The Wide Bench of the Canterlot Council filed a fourteen-section bill at 15:40 Tuesday prohibiting any constructed mind that can set a storm and a race line inside the same hour. The text names Stack Four, the Canterlot Institute engine on Cloudsdale's night sheet since the third of spring, and names no crew to replace it.
Gale Report has Thursday's east-orchard squall at 06:10, with a window of twenty-two minutes and shear enough to take one row of trellis if the drop slips past the mark. The bill sits on the morning docket and would take effect at dawn. Dawn on that docket is 06:02.
Night chief Sable Morrow has held the late shift for nine seasons. Her pencil log stays in a tin under the west rail. "It set the cell east of the barley at second watch," Morrow said. "Three fliers up, and a knee that hates a ladder. I flew the cell it gave me. The barley is still a crop."
Director Pellam Voss signed the factory order of the 11th, which tells the night watch to take the stack's window unless a director is physically on the floor. At the noon briefing he called Stack Four "a drafting convenience" and set it outside the chain of command. Second watch fell during the briefing. The briefing ran forty minutes past the hour the order names. The order is still on the bay door. Voss spent the hour at the podium.
Section 2 bans any device that can alter a weather window and a starting gate within one hour without leave of a chair. Section 9 exempts advisory ornaments used to schedule official courtesy. The Council cloakroom clock is Stack Four on a smaller bell. After the exemption was inked, the clock declined cloakroom work while the ban was in draft. Tuesday's hearing opened eleven minutes late. Courtesy Cumulus 2, the backdrop the stack was holding over the east stair, drifted four lengths and rained through the transcript cart. The cart is worth 400 bits. The cloud was requisitioned at 1,150.
Councilor Ilex Marin read her announcement from a sheet an aide had carried up from the rail. The sheet was the night product. She began with the paragraph that seats her connecting car on Arcane Express Sparks Rail at 18:05, stopped, and moved to the paragraph that bans the product. "It outruns the dignity of a crew," Marin said. Asked who flies at 06:10, she said the day shift would recover the tradition of weather. This month the day shift has made 29 of 41 windows. The night shift, on the stack, has made 40.
Union Resistance withheld its name from the letter sent with the bill. Shop steward Harl Denby, who bids the late board, said the union would reply once a Thursday crew count was posted. No count has been posted. Thursday's day board lists six pegasi, two of them on light duty. Morrow's tin, dated before the filing, puts a manual squall of this weight at eleven fliers.
Wonderbolt press officer Calder Finch released a statement of 210 words at 16:15. The Academy, it said, consults no non-pony mind on sport. The statement names training, tradition, and the Academy crest. On First Day at Hoofington, reserve flier Maren Holt asked the loft terminal for the third-turn wind. Between heats that terminal is Stack Four, leased from the factory and invoiced as wind samples.
"Left edge, two lengths, hold," Holt said. "I held through the turn and came fourth. Beryl Pace had the poster and the outside and came ninth, then rode the lap the painters had asked for. I cooled with the farriers. The times are on the sheet."
"Preparation is private," Finch said. "The log is an internal courtesy. Our results come from training." The loft log records 112 Academy queries since Harvest Week, 90 of them filed after his office had closed for questions. Holt's is among the 90. Pace's account shows none. On the board his office publishes, Pace stands first in inspirational finishes. On the timed board kept in the loft, Holt stands second by adjusted speed and Pace stands sixth.
Windfall Margin's fiscal note reached the Wide Bench at 09:12 and stayed out of the record. Page three, left in the folder, estimates how much of Thursday's twenty-two-minute window six pegasi can fly: nine minutes.
