What then? What else-- I took my date to the Weather Factory.

The Weather Factory is quite an extraordinary place. Of course, I speak from the perspective of a human; I'm sure to most pegasi or even most ponies in general that it is interesting, but fairly banal. But allow me to assert, it is even more extraordinary than the limited glimpse we bronies were given on the show. That diminutive representation does it no justice.

I am sure most readers are familiar with the images online of the vast supercell storms that sweep across the midwestern plains. They are intimidating to look at, even confined to the size of a computer screen. One can only imagine how overwhelming it must be to stand out in the fields of of some small town and see such a storm front rolling in.

Now imagine standing beneath such a storm, standing IN one, a vast brobnidagian boiling THING hanging in space overhead like a flying mountain of mist.... then the clouds part, and you peer up into its interior, seeing not just clouds and wind but a factory, a vast engine of nature, a thing of pipes and tubes and machinery and walkways of solidified cloud and snowflake glass, covered in antlike workers, churning and pumping and lit with a thousand industrial lights, all around the mists boiling with the slow brooding energy of a storm, streaked with sun dogs and brief rainbows, its inner crevices sporadically lit with flickering lightning and crooning with the low, gentle rumble of thunder.

If one could grasp that mental image, that feeling of personal diminutiveness as that vast and unearthly construction hovered on mere vapor over his world, he might grasp what the real Equestrian Weather Factory was like. (*)

It was a vast facility, and looked like a cross between a chemical plant the size of a city and a psychedelic fever dream. Enormous translucent pipes ran every which way carrying water, cloud vapor, and ice; huge complex prisms of magically inert ice like crosses between fresnel lenses and cathedral windows made of diamonds gathered sunlight and moonlight; leyden jars the size of houses crackled with stored lightning; and machines made of fog and air blended and infused these exotic ingredients with pure quintessance(1), transforming them into banks of clouds pregnant with rain, storehouses full of snow and ice, and titanic cloud-vats of liquid rainbow. And through it all serenely drifted cloud platforms, bearing workers and equipment hither and thither through the forest of pipes, vats, and cisterns, between shafts of sunlight and waterfalls of molten rainbow.

Violette and I were dwarfed, ants in an enormous engine of clouds. Even having seen it all before I was awed. Violette, for her part, was in a state of stunned wonder, huddling close to my side as she gazed about us, her mouth hanging open in amazement. We were floating through the factory on a cloud platform, one of the Weather Bureau staff giving us a guided tour of the facilities."...and here we have the main rainbow production facilities," the hard-hatted pegasus said as we drifted along. He was pointing to a pair of enormous rainbow falls. Each one was a torrent of mingled colors, like someone had tie-dyed the Niagra. They cascaded down into a stair-step series of pools, the division between the intermingled colors slowly becoming more distinct and clear with each one, till they became two perfect rainbow ribbons down below.

"Why are there two different streams?" I asked.

"Well, the one on the left is regular rainbows, made with quintessence and sunlight," our guide said. "The one on the right is a new production line-- for moon-bows, rainbows which will only come out at night. Since Princess Luna's return, they've been in really high demand. Took us a while to get the moonlight balance right." He sounded very pleased.

"As you can see there's a distinct difference in color warmth between the two."  He was right; the "moon bow fall", while having the same general spectra, was made up of much 'cooler' looking hues. "And there's another difference," he added. "Here, let's pull over closer." He spun the wheel at the helm, bringing the cloud over till we were within arm's reach of the two cascades. The glowing colors showered down around us, illuminating our transport with secondary light.

The look of enchantment on Violette's face was delightful. Almost impulsively she stuck out her hoof towards the cascading colors-- then pulled her leg back, blushing. "Pardon," she said. "Pardon, je ne sais pas ce qui m'est venu."

"Oh no, go ahead," the guide urged. "You too, sir. In fact, taste them-- just a tiny dab, mind." He grinned. "The flavors are a bit... intense."

I darned well knew about what happened to Pinkie Pie when she tried to taste the rainbow.  I cocked an eyebrow at him. He just smiled broadly and motioned for us to go ahead.

Now my curiosity was up. I dipped the tip of my pinky into the sun-rainbow fall and tasted carefully. Violette followed my lead, coloring the tip of her hoof.

Although I was prepared, the taste surprised me; it was definitely hot and spicy, reminiscent of sun-ripened peppers; chili, yellow, green, jalapeno, habanero, the exact kind eluded me. Violette wasn't so forewarned; she sputtered and spit it out, saying something in French that was surely impolite, even as her face lit up from within. It looked like someone had stuck a disco ball under her tongue.

The guide chuckled and gave her some suspiciously available bottled milk to rinse her mouth. I chuckled and availed myself of the milk as well; the burning heat of that tiny drop spread quickly and I had no desire to challenge my gastritis with it. Intrigued and emboldened, I took a larger dollop of the Moonbow-fall for a taste.

Now it was Violette's turn to laugh. I was prepared for spicy. I was not prepared for cool.

Not cool, cold.... It was like spearmint dipped in peppermint rolled in wintergreen and then infused with the pure essence of a mint ice cream headache. I gagged; the flavor was going clear up into my sinuses like someone had stuff a tin of Altoids up each nostril. I stomped my feet and pounded on the rail with my fist while multicolored light shot out of my nose and mouth and Violette's bell-like laughter rang in my ears. Tears streaming, I informed her that her disdain for my suffering and mockery wounded me.

"FNernfh," I said. The heartless creature only laughed harder.

"Here you go, sir," the guide said-- and handed me a peanut butter covered spoon. I regarded him in confusion but was in no position to question. I stuffed the gluey dollop and rolled it around in my mouth. "By jove it works," I said with relief as the overpowering coolth disappeared. Well, after I'd swallowed it and chased it with some more milk. I made a mental note: remember that trick.

"Little trick I learned when I was on the rainbow mixing detail," he said. "Stuff splashes sometimes and you can get a bit in your mouth. Gets you into the habit of carrying milk and peanut butter in your lunch." His eye twinkled. "Funny how often the tourists seem to need it too..."

I made a noncommital harrumph. "You know, I never asked this the last time I visited," I said. "But why do you make these? I mean, what technical purpose do they serve? I know that even here mundane rainbows occur whenever there's a rainfall..."

The guide coughed, somewhere between amusement and embarassment. "Well, the higher ups and PR ponies like to make a lot of foofaraw about tradition and 'beautification' and 'weather condition signaling' and the like," he said with the air of someone revealing an open secret, "But the truth of it is that this is all byproduct."

"Byproduct?"

"Yep," he nodded. "See, the rainbow juice is sort of a, well a leftover caused by the process of mixing quintessence, sunlight and water to make clouds," he said. "We had to do something with it, and there aren't that many ponies into hot sauce or overly strong breath mints. Fortunately we found that spraying it in a fine mist--"

"Like a really high rainbowfall off a cloud..." I provided.

"...or over an arched thaumatic lattice," he said, nodding, "Will let it evaporate quickly and disperse into the environment as quintessence and colored light."

"Making a virtue out of a necessity," I said. "Nice. Well. Where to next?"

"Wherever you please, Sir Arcturus."

I looked over at Violette. She was still giggling, her eyes twinkling merrily as she tried to stifle her laughter with her gaskin. I couldn't help smiling at the sight; gads, ponies were cute. She was cute. "Lady's choice, I believe," I said.

"Oh," Violette said.  "I haf always want to see où ils font la neige... where  they make the snow?" Our tour guide nodded and put the cloud platform back in motion.

We soon pulled into an enormous chamber... or would "hangar" be more appropriate?... a vaulted space large enough to hold all of Earth's zeppelin fleets combined. It was filled with huge billowing clouds, stacked in layers on either side, with walkways running back and forth between them. "You're in luck," our guide said. "This place has little to do this time of year, but we've got orders for an early-season snowfall up near Vanhoover."

We dismounted and started trotting along the walkways between the zeppelin-sized snow clouds. The air was severely chilly here. Violette shivered and pressed in closer to me. "As you can see, these clouds are already frozen," the tour guide said. "Nothing more than clouds of frozen water droplets." He led us over to one of the tabled work stations spaced out along the walkway. He reached out over the rail and scooped a hoof-full of cloud and held it up under the station's magnifying lens for us to see. We both peered closely; under the crystal lens we could see the cloud was made of billions of tiny shapeless frozen droplets.

"This one hasn't been seeded yet," he said. "Let's see if we can't find one where they-- ah, here we go!" he pointed off in the distance and headed off at a light trot. I followed at a more leisurely pace. Despite her own bright-eyed fascination Violette kept her pace matched with mine and stayed by my side. It made me feel warm, that.

We caught up with him quickly enough. He was standing before another enormous grey cloud being tended and fussed over by a group of weather pegasi. "Ah, there you are. Here we go now... they've just brought a snowflake in from the artisan floor and are just about to drop it in." As we watched, a cloud cart was pushed down the catwalk. It bore a single upright glass cylinder, capped at top and bottom with silver. It glowed faintly blue, and we could see a tiny blue-white something floating inside. Violette craned her neck trying to see.

"Hold up a sec, fellas." The cart stopped. "Come here, come take a look," our guide urged. Suddenly reverent, Violette crept forward, fascination radiating from every fiber of her being. She smiled and gave a tiny coo of delight. I stepped in behind her and looked over her shoulder. Suspended inside the cylinder, magnified by the curve of the glass, was a single, tiny, perfectly formed snowflake. It glowed with a ghostly blue-white light. "We could never make enough snowflakes by hoof for even a single snowstorm," our guide said quietly, as if afraid the breath of his words would melt and shatter the tiny thing before us. "But this single flake is infused with gallons of quintessance.. and just a drop of chaos magic."

Chaos magic?

One of the workers swooped down and picked up the cylinder in her hooves. She flew back up over the tethered cloud, hovering just above it. "Now comes the really cool part," the tour guide grinned.

The mare unscrewed the cap of the cylinder and let the snowflake fall out, and down into the cloud. There was a crackling, like rice krispies in milk... no, a hissing, like rain on wet pavement ... No, I decided yet again as the sound grew and I could hear it more clearly; it was the sound of crystal chimes, millions and millions and millions of tiny crystal windchimes sounding at once. The cloud began to glitter, a sparkling blue-white that spread out from that single snow-droplet and suffused it from end to end. Slowly the cloud went from a dull gray to an almost silvery gray-white. One of the workers scooped a hoof full of cloud and held it under the inspection lens for everyone to see. I leaned in; under the cool light of the glass I could see the tiny frozen droplets had been replaced by millions of perfect, unique snowflakes, dancing together in a minuet.

Violette clapped her hooves together. I regarded the brobnidagian cloud hovering over us. It was still chiming faintly, just out of the range of hearing. "Hast thou entered into the treasure houses of the snow..?" I quoted to myself under my breath, pondering I know not what.

The foreman shouted something, and the workers untethered the cloud and began pushing it to the double doors at the end of the chamber. With a rumble of machinery... or perhaps a rumble of thunder... the vaporous doors opened. Sunlight spilled in, and suddenly a torrent of wind was roaring through the center of the room. Beyond the doors I could see a vortex of air stretching off into the sky. "Jet Stream!" the guide shouted over the whistle of rushing air. "Express route to Vanhoover-- only way to get there on schedule!" The workers pushed their newborn snow-cloud out into the open aisle. It was sucked up into the sideways cyclone like a dollop of whipped cream up a straw. In moments it was whisked up into the sky and over the horizon.

"Au revoir!" Violette cried, waving. She realized she was doing and stopped, blushing and giggling awkwardly.

"Never mind," the guide chuckled. "I feel like doing the same whenever the things leave home." The doors rumbled shut and the weather ponies went back to work. "Shall we head for the stormclouds next?"

 

---

 

The stormcloud department was, figuratively and literally, a hair raising visit.  brooding, angry clouds rumbled all around us, and the air was so charged with static electricity that my hair and Violette's mane stood on end.  The pegasi seemed immune to the effect somehow. Natural resistance, perhaps? That didn't stop our guide from affixing grounding strips to each of us and himself, nor of keeping us behind barricades of lightning rods as we passed through the work space.

"This is another example of an unwanted byproduct," the tour guide said. "On top of the static buildup from pumping quintessence and air and water all together, we pegasi seem to generate a massive static buildup in clouds with their magic just by mucking about with 'em." I recalled a certain derpy-eyed pegasus who'd kicked out lightning just by bouncing up and down on a powder-puff sized cloud. "It's usually harmless enough when colts and fillies play about on tiny clouds," the tour guide said, echoing my thoughts, "But over time it can be a big nuisance. Cloud houses used to have to have lightning veins-- that's V-E-I-N-S, by the way--- to continually bleed off the static buildup."

"So what changed?" I asked, jumping as a nearby cloud boomed its displeasure at being so overstuffed with lightning.

"We found out lightning was useful," the guide said. "Put it to work cooking food, lighting houses, powering our appliances... here in the factory we pass overcharged clouds through this department to bleed off the juice and pump it right back into weather production." He pointed over to where some workers suited in heavy rubber suits and wielding long metal poles were corralling a cloud over an array of leyden jars. Once positioned, the jars were raised into position and began "milking" lightning out of the cloud. The cloud slowed its churning and its rumbling diminished, like a contented cow.

"The reason you ground-pounders... no offense... see thunder or lightning at all is because sometimes we need a rush job on the rain and we don't get the clouds bled off completely. That, and we sometimes actually get requests for thunderstorms specifically. Something about the ozone clearing out the impurities in the air, the Princesses tell us."

The thunder rumbled again. I heard a feminine squeak and felt something press against my hip.  I looked down. Violette was pressing against my side. I could feel her trembling. Gads I was a dunce. Talking pony or not she was still a pony, and ponies and thunder never mixed well... pegasi excepted. "Are you all right?" I said.

She laughed shakily. "Is no-sing, Artoor," she said. "I am just being silly."

"Scared of thunder?" I murmured, resting what I hoped was a comforting hand on her withers.

Distant lightning flashed in the warehouse, and she flinched. "Oui, since I was the filly," she admitted.

"We'll leave then," I said. "No sense in it..."

"Non, non," she said, shaking her head and smiling. "One must move outside ze com-fairt zone, no? À cœur vaillant rien d'impossible."(2)

"Nul n'est tenu à l'impossible,"(3) I replied. "Come now, if you're not having a pleasant time, then there is no point in being here, is there?"

The thunder cracked and she jumped. She bit her lip, shaking like she had the ague. Her eyes were wide and staring. "P-Pouvons-nous laisser maintenant? Je n'ai vraiment pas aimé cet endroit---"

One of the rubber-suited workers tending the stormclouds tripped. The long lightning rod he was using to herd a cloud across to the leyden jars fell crossways and jammed between two clouds. This was apparently a bad thing to do. Both clouds released a massive discharge, setting off a chain lightning bolt that flashed between a half-dozen clouds or more. The flash was blinding; we were submerged in a massive, deafening boom of thunder. Violette let out a scream and--

And well, she leapt. Into my arms.

For a wonder, I didn't drop her. For another wonder I actually managed to remain standing, holding her. Three cheers for a healthy diet and regular activity. She and I held that pose for a moment, her with all four hooves curled up, me holding her like Shaggy holding Scooby Doo and staring at her stupidly. There was an aftershock from the clouds; she let off a tiny shriek, threw her forehooves around my neck and buried her face under my chin.

Aw, heck.

I grunted and shifted her weight a bit. "Go fetch the cloud platform would you?" I said to our tour guide. "I think we've seen enough of the storm department." He blinked for a moment, then chuckled. He gave me a wink, darn him, and trotted off for the platform. I resisted the urge to boot his cutie mark as he went past, and settled for walking after him as best I could with a tonitrophobic girl--- filly--- shivering in my arms.

He made it back to us before I'd gone a dozen steps. Which was good, as the thirteenth would have ended with me falling flat on my fat backside. I sat down on the edge of the platform with Violette on my lap while our guide drove us out of the stormcloud warehouse. Poor Violette was a shaking wreck.

Our guide thought on his hooves and took us to the Weather Factory commissary. A cup of coffee (heavy on mocha and whipped cream-- Equestrians are unparalleled sugar junkies) was just the thing to soothe frayed nerves. She smiled wanly at me as she sipped the sweet caffeinated drink. "I am sorry, Ar-toor. I feel like the silly filly."

"No no," I said seriously. "I... I know how it is with phobias. Um, le terreur des tonner." Hey, the tutoring sessions in Fancy with Applebloom were paying off. "When something scares you, it doesn't matter how little sense it makes. The fear is still there."

"Do you .. have the...?" she waved a hoof, searching for the word. Her pretty eyes fixed on mine, demanding.

"Phobias?" I thought about it. "A... few. Un ou deux." She looked surprised at the admission. I went on. "A fear of failure. A fear of shame. Of...damnation and hell...Rejet par mon Dieu."

She shook her head, scowling. "Je ne comprends pas. But these are... common. Little..Les craintes sensées communs. Not.. "

"A phobia is defined as Une extrême peur irrationnelle." I said. "Extreme or irrational. My religion... ma foi... is one of Grace. Teaches that my soul is secure. And yet I fear. Irrational, no?" I smiled wryly. "I have so many flaws that I live in constant terror that I shall blunder and unforgivably shame myself. And even though I have had so many triumphs, I am convinced that I shall fail you all at some desperate moment...I am told those fears are irrational. But there they are."

Her hoof came across the commissary table and rested gently on mine, surprising me. Her smile was kind and her eyes were gentle. "Because you care,"  she said. "Because you are a good man. à mon avis. "

I shook my head, smiling. "Personne n'est bonne autres que Dieu. But you weren't asking about any soul searching things, were you. You meant more-- immediate fears." I thought about it, sobering immensely. "I do have one crippling phobia," I confessed. " L'asphyxie. Suffocation." I felt a shiver run down my spine when I recalled how I learned I had that phobia.

"Pourquoi?" She leaned forward, curious.

"I have... something of a snoring problem," I admitted with a weak chuckle. "A fairly bad one, I'm told. The doctors of my world tried to help me. They tried to fit me with a CPAP... a, um, mask that would help me breathe at night while I slept." I waved a hand around my face. "They wired me up with sensors and strapped the thing to my head.

"The moment it went on, I went into a panic attack.

"Heart rate through the roof. Struggling to breathe. I thought my heart would burst from the fear. The thing was blowing fresh air into my face, and it felt like I couldn't breathe. I tried twice to put the thing on... they told me my sleep breathing was so bad it could eventually kill me... but I couldn't.

"I can't describe the despair I felt. Such a simple treatment, something that would have immeasurably improved my life, and I couldn't use it. I decided it was better to shorten my life by years with my sleep apnea than to spend every night in terror-- assuming my heart didn't just burst from the stress." I gave her a weak grin. "I can't stand to have anything affixed to my face to this day."

I watched as she digested my confessions. "How long have you been afraid of thunder?" I asked.

She sighed. She seemed to accept my own admissions of weakness as an offer to unburden herself. "Since I was a tiny filly. One summair, I visit wi' my Grand-pere. I stay in his lodge, far from ze city. Hills and fields to run and play in... it was un merveilleux été." She smiled wistfully. "But then one night, when ma Grand-pere was away to town, a rogue storm fell on the little valley. The lightning, the thunder, zey nevair stop flashing and roaring... and the wind, it shakes the whole house like a foal with a rattle. Till the wind tear half ze roof away." Her eyes grew hazy. "All I see is the storm above,  rain slashing like knives, the wind howling, and ze storm above boiling and raging like a monster big enough to swallow ze world.

"I hid under my bed, crying for ma Grand-pere, for ma mere, for anyone, till ze storm stop. Grand-pere find me undair ze bed, like a little drowned mouse--" she laughed a little sadly. "For a long time, I was afraid even of the clouds on a sunny day."

Considering what a careless pegasus could do with a kick to one, it struck me as more sensible a phobia than it seemed. I nodded. "I wish you had said something," I said. "I would never have let him take us into the storm warehouse if I'd known. Why didn't you?"

She smiled and nodded to her cutie mark. Ah yes. "It is who I am," she said. "I must face my fears, challenge myself, from time to time, or I am not myself." She smiled into her cup shyly. "And when I am wit you, I am feel... a little bit more brave than before."

My ears felt hot. I realized I was smiling. "At least we have something in common," I said. "Fears aren't so bad when you have someone to share them with."  She said nothing, but I think she agreed.

 

---

 

The remainder of the tour was somewhat mellower. We got a quick glimpse of the weather planning boardroom, which was about as exciting as it sounds (as in, not at all), and a brief tour of the wind manufacture and storage facility, where surplus gusts and torrents of wind were stored in enormous Wind Bags. The supervisor there didn't take it well when I congratulated the staff on finally finding a productive use for upper management.

Our final stop was at the Weather Factory gift shoppe. Yes, they had a gift shoppe. It took every ounce of my willpower to not simply buy one of everything there.(4) It was a veritable wizard's workshop; the most mundane thing there were things that human physicists would have sold their internal organs to possess. Trinkets made of crystallized rainbow. Bottled lightning. Cans of fog. Vials of sunshine and moonlight suspended in quintessence. Toys made of solidified cloud. Miniature bags of wind (good for three strong gusts or your money back.) Even the humble books and magazines ("So You Want to be a Weather Pony;" "Rainbow Recipes;" "Cloud Architecture and You") would have had earth scientists either in spasms of ecstasy or curled up in a corner, weeping and sobbing.

I splurged a bit on an impulse buy and bought a Junior Weather Pony Home Weather Experiment kit. It had a miniature set of weathermaking tools and "over 50 vials of common weathermaking ingredients-- includes its own quintessence gatherer! Thousands of experiments, hours of fun!" I didn't even know if I could even use the blessed thing, but I certainly intended to have fun trying.

While the clerk was wrapping my purchase up, I saw one other item that I just had to get. I looked over to make sure Violette was still browsing the tee-shirt collection ("Pegasi do it on Cloud Nine." Really, Cloudsdale? Really?) and silently indicated what I wanted to get to the clerk. She nodded and quickly packaged it up for me; I slipped it into my coat pocket.

It was evening when we finally left Cloudsdale. The guards were kind enough to take the chariot on a circuitous path so we could watch the sun set unimpeded. We sat in the chariot, leaning against each other as we watched.It was one of Celestia's better ones, rich with golds and purples, pinks and oranges.

We spiraled down to Canterlot, the palace and the city below us glittering in the night with a thousand streetlamps, and set down on the road in front of Violette's house. I escorted her to the door. Just before she stepped inside I cleared my throat and pulled her present from my pocket and held it out. "I know it's a bit early to be buying jewelry, but I saw this at the shop, and, ah... well."

It was a pendant. A tiny diamond phial on a silver chain, etched in silver. The cut was reminiscent of the Light of Earendil, the phial that Galadriel had given Frodo in the Lord of the Rings movie, which is why it had caught my eye. Suspended inside was a single perfect snowflake. It spun slowly and glowed with a faint blue-violet light.

Violette gasped, her pupils growing enormous as she drank in the sight of it. The glow complimented her color perfectly, I noted, pleased. "I saw how enchanted you were with the snow room, and. Ahem. Well. A memento.." I realized my conversational skills were deteriorating to sentence fragments. I could not resist adding a quote..."May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out." I felt foolish the moment I said it, and shut up.

"Oh, it is lovely," she cooed. "Merci, Ar-toor." She bowed her head as I hung it around her neck. "Somesing pour vous." She reached into her saddlebag. Shyly she held out something to me, balanced on her nose.

It was a bracelet, woven of two thin braided rainbows. Literally. One the warm color of a sunbow, the other the cool of a rainbow made with the light of the moon. It was the strangest sensation; I could feel the weight and solidity of them, yet they looked intangible as air. It was like holding a looped streamer of light in my hand. "A little joke, non?" she said. "A memento, as you say."  Visions of us both getting suckered into tasting pure rainbow juice danced in her eyes.

Chuckling, I slipped it onto my wrist. It slipped easily under my shirt cuff. "I'll treasure it," I said.

Before I could say any more she reared up on her hind legs, placed her forehooves on my chest and kissed me on the cheek. I stood there, surprised, with surely the stupidest look in history on my face. "Au revoir," she said, retreating inside. The door closed with a click, but not before I saw the blush and the smile on her face.

I stood there for a moment in the dark, savoring the moment, then turned and started walking back toward the waiting carriage, my cane under my arm and my hat at a jaunty angle. I didn't get more than halfway before l'esprit d'escalier jumped out of the bushes and slapped my stupid face. Facepalming, I hurried back to the doorway and knocked. No, not frantically. Just briskly. She opened the door almost instantly. "I'm sorry, I forgot to ask if you would like to go out again next Friday?"

---was what I meant to say. However I instead managed to fumble my own tongue and blurted out "Next Friday?" like a lout.

Of course I was drowned out by her simultaneous shout of "Oui, Oui, j'aimerais bien!"

We Eeped, erked, and mumbled for a few seconds, before finally managing to get out "Next Friday? At seven? A movie?"

And a "Oui, tres bien." This time she merely hopped up and gave me a peck right on the lips. "Bonne nuit, Ar-toor." She disappeared back inside.

The door closed. I retrieved my bowler hat from where it had rocketed off my head into the bushes, gathered my scattered wits, and marched, with a fresh confident smile, back to my waiting carriage. The two guards said nothing as they flew me back to the castle, but I could see them shooting me looks and knowing grins over their shoulders at me.

Pah. Discipline had gone to bloody Tartarus since Shining Armor left the capital.

I arrived, made my way through the castle, made my distracted greetings to the few officials and nobleponies I encountered, returned to my suite and went to bed-- where I stared at the ceiling with mixed emotions and ambiguous thoughts. She was charming, shy, sweet, bold and yet vulnerable at the same time in a way that I found irresistibly attractive. And most amazing of all she seemed to actually like me.

And she's the wrong species, the thought returned. She's an alien race from another dimension. Or I was, which was the same difference. Somehow though that thought didn't erase the smile from my face.

This was going to be.... complicated. But complicated, I supposed, could be a good thing?

 

 

---

 

*)If that fails you try and remember the footage from the first Star Trek movie when the Enterprise does a fly-by of VGer's ship. Yes. Like that.

1)Quite literally, 'the fifth element': hypothesized by the ancient alchemists and natural philosophers of Earth-- more vaporous than air, more fluid than water, more substantial than earth and more aetherial than flame. Aka, the essence of what Equestrians called "magic."

2)"To a valiant heart nothing is impossible."

3)"No one is bound to do the impossible."

4)I waited till the next day and mailed an order in. You can do anything with sufficient bits.