least was to be expected of a mare.

                                            >Her wings were longer than yours, looking large even on her taller frame just barely crossing over her back, and sporting a two-tone pattern that you haven’t seen the likes of since you left your mountainous birthplace for good.

                                            >Her intricate cutie mark feels like it should be familiar, but…

                                            >”Ah, there you are. Kissy, this is Tramontane. Monty, Kissy Wings.”

                                            >You let your wings hang in a very respectful greeting carefully calibrated to look as lazy as possible.

                                            >After a moment’s pause – and the slightest tilt of her head – her wings respond with the opposite display; an overly formal and exactingly precise execution of the most basic passing greeting imaginable.

                                            >Oh, she’s dangerous. She could cramp your style.

                                            >Anon, of course, was oblivious of the intricacies of pegasi body language. “The three of us are the only ‘outsiders’ here, so we have to work overtime to make good impressions.”

                                            >”Didn’t I, uh, I think I saw you on my way here,” Kissy said. “Sleeping on a cloud.”

                                            >You shrug your wings.

                                            “Sleeping on the job hasn’t gotten me in trouble yet.”

                                            >So she’s been here for up to six hours already, depending on how loaded down she was.

                                            >She’s probably already got a quick tour of the town then, and if she’s still with Anon that means-

                                            >”Play nice, you two, you’re housemates now.”

                                            “As long as she doesn’t get in my way. I have a lot of nothing to do and I’m in a big hurry to get it done.”

                                            >That got a slight smile out of the pale pink pony.

                                            >Alright, maybe you could defuse this bomb.

                                            >Then figure out what to do with it.

                                            >”She’s going to be working the store with me for awhile, seeing if she’ll work out. Monty, where’s your- ah I should just see if I have spares myself. I’ll be right back.

                                            >After he left; “So where’d you park the clouds?”

                                            “Eh. Around.”

                                            >”Around?”

                                            “Yeah, I’ll get back to ‘em tomorrow. They’ll still be… wherever.”

                                            >You run through any number of ways she could call your bluff as she eyes you in silence.

                                            >”Can you teach me?”

                                            >That was the last line you thought you’d hear.

                                            “Can I… what?”

                                            >”Teach me. I never got to work with them. Clouds, I mean.”

                                            “Really? Not even in school?”

                                            >The briefest of glances flits over her face, like she’d forgotten something important.

                                            >Well, she did, technically speaking.

                                            >She regains composure quickly enough. “I went to a different kind of school.”

                                            “Uh, sure, I guess. I’ll need to go back up for another round in a little more than a week. You can tail, if you really want, but don’t get in my way.”

                                            >That slight smile you saw came back, and felt a lot more genuine. “Thanks. Sorry to be a burden.”

                                            >You shrug your wings again.

                                            >”Here, Kissy,” comes Anon’s voice from the hall.

                                            >A pair of keys sails through the air towards her.

                                            >She just stares at it for half its arc.

                                            >Only when it was already too late did she try to hold a wing out to catch it, and ended up slapping it towards you instead.

                                            >You slapped it right back at her with a  wing of your own.

                                            >The keys bounce off her chest and fall to the floor with a jangle.

                                            >She promptly stomps on them with a hoof.

                                            “Good catch.”

                                            >Her cheeks burn red under her pale coat.

                                            >You turn to Anon to spare her.

                                            “Check your vents back there, something’s off.”

                                            >”Will do when I’m done here, thanks Monty.” He turns back to Kissy. ”Come on, I’ll show you the second floor. Didn’t get to earlier, but that’s where we all live. We’ll have to empty a room out and make it livable, but there’s the kitchen and stuff you’ll want to know.”

                                            >His voice trials off as the two go upstairs, leaving you alone.

                                            >All this time with just you and Anon, and now you’ll have to live with a mare.

                                            >A supreme klutz, apparently.

                                            >What kind of pegasus has never worked weather?

                                            >Even if just as a foal in the schoolyard?

                                            >That’s where you learned how much harder you’d have to work.

                                            >And how were you going to deal with her trying to learn your tricks?

                                            >You shake your head and walk for the door out to the street.

                                            >What did you do to deserve this?