An exhausted White Lightning flared her wings and landed on the second floor breezeway of her apartment building. She stood for a moment, wings held off her flanks, dripping sweat. North Carolina was way too hot, even in September.
Her wings screamed from the day's exertion, like being a foal back in Flight Camp, and her spine from her wings down to her rump was sore.
"How are you?" said her neighbor, an elderly widow. Mrs. Fenney sat on a folding chair outside her own apartment, enjoying the low evening sun, a book held in her hands.
"Excellent, Mrs. Fenney, excellent! Tired, though. I had a long day."
"Football game?" Mrs. Fenney said.
Lightning rolled her eyes and grinned. "Big game today."
"Get some rest, young lady. You look exhausted."
Lightning pressed her snout against the nose-print reader, unlocking the door, and entered the apartment she shared with her husband. First thing, she put her Pegasus Pizza uniform cap and her lanyard-hung iPhone on a hook by the door, and kicked off her four rubber-soled shoes.
Celestia, she was tired! Honestly, if the job didn't pay so well... regardless, she would quit as soon as her husband graduated with his Master's, and go back to school herself.
"Honey?" Lightning called. "Where're you?"
"Computer room," Sam said. "How was your day?"
She trotted into the computer room. Sam looked up from his laptop and classwork and his jaw dropped. "What happened to you?"
Lightning smiled, and touched her bright-red mane with a forehoof. "What's my usual color scheme? White and baby blue? Who does that remind you of?"
Sam laughed. "Ha! I get it. Can't have University of North Carolina colors the day we're playing them and expect to get tips, right?"
"So the others and I all dyed our manes red and our tails black. Go Wolfpack! I made so much in tips today!"
She hopped up to her rear legs, putting her hooves on her husband's knees, and they shared a quick kiss. He rubbed her left ear with one hand.
"I smell like a minotaur," Lightning said. "Let me wash this silly dye out and get cleaned up, and I'll tell you the story."
After she showered, she went into the living room. Sam sat on the couch and Lightning stretched out, her forequarters across his lap. His hands—wonderful, wonderful hands!—massaged her withers and wings. His fingernails, now well-practiced after half a year of marriage, preened her feathers back into shape.
"Your muscles are super tight," he said. "Tell me about your day?"
White Lightning and nine other pegasi sat in the break room in the back of the University Area branch of Pegasus Pizza. They were all clocked in and getting paid, it was simply a matter of waiting for the day's first—
"Order up!" shouted Mr. Robertson, the franchise owner, as he transferred two pizza boxes, a box of jalapeño poppers, and three two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew to Lightning's saddle bags. "Lightning, phone please."
White Lightning's iPhone hung from a lanyard around her neck. "Hey Siri! Unlock." It checked her face and opened. "Hey, Siri! Pizza Delivery app."
The Pegasus Pizza Delivery Pony app opened, and Mr. Robertson tapped a nine-digit number into her phone, locking in her delivery. "The customer didn't have location services enabled on his phone."
Lightning facehoofed. "Oh no. How am I supposed—?"
"It says, 'Arena East lot, 1500-area, big red pickup truck.' Nice mane and tail, by the way," he said, pointing to the red and black, which along with her white coat, made her the very image of the North Carolina State Wolfpack team colors.
"Sure," Lightning replied. "There won't be more than one big red pickup truck at a football game in North Carolina."
"Do your best," her boss said. "They didn't add a tip in the app, so you'll probably get cash."
"Or I'll get stiffed."
Mr. Robertson fitted the saddlebags over her back and pulled the strap tight. Lightning wrinkled her nose at the stench of charred meat.
They both looked at the countdown timer: seventeen minutes left in the thirty minute guarantee.
"Hmmmm. Okay, off I go."
She trotted out the back door, took a running start, and leapt into the air. Flapping hard, she clawed for altitude. The saddlebags of junk food and soda were heavy, but she could carry them if she didn't mind a little sweat.
TV helicopters and a few light aircraft circled around, watching the traffic and the tailgating parties, so she kept herself below three hundred feet, and to the pegasus-reserved flight corridor above Western Boulevard.
The massive expanse of asphalt and gravel of the football-basketball complex's parking lot unfolded below her. The smell of charcoal, grilling pork, and port-a-potties rose to meet her sensitive nose.
Humans! she thought. They have no idea how bad they smell! At least my Sam doesn't get offended anymore when I tell him he needs to wash...
She looked down and accidentally made eye contact with a human who was using a port-a-potty that had four shower-curtain style sides, but no top.
Yuck!
Just east of the basketball arena and just west of the football stadium was the Arena East parking lot. She swooped and heard a few children yelling "Momma momma pony I wanna ride the pony!"
There–parking row 1500. She fluttered down to the ground and trotted, looking for a big red truck.
Every other vehicle was a big red truck.
North Carolina, she thought, thrashing her tail.
With a forehoof, she lifted up her phone and checked the delivery details.
Nothing. Not the parking spot number, not the license plate. Not even the make of the big red truck. Ford? Toyota? Dodge?
"Hey! Pony!" shouted a gray-bearded man in an NC State ball cap, sitting in a folding chair and poking at some sausages on a small charcoal grill.
"G'morning. My name is White Lightning, though, not 'Pony.'"
"White Lightning? Like the drink?"
"No."
He pushed his sunglasses up his nose. "Sorry. I've just never been up close to a pony before, and hadn't really believed you all could talk. You know how TV is with the special effects."
"Well, I can talk, but not right now. I have a delivery to make. If you'll excuse me...?"
"Wait, can you levitate something, first? Is that real, or is that special effects?"
Lightning pointed at her forehead. "I'm not a unicorn, mate. My twin sister's the unicorn."
"Oh, right. Sorry."
Eleven minutes left! Stupid thirty-minute guarantee. They needed to change the policy so that the guarantee doesn't count if you don't give the delivery pony your GPS coordinates and instead make her hunt for a lone big red truck amongst hundreds of big red trucks.
She trotted up to the first big red pickup truck. "Excuse me?"
A mixed group of humans looked at her. Their conversation died. What smelled to be chicken wings popped and sizzled on the hibachi sitting on the truck's tailgate.
She looked at her phone. "Did you order two pizzas, jalapeño poppers, and three bottles of soda?"
A teenage boy took a few steps forward. "What kind of pizza?"
His mother whacked him on the back of the head. "Jonathan! No, young lady, we didn't order a pizza. ...Can't find your customer?"
"They didn't have GPS enabled. Just said 'big red pickup truck, 1500 area.'"
"Oh, how rude!" The woman said. "Best of luck. Can Jonathan here help you?"
Lightning pondered that. The teenager could check half the trucks while she checked the other half... but no, this was her job, and she would do it. Besides, rent was due soon and she didn't want to split the tip, assuming there was a tip. "No, but thanks. Have fun. Go Wolfpack!"
Three parking spots down were two big red pickup trucks, parked together, a sun awning stretched between them. Nine minutes left. Getting tight!
"Did anyone order two pizz—"
A tall man with dark hair threw a piece of the parking lot gravel at her. Lightning burst into the air, a respectable fifteen-vertical-foot standing jump, and landed on the truck's cab.
"Hey now!" she said. "I'm delivering pizza here!"
"Scat! You! Skedaddle! Taking our jobs and and and who would order food from an animal that uses its mouth instead of hands?"
He picked up a larger rock and cocked his arm back.
A second man, possibly a brother or cousin given the resemblance, grabbed his arm and forced him to release the rock. "That's against the law! It's no different from assaulting a person."
"I am a person," Lightning said, flicking her ears angrily. "I'm just a person with four legs. No pizzas?"
"No pizzas," said the second man. "Sorry, he's had a little too much to drink already this morning."
She tried three more big red trucks. All the humans were polite, but none had ordered pizzas.
Finally, she trotted up to a dilapidated Toyota that was equal parts rust and red. A very old man sat in a folding chair, with several middle-aged adults and a half-dozen children.
"Pizza! Grandpa, the pizza!" shouted a little one, maybe four years old. "Grandpa said he would order pony pizza cause I ain't never seen a pony up close!" She hugged Lightning and nuzzled her mane, and the red dye rubbed onto the little girl's face and blond bangs.
You owe me a tip, old man, Lightning thought. She glanced at her phone: two minutes left!
She reached with her mouth, down to the sheath strapped around her left foreleg, and pulled out a soft-tipped stylus. She tapped on her app. "Misther... Jonhtthon?" she lisped around the stylus.
"Yeah, that's me."
"Two pizzas, poppers, three Mountain Dews?"
"That's it."
She tapped delivered. The timer cut off at one minute, and she nosed the stylus back into its holster. "They're in my bags."
"I was beginning to think you wouldn't be here," said a woman who appeared to be Mr. Johnson's daughter.
"You didn't have location services enabled on your phone," Lightning said, "so I had to check the whole 1500-block of parking spots."
"I told you not to get an iPhone," the daughter said, unzipping the saddlebags and handing pizzas to a teenager. "If it was Android the kids or I could help you."
"Apple phone was what Edward said I needed!" Mr. Johnson protested.
"Who's Edward?" Lightning asked.
"My youngest son," Mr. Johnson replied. "He's in the Navy, off in the Mediterranean, or else he could fix it for me... what did you call it that needs fixed?"
Lightning's ears drooped. "Goodness, I know that feeling."
"What?" said Mr. Johnson.
"Huh?" said his daughter.
"Silver Sable," Lightning said. "My sister, twin sister. She's in the Guard—that's Equestria's army. She's always off on deployment. I miss the daylights out of her. If you unlock your phone, I can fix the location services for you...?"
He looked at his daughter, and she nodded slightly. Mr. Johnson used shaky, elderly fingers to tap his code into the phone, and held it out to Lightning.
She nosed her stylus back out and swiped-and-tapped, setting the Pegasus Pizza app to use the phone's location.
"There," she said, once she had the stylus re-holstered. "Next time you order from us, we'll know exactly where to bring your pizza!"
"Bless you, young lady," Mr. Johnson said. "And I hope your sister comes home safe."
"And your son," Lightning replied.
A granddaughter handed Mr. Johnson a red plastic cup of Mountain Dew. "To absent family."
Lightning Flared her wings and dipped her head. "Hear, hear! Absent family. Have a good day, sir. Go Wolfpack!"
She dipped her knees and prepared to jump into the air, when the daughter held up a hand. "Did he give you a tip?"
"Ummmm....." Lightning said.
The woman shook her head, and tucked a twenty-dollar bill into Lightning's bag. "Go Wolfpack!"
Lightning smiled her whole flight back to the pizza parlor.
Author's Note
Constructive comments are always welcome!
