Three days of being confined to the palace was more than close to torture for Cloudy’s sensibilities. Denied the sky, the wind, and taking off whenever she wanted, it was enough to drive a mare mad.

The consolation was that she got to spend time catching up with Rosemary. An hour here, a night there, talking. Nothing but talking. Sex was right out. Cloudy wasn’t sure if she could feel right if that was the first thing she defaulted to when she got back together with her longtime lover. Her one-time best friend she’d been forced to flee from.

But the time was well spent. She told Rosemary about her time in the Dammeguard, the friends she’d made, and the trials she’d faced as a Merrier donning the blue of House Primline, the stewards of Damme.

In turn, Rosemary told her of her life, both with Rosewater and about the town. It was during those talks that Cloudy learned more about her date than she had from the mare herself. The love behind closed doors, the care Rosewater took to at least appear to adhere to Roseate’s strictures, and pretend to be cowed.

To Cloudy, it seemed that the act of acting cowed wasn’t much different from the reality. Especially when the end result wasn’t that much different. The only thing different, in fact, that Cloudy could determine from talking to Rosemary about it, was the feeling that Rosewater stated she was only playing along until the right moment.

Not that I have a lot to say… I ran instead of facing her.

And now she was going to chase Rosewater in the old way. If Rosewater had been cowed, truly, it would be an easy chase and hopefully a wakeup for the mare that things were not right in her world. The chase was at the heart of Merrier romance since days before the founding of the two cities. A game of skill and chance and adapting, it wasn’t looked on with much favor in Damme, but there had been a few mares who’d been willing to try the game.

Sunrise had been one such, far away from prying eyes to the north where they could soar and dive and chase each other from cloud to cloud without needing to worry that she would be spotted by her family or those close to them.

Few unicorns took her up on it, and for good reason. A pegasus had a distinct advantage of mobility in a chase and if a unicorn was less than skilled at subterfuge and stealth, Cloudy could find them.

But I never saw her until she wanted me to see her, she reminded herself, smiling as she stood still, letting Collar inspect the harness she’d tied to her body. It was a Rosewing’s girdle, sewn with pockets and loops to hold all manner of a mistweaver’s tools of the trade. Tools she hadn’t needed in a year. More than a year.

“Are you sure this is all you need?” Collar asked her quietly as he tightened the cinch over her shoulder. A brace of pouches settled against her breast and shoulders, easy to reach with a turn of the head or a dip to pull free the contents. Satchels of flower petals, ready to crush between her teeth and release the scent they’d been soaked in. “It seems kind of light for… well… for facing Rosewater, even if it’s consensual.”

“For a Rosethorn, it would be,” Cloudy agreed with a kiss to his chin. “I’m a Rosewing. We’ve never relied overmuch on things. Our wings are our power. Our control over wind and weather. Mist especially. My mother, Windrose, is still one of our best mistweavers. Mist shuts down scent in most cases, but for us…” She grinned fiercely. “They’re our allies against the Rosethorns and Incensers.”

“It doesn’t seem to stop Rosewater…” He waved a hoof. “Her magic seems to thrive with mist.”

“Rosewater is a talented mare. And… yes.” Some of the Rosethorns, even some of the lesser cousins, knew tricks to get around mist. “Some scents are amplified by mist. I wouldn’t want to face any of the Rosethorns even with a night full of mist at my disposal. Silk, especially, if she managed to tie my muzzle shut with one of her tendrils.”

“And you’re sure about this?” he asked, the worry in his voice evident. He still didn’t approve of her going alone. “I could—”

“No. This is… this is how proper Roses court. The chase. It’s in our blood, Collar.“ She ruffled her wings and stretched out her hind legs. “And I trust her. Mostly. She came to us, Collar. And I saw her before.” She swallowed and turned to face him fully. “I saw her break down when she feared for your safety. She’s either in love with you for what you’ve done for Rosemary, or she feels she owes you for saving her baby girl.”

He grunted and tugged on her harness again. “I think you’re as tight as I can get it without restricting your movement. How late do you think you’ll be?”

“No idea. I’ve never tried to hunt her seriously one-on-one. And she’s never done the same to me.” Cloudy chuckled. “I’ll be okay. It’s still too soon after Firelight Sparks appeared at the Rose Palace to give them all a drubbing for them to try anything.”

“We don’t know that.” He pulled her chin up gently and kissed her on the lips. “I love you, Cloudy. You mean everything to me.”

She returned the kiss with a measured heat, nipping his lips before she parted. “I’ll be safe. I promise.”

She left, then, to stop by Rosemary’s room, but the empty guardpost outside told her that Platinum was either talking or making love. She wouldn’t begrudge Rosemary her lovers, either. Silently, she wished her love a good night, and listened only briefly to hear the sound of soft voices whispering.

Unable to tell what they were saying, Cloudy just tucked away how close Platinum seemed to Rosemary under things to be grateful for, and continued on her way.

The night air greeted her with a nip that touched her nose briefly before she flared her wings and called the warmth of the castle behind her to cup her feathers as she crouched and launched, surging upwards on the artificial thermal and racing towards the nearest cloud bank to begin her stalk.

Below her, the city was ending the day’s business and beginning the brief nighttime play that bounded the setting of the sun and the beginning of the safety curfew, when the day’s light still faintly prickled the horizon and made the night less frightening and more beautiful.

Dusky purple still limned the highest buildings on the wharf and reds and golds highlighted the clouds she was aiming for, bathing her in a late-day radiance that marked her out like a comet rising in the sky, an anonymous birdlike speck. She half-hoped that Rosewater was watching to see just how bright her emerald green primary feathers could shine.

Likely, she was watching. As soon as she landed on the cloud and rolled in the misty top, wrapping herself with the neutral smell of rain and wind, she crouched at the edge and raised her scope to study the Merrie side of the river. Rosewater’s house was easy to find, two storied, broad-fronted, and extending into the hill behind it with a red-washed roof and chimneys rising from rooms she hoped one day to explore, to see Rosemary’s childhood home.

Maybe even to lay with her on a cold winter night.

She let the dreams of a night in the future bubble under the surface, warming her as she watched the front door in between bouts of scanning the city below for signs of shadows moving where they shouldn’t.

Rosewater’s door opened abruptly, letting the mare herself out into the deepening night. She was wearing a scarf, her mane done in a light braid that showed off the fact she had no vials tucked into it, and to show off her long, graceful neck.

Every bit of her was grace and poise that night, assured in her power and strength of will. Even the arrogance of not bringing scents was a bit of her. Though that scarf might be a convenient foil for a slender harness like Cloudy’s. Or might, itself, be scented. She stepped down the stairs, her tail low and calm, her ears flicking briefly, and her lips parted in a half-smile that Cloudy could only barely make out.

Figures from the cart yard across the street stepped out of the cover of the roofing to approach her.

No! Cloudy adjusted the viewer to study them. They didn’t wear the livery of the Merrieguard, and their cutie marks were unknown to her. But their attitudes as they approached Rosewater made it clear they were going to make trouble.

And she could do nothing. All she could do was watch and hope Rosewater wouldn’t be delayed from their date.

A giddiness gripped Rosewater, wholly unlike the vengeful flutter that had visited her heart over the past week. I’m going on a date. The first in more than a year. The first date where she had no idea who would win. It might end up like Roseling, with her being chased instead of her being the huntress. It might end up with Cloudy under her or atop her. It might end with only a kiss, or it might end with more.

I don’t know. It was liberating. A not knowing that wasn’t for harm’s sake, but for pleasure’s sake. Something she didn’t need to know until it was over.

She’d spent the day in her workshop considering cosmetics and mane styles, perfumes that she could wear to accentuate her natural aromatic presence without being overpowering. The latter half of the day, she’d spent considering saddles and scarves, hats she could wear to accentuate her height or downplay it. Ankle wraps, too, she considered. Convenient places to store a folded cloth scented with some subtle fragrance to play about in the wind. Or simply to accentuate the definition of her ankles.

In the end, she’d reminded herself it was a first date, and not simply a fling. A first date was a subtler affair, gentler. She couldn’t thrust herself at Cloudy and hope the mare would accept her advances. She had to play the mare at a longer hunt.

A first date was when she had to show her best, natural side, not to flaunt herself.

I want her to see me as me.

She chose a scarf she’d carefully descented, making it a blank slate for her plan, and her route, one she’d followed with Collar not even a month ago, and tucked two tiny vials into its folds. One a peach-base edible scent, sweet and comforting, enticing to taste, the other a tart lemon to excite the senses and refresh the mind, also edible. Or lickable.

The thought sent a tingle through her that she hadn’t felt in some time.

Nothing else. Everything else, she could find in Damme. The baker’s slow-rising bread, the smoking applewood and mesquite smells of smoking fish by the docks if their chase went that way. Or the smells of the dried magnolia blossoms crunching underfoot.

Cloudy loved Damme. The best thing she could do to endear herself to her was show her how much she appreciated the natural scents of her chosen home. At the last minute, she chose, also, to braid her mane down the back of her neck to leave a tail to dance along her shoulder.

And then she was ready. It’s a date. You’ve been on dates before.

A decade ago had been her last courting date and not a chase for sex, when she’d courted a stallion to bring him into her home, her life, hoping to start a life, a family with him, and find solace in a simpler life. A life where she didn’t have to participate in a war she hated to appease a mother who only wanted to use her talents and didn’t care for her happiness.

A mother who’d scared him off after only three days. She’d not heard from him since, but Roseate couldn’t resist gloating over the stallion who’d stood her up, sounding placating, but she couldn’t have known about him unless she’d been watching her, had orchestrated the scaring off of her would-be lover, Hollyhock Rose, a distant, distant cousin of hers, linked to Rosethorn the wise only through a tenuous parent sometime in the past two hundred years who’d been in one of the off-branches.

He had been kind to her, and interested in what she’d proposed. He wasn’t a long-time friend, but those that she still had were… off limits for various reasons.

She shook her head free of the daydream and took a deep breath before undoing the wards on her door and stepping out into the cooling night, the sun barely holding a purpling, darkening glow over the clouds flowing and parting above both cities.

Maybe it had been for the best, after all. Now, she had an opportunity that she wouldn’t have had if Roseate hadn’t been as malicious and spiteful as she was.

It was time to step towards a beautiful future, and it was going to be a beautiful night for a date with a beautiful mare.

She chuckled at herself and stepped out.

Once she got past the ruffians that Roseate had not bothered to call off from their nightly vigil of her home. The ruffians who, even as she stepped out and adjusted the scarf against the promise of a chill wind, stepped out from the cart yard, reeking of wine.

“Rosewater, all prettied up,” Rosejoy said through a half-slurred laugh. “Where are you going tonight, pretty mare?”

“Away from your delicious wit, Rosejoy,” Rosewater said with a sniff. “It smells like Petal’s cut you off from her supply already. Canterlot White? You’re going soft.”

“Rutting bitch,” Rosejoy muttered, staggering against a bigger male with a half-staff erection. They smelled of sex and rutting. No doubt they had interrupted their play on orders rather than out of a want to harass her. Further into the shadows, she spied a mare and a stallion enjoying each other’s company still. No doubt she’d interrupted Rosejoy just before she had the male.

“Careful with that wit, you might cut butter with it someday,” Rosewater said with a thin half-smile as she veiled and pranced away from the mare towards the river. She didn’t want to cross wits with Rosejoy, as much as crossing wits with a walking, talking bottle of wine was entertaining for short spans, she had far more enjoyable pursuits that night.

She let the curses fade into the wind and susurrus of the river slowing in its wintertime yawning, and looked up to the sky, focusing on her objective and hoping that she wasn’t too late to catch Cloudy rising. If she was, she’d have a hard time catching up to the pegasus, and a far easier time becoming the prey rather than the huntress she was used to being.

One cloud sat still in the drifting sky, with a good vantage of the surrounding cityscape. Too dark to see if there was a glimmer of light flashing from a scope, but her instincts told her that was exactly where Cloudy was. The instincts of prey, of being hunted, woke in her as she studied the cloud on her way to the nearest bridge.

She didn’t bother distracting the guard, instead opting to ghost past silent and invisible even as she woke the drying flower bushes beside them to new scented life, meaning to wake the senses and make it harder for company to follow her.

The Dammers certainly didn’t trust scent magic, but they knew how to counter it in subtle, small ways. The scent masks at their sides would help further, and after that touch, they’d have them closer to hoof. The day lillies in the planter pots would give off a scent to counter lust when crushed, and the more neutral blackberry bushes provided food and a sweet counter to musk from their blooms and leaves.

It was gratifying to see the two guards stiffen at the wakening scent and look about. Alert, too, and no wonder after so recent an incursion.

She looked up in time to see a dim shadow fall from the cloud just before it began its stately journey across the sky again, broad wings parting a heart-stopping distance above the rooftops as Cloudy darted over her, too fast to do more than admire the grace and breadth of her wings.

It was the swoop and dive of a huntress, scattering her quarry, or attempting to.

I am being hunted, then. Attempting to fight that understanding and turn the tables too soon would leave her open to too many headstrong counters. Better to lure her away from her home and familiar ground. Routes through the city sprang to mind, ways she could turn the hunt about and still end up on top. Draw her through a stand of broad-limbed oaks, force her to land to continue to track her. Or take refuge under a magnolia and force her, again, to land to find her.

She had her secondary goal, too, of winding her way through the city and binding it to her scarf, weaving the place Cloudy loved into the garment she meant to leave with her by the end of the night, whether the hunt came out…

Rosewater hesitated under the broad boughs of a magnolia, its wide, heavy, waxy leaves giving her cover from the more frequent patrols above.

Hunt is wrong. Rosethorns hunt. The pegasi call it a chase. Chased and chaser. I am chased, tonight… but… She grinned and bared her teeth at the night sky. There was always room and opportunity for it to be turned around.

There was, of course, a heightened presence of Dammeguard in the city at night. It would likely last until winter called a halt to the war. Not even the best scent mage could hide their tracks in fresh-fallen snow in time to escape.

Their presence, though, was an obstacle to the date, adding a feeling and reality of danger if she were caught, where Cloudy might betray her. If she had the inclination.

Tonight would be a momentous night, no matter how it turned out.

Her eyes on the sky as much as the ground, she spotted Cloudy taking several higher passes, surveying and mapping possible routes, no doubt. Where Rosewater would duck, where she might flush her quarry to the best effect.

The game would be over when there were no more moves to make. One would corner the other. In the last moments of the game, it was the most tense, the most exciting, when everything might be turned on its head, when Rosewater might yet turn things around and find herself looking down.

Roseling had chased her from the start, blocked her escape by her swiftness and agility, her keen nose, and her wits, and caught her in a copse where Rosewater, panting, had lain and rolled to bare her throat and belly to the victor. But her huntress hadn’t taken the kiss or the lick on exposed neck or stomach, but taken a kiss from the lips, equals in a fine chase.

She let the memory slide through her as she flicked her tail to the side then covered herself again. This was no fling, even if there was no mating tonight, she would have to relieve herself of the desire on her return home. Mayhap she could capture enough of Cloudy’s scent to…

Hooves danced on the pavers behind her, and a rush of wind snapped over her as Cloudy landed ten paces away, wings still spread, a predatory smile creasing her lips as she considered the swirl of wind around Rosewater’s form, the eddies that kicked up around her ankles and body, the flutter of her scarf snapping in the wind. The clink of vials tapping together.

“Careless,” Cloudy whispered, her wings raised in a snap-launch position. “So very careless, Rosewater. Clinking. From you?”

Adrenaline surged through her as she snapped her veil into invisibility and danced aside as the pegasus launched and landed just to her side, wing brushing through the veil to touch her side.

First touch to her. Rosewater broke into a full gallop, sending the sound of her hooves clattering down another alley before she cut off the sound entirely.

Cloudy snapped up behind her, the rush of her rise chasing after Rosewater as she made a wild turn down the alley. The scarf. She’d barely noticed the way it fluttered in the wind, or considered how its disturbance of the flow of air and the sound of it rustling might give her away in her daydream.

Careless was right. She stopped abruptly at the entrance to an alleyway and let her veil slip back to a shadowy cloak. Two Dammeguard in front of her, laughing and chatting, their eyes alert and the smell of coffee hanging about them.

Wings overhead, beating on the air before hooves settled onto the roof above her.

“Hoy, Cloudy,” one of them called. “Fine night!”

Cloudy laughed, her voice breathy and light. “Ah, you have no idea how fine a night it is, Branch! The winds! They sing tonight.” Her eyes dropped to almost meet Rosewater’s.

“Hah! I heard they finally let you out. Don’t let it get to your head. There’s Roses about tonight. Midline Bridge reported scent magic not ten minutes ago.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, but worry about your own steps, too. I’d hate to see you swooning.”

The guard rolled his eyes and nudged his partner, and the two of them started off at a steady pace, chattering like magpies about this and that going on about the city, and especially about Rosewater’s visit to the palace under the flag of treaty.

Neither of the guards took notice of the blended shadows clumped in the lee of a baker’s shop, just below where Cloudy was perched. Her veil was all but perfect from the ground. All Cloudy needed to do was alert them to her presence. Tell them it was her that had done the unconscionable deed.

But she didn’t. She studied Rosewater instead, silent and intent, her wings open slightly to taste the wind’s shape and texture. Cloudy was one of the finest flyers in Damme or Merrie. No doubt the wind was telling her enough. More than enough, she noted as Cloudy raised her wing, drawing a column of air up past Rosewater to let Cloudy taste the scents on it. A dangerous move against a prepared Rosethorn, but in a chase…

Cloudy’s smile grew as she drew in the scent. “You came clean,” she whispered into a breeze that flew down to Rosewater’s ear and dissipated on a subtle downstroke.

Rosewater veiled completely again and backed into the alley instead of darting out into the street, silent, subtle, unexpected.

Cloudy frowned and studied the alley and the street beyond, then snapped up into the sky again, her eyes scanning both road and alley as the wind scattered leaves and dust.

Rosewater only had to move with it to keep from disturbing the patterns, using the flowing nature of the scarf to follow them rather than try to control them, before she ducked around the building opposite Cloudy and leaned against the facing, her heart pounding. Danger and allure. Roseling hadn’t been so exciting.

But Cloudy had kept her promise. So long as Rosewater kept hers, she might still come out on top.

She was wearing a scarf. Rosewater was wearing a scarf. It was such an insane thing to wear on a chase, and yet it fit her perfectly. Absolutely. It was stylish and useful at once. Cloudy could see the advantages as soon as she considered them when against a pegasus.

Creating winds, disturbing them in odd ways to confuse the currents, giving weight to an illusion that wasn’t there and fooling the pegasi wind senses. She’d done that before, and with other opponents.

Oh, she could have disappeared entirely and not given Cloudy an inkling that she was there. The mare had proved herself more than capable of that, but that wasn’t the purpose of a chase.

One didn’t run a chase to win, and Cloudy never did. She ran to have fun, to test herself against another, to learn more about them through the way they ran. A proper chase would last only as long as it needed to, to let both participants enjoy the rush and thrill, the old instincts waking to throw life into the blood and sing with the thrills of an age long dead.

Except for this one time, this one custom that Rosethorn and Rosewing and Rosewood had preserved through the ages.

For the first time in more than a year, Cloudy felt her heart racing with the prospect of catching a pony who wasn’t Rosemary or Collar—on the one time she’d tried to teach him how to chase… which he’d ‘won’ before they even started. The cheater.

Cloudy chuckled and surveyed the alleyways all about her perch. She’d lost Rosewater in the rush of wind, probably her using the scarf to make the wind flow around her rather than buffet her. Clever. It was still anypony’s game. Cloudy would need to come down soon to look for her, or Rosewater would need to make a move. The unspoken rules on idle time demanded that the game never stall for longer than it took for the heart to calm.

Just as she was about to leap for the sky and survey the streets, a flicker of shadow near a magnolia tree caught her attention. The wind wasn’t so strong… and even as she watched, a blossom faded from view into shadow… and then was gone.

She saw nothing else, no hint of a pony moving, but it was clear. Rosewater had snagged one of the few remaining magnolia blooms so carefully tended by the earth pony wardens. And left.

Without waiting, Cloudy leapt and dove for the shadows lining the street, stopping short and sending her column of air flowing down the corner, lifting debris, dust, and… a clinking sound again.

She dashed after it, listening for the telltale clinking or the sound of hooves poorly masked, but it wasn’t either that stopped her cold. It was… bread. The smell of rising sourdough, of onion dill and rosemary thyme, nowhere near a bakery stopped her in the entrance to an alley, dark and shadowed.

The smell of magnolias bloomed in the midst of it all, intensifying until it felt like spring had come again and the ice to come was a distant worry.

Then a white bloom sailed out of the shadows and bounced off her nose.

An involuntary sneeze sent a trail of petals fluttering around her, all of them vanishing like sparks in the night as they transformed into the essence of magnolia, a symbol of Damme, that covered her from head to toe.

Blatant scent magic, but not bound to any intent. It was a tease, a way to say ‘I could have ended this now, but I want more.’ It was the mare she thought she’d seen a glimpse of several times, defiance hiding behind formalities and concerns. This was the mare, raw and uncovered.

She understood what it meant to chase. Winning wasn’t winning. Winning was the thrill.

Cloudy’s heart sang as she leapt into the air to give chase, or to flee. She wasn’t certain anymore, and that made her heart thump faster.

This was going to be fun.

Author's Notes:

Book 2 begins!