The Golden Shortcut

You let Static take the arch.

Here is what nobody told you about narrow golden arches of mist just off the marked course: they are golden because they are full of yesterday's sunset, which the Cloud Court stores there for reuse, sunsets being expensive. You and Static burst into a warehouse of rolled-up evening skies, and Static — being young, and crackly, and made of weather — sneezes.

The sunset goes off.

You are found twenty minutes later, two miles off course, dyed head to toe in glorious flamingo-orange, sitting on a thunderfoal who is now permanently sunset-colored and extremely pleased about it. The race has long since finished. The Court judge flies out to you, looks you up and down, and writes something on his misty clipboard that you suspect is the Cloud Court word for “disqualified, but memorably.”