When the Wall Stops Protecting You
Thunder roared.
As did Flitter. “They said what!?”
Cloudchaser wished Flitter hadn’t asked. The look on her sister’s face when she, Cloudchaser, had read the letter aloud the first time around…
They were sitting up to the kitchen trough, which still had bits of scrambled ostrich egg in it. Good, rich protein boost. Frankly, Cloudchaser needed it.
Even she had to admit that pegasi over the millennia had inherited some peculiar eating habits from their Ancient Pegasus Empire days, when extravagance had been easy to boast about in a world barely explored. It was a mere matter of detail that ostrich farms were more common in modern Equestria than they had ever been back in the “golden” age.
Yet despite her spiked mane-style suggesting a glam-punk-junior-final-fantasy-rock hurricane had swept by, Cloudchaser hewed towards the traditional in certain key areas of her life. Especially when it came to family.
After all, sitting up at the kitchen trough, she only had Flitter. One thread, always on the verge of breaking.
Had been sitting up to the trough, at least. Flitter now jumped to her hooves, wings fluffed up like a startled quail.
“Read it again!” she pleaded.
Cloudchaser read the letter again. The words seemed less friendly the second time, as if a bully had insisted on repeating an insult loudly and clearly. In this case, the bully used diplomatic high-falutin’ language, but no amount of hedging and formality would cushion the blow. Not when the blow was meant for Flitter.
So Cloudchaser squirmed for a while trying to think up the right words to shield Flitter from the real ones. She wasn’t very good at it. Weather ponies tended not to go in for eloquent circumlocutions, but got straight to the point in case of lightning-fast accidents.
Outside the window, thunder howled to the heavens.
“You… didn’t get in,” she said, softly, miserably, apologetically.
Flitter stared as if she’d been slapped.
“I’m sorr –”
Not even waiting, Flitter snatched up the letter. Her gaze held the words over the fires of rage until they said what she wanted. They were going to roast for a while, then.
“There must be some mistake,” she said. “I worked so hard.”
“I know you did, Flits.”
“How could I not get in?” Already, tears broke out in the corners of Flitter’s eyes. “I’ve waited my whole life for this! I earned it!”
Then the sobbing started.
Cringing behind a wing, Cloudchaser wisely kept her mouth shut. It was true that Flitter worked hard, but she wouldn’t point this out. Agreeing with Flitter only worked on good things.
Deep inside, however, a nasty corner of her mind scoffed: Earned it?
She shushed it, but it was definitely true. Back at Flight School, Flitter had been the sort of student to stare at a “C” grade until it somehow turned into an “A”. And she thought effort was the same as result.
No one’s wings had buzzed harder. That had been the problem. Where young Flitter had buzzed, going cross-eyed with the effort, pegasus ponies like Rainbow Dash and Thunderlane and Cloudchaser had cruised on by.
“I’m sorry, Flits,” she said. “Getting into the Wonderbolt Academy is super-tough. It’s no shame if you didn’t get in. Lots of ponies don’t.”
Then Flitter’s sobbing stopped.
Uh oh.
Flitter had gone quiet. That meant she was switching emotions, without losing any of the momentum. Time to retreat, perhaps?
“Er…” Cloudchaser’s chair scraped; she caught herself backing away and stopped immediately. “Look, I gotta go already. Thunderlane’s expecting a letter too. H-h-he’ll need my support, just in case he didn’t… you know…”
Thunder growled. Lightning whiteness caught on the edges of Flitter’s face like bright scars.
Flitter found her next emotion; suddenly, she glared up. “Did you get in?”
There had, after all, been two letters.
Nervously, Cloudchaser glanced at her own on the trough’s edge. She glanced at Flitter’s glare. As one, they glanced at the letter again.
Cloudchaser beat her to it. She always did. By the time Flitter had mustered her muscles, her eye-twitch had given her away. Cloudchaser hopped further away with the snatched letter before Flitter could make a dive for it. But then, Cloudchaser always had dibs on things: lockers, special work duties, offered treats, friends made, life lived.
Hastily, she scrunched up her own letter and binned it. “Look, it’s probably best you take the day off, be kind to yourself, you know, after the shock…”
She saw Flitter peer into the trash bin. Waste of time: Flitter was a prissy pony. Between her preened coat and her pretty hair bow, Flitter wouldn’t let trash near her if she could help it. The scrunched-up letter might as well have gone into space for all the chance she had of getting it back.
So she went on the attack.
“Did you get in!?” Flitter advanced.
Step by step, Cloudchaser retreated slowly, trying to show no weakness. “I’m just saying. It’s tough. Super-tough. I wasn’t expecting to get in myself. It’s just everyone at the weather factory was sending their own letters, and I thought hey, why not? I could give it a try and maybe –”
“You got in! I know you did! It’s not FAIR!”
Cloudchaser stopped herself at Flitter’s snarling sob and looked at the ceiling to wait her out.
Yet another thing she hated about her sister: Flitter took everything so personally. When Thunderlane had started spending more time with Cloudchaser, for instance, Flitter had screamed the house down, gone to Ponyville, and eaten so much candy that she’d had to spend a week swallowing indigestion pills to stop the resultant outburst of colic.
All that, despite the fact everyone knew Flitter had just had a silly little girl’s crush on him. It had been about as serious as fawning over some faraway teenage idol. Thunderlane had been nice, and polite, and weirdly blasé about “signing autographs”, and basically as gentle as a colt could be when he knew he was talking to someone several sandwiches short of a picnic.
It didn’t matter that the Star-Crossed Love That Tore Cloudsdale Apart had been wholly in Flitter’s overheated imagination. Thunderlane barely ever remembered her name, except as “Cloudchaser’s sister, right?”
As far as Flitter was concerned, though, Cloudchaser had been a traitor. That was all Flitter’s dumb childish head could grasp.
She didn’t get the real world. Never had done. Her big sister had ended up getting it for her.
As usual, Cloudchaser had been the one who’d had to drag her out of Sugarcube Corner that day – taking the hyped-up insults without a word – and thereafter had always been the one to make sure Flitter stuck to her pills, and then to a diet. Around sugar, Flitter had no self-control.
Still, whatever the fallout had been, Cloudchaser had been forced to tell her the truth. Things had gotten serious with Thunderlane. He’d needed her support. Flitter wasn’t going to figure it all out by herself, not unless it was put to her straight, right there and then.
And Cloudchaser never, ever told her any downright lies. All the others were just part of the act. Some lines could never be crossed.
For one thing, she was a weather factory worker, and they tended not to be an imaginative bunch. Clouds were clouds. Rain was rain. Mess up, and you couldn’t exactly hide it in the paperwork. Cloudchaser didn’t have the stomach for lies, anyway.
Worse than that: if she lied to Flitter, then Cloudchaser couldn’t be Cloudchaser anymore. It couldn’t be simpler than that.
“Did! You! Get! In!?” Flitter hissed again.
“Y-yeah.” That was all Cloudchaser could say. “Yeah… Yes.”
She saw Flitter’s ears droop warningly.
“But it doesn’t mean anything,” she added fast.
It meant everything. Cloudchaser flew faster, longer, cooler, stronger. But Flitter tried the hardest to keep up. To match her big sister. To prove they were sisters.
This time, the distant thunder of the scheduled storm died away slowly.
Rain pattered. All that was left against the dark window was streaming misery.
She didn’t even need to act. “Flits?”
Flitter’s eyes wobbled warningly. “What?”
“Could you… come with me?”
The wobble vanished; Flitter narrowed her eyes in frozen suspicion. “With you? To Thunderlane’s house?”
“Yeah. I’ll need your support.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s the Wonderbolt Academy. It’s super-tough to stick to it. Even if Thunderlane got in, he might have a tough time when he actually gets there.”
“Him?” Just like that, and with tears still streaming down her face, Flitter switched to another emotion: complete surprise. “But he’s the best flyer after Rainbow Dash. I heard she’s not even worried about getting in at all.”
“Rainbow’s different. Some of us don’t see it the way she does.”
Which was another way of saying: we don’t have her ego. But one of the things Cloudchaser had learned early on was that she had to watch what she said to Flitter, who tended to absorb opinions if someone cool enough spouted them. Cloudchaser sometimes needed a good run-up before she dared utter any kind of opinion, in case it came back to haunt them both.
“He’ll get in, guaranteed,” said Flitter easily.
That’s what you said about yourself, thought Cloudchaser, in that special corner of her brain that her sister would never be allowed to see.
It wasn’t a corner Cloudchaser admired, but it was one she needed. At times like this, Flitter could pop as easily as a bubble.
“He’s still worried about it,” said Cloudchaser.
“Ha! What, is he crazy?” Flitter’s smile darted in and roosted comfortably with barely a flicker. “I bet he’ll be Captain of the Wonderbolts in no time!”
Cloudchaser rolled her eyes as if to ask the ceiling, “Can you believe this?” Aloud, she said, “Not everyone sees themselves the way you see them, Flitter. See, there’s a lot of pressure –”
“Anyway, if you got in, then he’ll have at least one good friend to help him.”
Oh boy, thought Cloudchaser. She’s still at the “friends beat everything” stage. One day, I think she and I need to have a talk.
“Yes,” she said quickly, to buoy Flitter up at the beginning before dragging her down, “but still –”
“But still what?” Flitter’s confidence laughed in that one. She wiped her cheeks. “He’s as good as a Wonderbolt already. I know he can do it.”
“He might be out in a week. Any of us might be out in a week. I might be out in a week.”
“You!?”
“Yeah.”
“Of course you won’t! You’re good at everything.”
“Not everything.”
“No, no, no! You are. Look, who beat the endurance record back in Flight School? Huh? Huh?”
Flitter hadn’t. Flitter hadn’t even made the top half of her class. Hardly an hour into the race, she’d moaned and whined and refused to keep flying until Cloudchaser was summoned from the finish line to guide her the rest of the way. Flitter had even burst into tears and thrown a tantrum until she’d seen her sister coming for her, and only then had she smiled and obeyed.
Cloudchaser hated that day.
She didn’t hate lightly, but when she’d broken a record and expected to be proud of the day forever…
Trouble was that Flitter had never grasped the idea that she could do things without her big sister around. Not until late in life, and even then – even now – she didn’t like doing it.
What an embarrassment. The only reason Flitter hadn’t looked worse in the race was because Derpy had gotten lost and somehow turned up in Manehattan a few days later. Meanwhile, Fluttershy had locked up early and wouldn’t move for the rest of the course. At least Flitter had crossed the finish line.
But Cloudchaser had crossed it hours before, then had gone back for her that time – hiding the grumbles, pretending this wasn’t happening, putting up with the shrill little voice, the cool-destroying embarrassment, the teasing from the sidelines about being Flitter’s keeper, or her “Mommy”, hey “Mommy”, when ya gonna feed her, “Mommy” – because she was Cloudchaser.
If she hadn’t gone back, she wouldn’t have been Cloudchaser. It was built in. Rain fell down, not up. Thunder came after lightning, not before. Cloudchaser would always be with her sister, never without her or against her or far away from her.
At the end of that endurance test, just when Flitter had done the worst and gone into her annoying speech along the lines of “ha ha no sweat I could have done it myself anyway”, just when everything had seemed too bad to be really happening, one of the spoken, pompous words had cracked through Cloudchaser’s armour and bounced around and around until it broke something essential, and then Cloudchaser had snapped, and for one dark, wrecking-ball minute she had let go and something out-of-control had possessed her, and she had become – for one whole minute – not Cloudchaser.
It was the only time she’d ever snapped.
Years later, she still wouldn’t let herself forget it. The most hated day of her life.
Ever since, Cloudchaser’s cursing and muttering and sarcasm and snide comments had stopped. They were no longer allowed out of her mouth. Instead, she put them in that special corner in her head, where they could wreck the furniture and graffiti the walls as much as they liked. So long as there were no more hateful days.
Then suddenly, Flitter was right next to her. Cloudchaser blinked, and the present returned.
Teasingly, Flitter winked at her and nudged her wing with her own. “Who beat the endurance record? Who beat the endurance record? Come on. Come on. You know the answer. Yes, you do.”
Cloudchaser sighed at the ceiling. “It was me.”
“Ha! There! See!? And you thought you wouldn’t get into the Wonderbolts. Silly Cloudy-Woudy…”
That name! That was the stupid name!
“Big silly Cloudy-Woudy Woo.”
Cloudchaser snapped –
“FLITTER!”
– she almost… snapped.
Lightning flashed. It was a while before the thunder caught up in a rolling tide that swept the silence aside and left only soundless horror.
So. Close.
Cloudchaser caught herself both just in time and far too late; the look of shock on Flitter’s face kicked her in the heart. She thought she’d been on top of it for so long…
“Flits,” she said, more reasonably. “Can I, can I have a minute, please?”
Past a confused Flitter, Cloudchaser pushed her way. Then she hurried out the kitchen, up the slope – pegasi didn’t need stairs – through the door to her room, slamming it shut behind her.
One minute. She just needed one minute. Don’t flap – that’d agitate her even more. Calm, calm herself, wait for the storm to ride itself out.
Here, the raindrops pattered off the thin slate ice of her roof.
She went for her lonely stall in this private stable of a room – another old tradition – and crunched on the warm snow. If she’d been an earth pony, it would have been hay, but pegasi could do amazing things with the laws of physics and meteorology. Warm snow was better than hay. The stuff immersed her. After a while, it would feel as relaxing as a hot bath. Another pegasus tradition. Another family tradition.
The rest of her private stable-room broke tradition.
There was a torso-sized bookshelf, small and looking smaller with only five books on it. There were clothes strewn on the ground any old how. There were posters, the teenage colt band ones firmly if inexpertly covered up by newer glam rock ones. Her dandy brush had dust on it. Her mirror suffered under so much neglect that it only reflected a blurred outline if she stood really close; otherwise, it could just make out light from dark.
There were a few medals and trophies in a display case. Some of them had the word “Stormwalker” on them, for those few times she’d gotten away with lying when asked, “What’s your name?”
“Stormwalker” had been a phase, but a phase that refused to let go. “Stormwalker” was a winner’s name. “Storm”. “Walker”. Like “Thunderlane”. Even Rainbow “Dash” was a name going places, at supersonic speeds. But “Cloudchaser”?
Over her stall boasted one of the glam rock posters, all asymmetric clothing and glitter and body paint. The Manehattan Dolls. Their poster shrieked, “WINNING COUNTS! FUN IS A BONUS!”
Sometimes, she wondered if Flitter had the right idea. Flitter had a modern bed, in a modern bedroom. Blankets and pillows were the soft option, though, and Cloudchaser didn’t want to break character there.
One minute… OK, make it two minutes… Three… Four at the outset…
Five minutes passed before Flitter knocked on the door to the room. Not enough time: Cloudchaser still had birds panicking inside her head. The agitation wasn’t settling down yet.
“Door’s open!” she cried out.
Flitter eased it open nervously, expecting a trigger. Streaks shone under her eyes.
Lazily, Cloudchaser sat up. She’d smushed her own mane deep in the warm snow, just to mess it up. Her face was a bluffing general; she’d give nothing away, especially not the state of her own army.
“Hey,” she said, smooth as snow.
By then, Flitter’s eye had caught the mess of hair. “Your mane’s a wreck again.”
“Is it? Oh. I didn’t notice,” Cloudchaser said, shrugging.
A sniff. “Do you want me to tidy it all up again?”
Now the heave of the shoulders: Cloudchaser was a great loss to the acting profession. “If it gives you pleasure.”
She turned her back and felt the age-old tingle of nerves agitate her again. She hated not seeing what was going on. Such a level of trust didn’t come easy to her.
Soon enough, Flitter’s hooves tugged and pulled and moulded and patted at the spikes. When it came to prettifying, Flitter could do with manes what Rarity could do with a few yards of fabric. This wasn’t even an exclusive service. Other pegasi had come to her before: Clear Skies, Fluffy Clouds, Inky Rose, Cotton Sky. Rainbow Dash herself occasionally nudged her in the locker room for lotion tips, whilst furiously denying she was asking anything of the sort.
After a while, it was far more relaxing than warm snow. The agitated birds came home to roost, and eventually fell together into a trance.
“Are you upset, Cloudy?” Flitter’s voice peeked out of its bolthole.
“No, I don’t get upset,” said Cloudchaser. In her own mind, this wasn’t technically lying. She wasn’t trying to deceive anyone. The words were all part of the act.
“I’m sorry I got upset, Cloudy. I didn’t mean to.”
“Hey, no big deal. A letter like that would upset anyone. Except for me.” Cloudchaser raised the stakes and threw in a shrug. “I wasn’t that committed anyway. It’s nice to get in, but I don’t mind either way.”
Good grief, she was good at this act.
The rain continued to hammer the ice overhead.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get in,” said Cloudchaser, briefly glad she didn’t need to act. “It just won’t be the same without you there.”
“I wasn’t going to get in, was I?”
Cloudchaser hesitated too long.
“I’m still a crybaby, aren’t I?” Flitter apologized through her mumble.
For once, Cloudchaser was glad Flitter couldn’t see her expression. Crybaby. That was what she’d called her little sister, on the most hated day of her life. Others had called her that, but they weren’t the big sister she’d looked up to.
“Cloudy?”
“Yeah, Flits?”
“I wish I was more like you.”
Ha, thought Cloudchaser. Try it sometime. You’d be surprised.
“You never get bothered by anything.”
So she’s a hero-worshipper and she’s got a terrible memory. That hated corner of Cloudchaser’s mind burst out laughing where it wouldn’t hurt any sensitive ears.
“I know I can’t be more like you,” continued Flitter. “But… if I keep it quiet, and don’t cry all the time, that’s kinda close, right?”
Warning bells went off in Cloudchaser’s head, shutting up the hateful laugh.
“I’ll try harder next time to –”
“No! No. What?” Cloudchaser couldn’t help herself. “That’s crazy talk. Flits, you wanna cry when you’re sad, why should anyone stop you? They’re your feelings. You own your feelings.”
You don’t hide them like a coward.
A shocked pause held her hair tight, and then Flitter’s mind came back down to the clouds again and came running at full gallop. “But when I was little, I was so dumb, and you were so cool, and I’m still –”
“Look.” Cloudchaser spun around, winced as she wrenched out a couple of hairs, and settled for peering at her own shoulder. “You’re not me, I’m not you. You be you. You belong to you, got it?”
“OK, but –”
“You’re better than you think you are, Flits. That’s fresh from your own sister’s mouth.”
A more thoughtful pause. The hooves still gripped locks of Cloudchaser’s mane.
“I am?” mumbled Flitter, but without much confidence and clearly still looking for the catch.
“You’re not a crybaby. Anyone who said that to you was a moron. You’re a pegasus, just like me, except you’re a pegasus and you wear your heart on your flank. You’re not a label. Labels aren’t cool. And don’t let anyone tell you any different, understand?”
The most hated day of her life. It muttered something in the corner of her mind. Cloudchaser ignored it so hard her own head started to burn under the effort.
After a while, Flitter’s hooves resumed their dangerously close tugging of the hair. If she were a smidgeon rougher, there’d be pain. Cloudchaser felt it as a warning on the edge, but she got close and never went over, because Flitter pulled at just the right time in just the right way. Manes were Flitter’s genius.
The last thing Flitter should do was try to be her sister.
What, try to be someone who refused to wail when she wanted to scream, refused to laugh when she wanted to break out in guffaws, refused to break down when she wanted so much to just give up and get it over with? Try to be someone who remembered Mom and Dad, when she could be that blissful younger child who had no memories stuck in her head like a barbed arrow? Try to hold up a house, when she could be running through its rooms like a wild child?
And the worst part was that, under the same rule, Cloudchaser couldn’t explain all this to Flitter either. No explanations, no complaints. She had to be the strong one, twenty-four-seven. If she let so much as a crack slip, she wasn’t Cloudchaser.
She wasn’t going through that hated day again. That was what the corner in her mind was for.
“Cloudy?” Flitter was almost finished: the hairs didn’t tug so much, so she’d moved on to flourishes.
“Something on your mind, Flits?”
“You OK? You feel tense.”
“That’s normal after a morning spent on a storm shift.” Which was broadly true, but didn’t hold up to any level of detail. “You know, exercise and atmospheric pressure and so on.”
“Why do you want me to come with you to Thunderlane’s?”
“It’s always nice to see a friend again.”
But Flitter wasn’t going to be put off when she’d adopted this inquisitive mood like a stray. Things worried her. She picked at things. It made first aid and scabs a nightmare, but Cloudchaser had encouraged the attitude, in a way. As in, she hadn’t discouraged it. And she’d always told her sister things like “Be honest” and “Be yourself” a lot, so what else should she expect?
“You think he’s feeling tense?” said Flitter.
“Oh, yeah. That’s Thunderlane. Cool on the surface, bundle of nerves underneath. I figured he’d like some cheering up, you know?”
“Are you like that, then?”
The question hit so hard, it bounced Cloudchaser from one side of her skull to the other.
Her recovery time was atrocious, but the key was to act like it wasn’t a problem and to hope Flitter dropped the subject soon.
“Not often,” she said, as if it was of no more interest to her than a passing buzzard. “I get it every now and again, just not as bad as he does.”
“You’re still very tense. Do you want to go to bed early?”
“Pretty big storm. Only to be expected. Don’t you worry about me.” This last part Cloudchaser said heartily, safe in the knowledge it was one of the few suggestions Flitter always ignored.
More happily, Flitter added, “It’s so cool you got in. I knew you would.”
Lucky for you, thought Cloudchaser, making a face to the wall. “I do what I can,” she said until she could think of something smarter to add.
That was the first and the last of it, though, right there. Cloudchaser. The other pegasi knew Cloudchaser. She’d always been one of the cool kids, had Cloudchaser.
Whereas Flitter only escaped the same fate as Derpy and Fluttershy because blood was thicker than water. And black eyes were thicker than others whenever Cloudy heard someone pass the wrong comment about her little sister.
She’d knocked out Thunderlane’s teeth once, as soon as her sister had been shepherded away from the scene for her own good. Only Thunderlane's dumb macho story about “flying into a flagpole” had saved Cloudy from any punishment from the flight instructors. That was chiefly because a punch was a recognized and respected tactic in cocky adolescent diplomacy. And they’d been cocky adolescents and a half.
Celestia above, they’d been stupid foals.
And that was something that made the corner of Cloudchaser’s mind seethe in burning oil. Young pegasi might not be Canterlot elites, but their own kind of snobbery was far worse. After all, Canterlot unicorns merely stopped inviting you to the best parties. They didn’t sneer at you on the Flight School course and then follow you to the locker rooms.
She’d seen what had happened to Derpy and Fluttershy. Both of them had moved down to Ponyville as soon as they’d been old enough to flee. By then, all the pegasi had grown up and gotten some brains and a fully functioning conscience at last, but it hardly mattered. Ponies didn’t like staying in places with painful memories.
That was never going to happen to Flitter. She’d sworn it wouldn’t.
“You know,” Cloudchaser said smoothly, as soon as she felt the hairs stop tugging at her scalp, “I think there might be some good jobs coming up for you.”
“Oh, Cloudy…”
“No, no, hear me out. I’ve been talking to Fluttershy lately when I went shopping for apples. She says Ponyville might host the Breezie Migration next year.”
Right on time, she heard Flitter gasp.
“Oh, the Breezies! Their wings are so sparkly, and they’re so widdle and so, so cuh-yute, I could just cuddle –”
“Yes, yes, Flitter? Talking here?”
“Sorry! Sorry. Carry on.” A few hair-tugs resumed. Flitter was flustered. At least she was in the right mood.
“And they’re gonna need careful, gentle pegasus ponies to guide them through town. And I thought you might like to get the best view of the Breezies, and you’ve always been a…” Diplomacy glared at honesty for a moment. “You’ve always been a careful flyer. Well, I passed on your name, and it caught Fluttershy’s attention. Hope you don’t mind?”
“Don’t mind? Don’t mind!? Are you crazy!? I’d have never, ever forgiven you if you made me miss out! They’re soooooooooooooooooo adoooooooooooorable…”
Cloudchaser let her coo and baby-talk to herself for about a minute. Sometimes, she wished she could gush like that. It sounded like the sweet music of freedom.
“Yeah, well, I thought you might like it,” she added, whilst Flitter carried on deep in her own private wonderland. “No big deal.”
A thought cut Flitter off: Cloudchaser heard the grunt and the flop where Flitter’s words tripped themselves up for a silent second.
“Didn’t you want to do it?” said Flitter.
“To be honest, it’s not my trough of water. Wings like mine wouldn’t work, anyway. I was garbage at… careful flying.”
A twisty sentence, at best. Anyone would be garbage if they weren’t careful. Angrily, she forced herself to bend the sentence around the fact that – when it came to childhood accidents – Flitter had been chaos central.
To her not-complete-surprise, Cloudchaser grunted as Flitter’s legs nearly knocked her into the wall. It was one of those hugs that would’ve worked better for a tackling foal than a grown mare. Most of the sudden weight was, in fact, enthusiasm.
“Thank you so much, Cloudy!”
Cloudchaser ignored the burst eardrum; Flitter’s mouth was right next to her head. “No… no problem.”
And then, like a light switch, Flitter vanished from Cloudchaser’s immediate world and gasped at the quantum leap of thought. “I’m excited, but kind of nervous too! Is there a word for that?”
“I, er, I’ve never come across it.”
“Are you excited-but-kind-of-nervous too? Oh my gosh, I didn’t think about how you might feel! I mean, it’s the Wonderbolt Academy! Cloudy!?”
“Keeping it together here.” If only Flitter hadn’t asked. The agitation came back and burst forth, flapping and squawking all over the place.
Yet hearing it in Flitter’s mouth, free and open, calmed a few of the birds down. That was the magic of Flitter: Cloudchaser wouldn’t bounce off the walls, so Flitter bounced for her. Not literally, of course, because that’d wreck Flitter’s pretty bow. Yet in a sense it was happening at full speed, with or without the actual jumping hooves and flurry of scuff marks.
At least one of us is honest, thought Cloudchaser sadly.
“I’ll come with you.” Flitter coughed, again switching like a light bulb from calm darkness to flaring anxiety. “To Thunderlane’s, I mean. It is good to see a friend again.”
And at least one of us grew up too. Good for you, Flitter.
“I’m sure he’d like to see his friends,” said Cloudchaser.
Overhead, the raindrops suddenly stopped hammering so hard. Now the sound was the tinkle of distant glass breaking, but as if it was meant to happen, like a ritual at the end of a satisfying meal.
“OK, turn around,” commanded Flitter.
Cloudchaser did so. There were still tearful streaks down Flitter’s face, though the rest of it was too sunny to notice the rivers.
As she always did, Cloudchaser instinctively reached up to pat her mane-style – Flitter went “ah, ah, ah!” and forced her hoof down fussily. There was no point checking the dirty mirror, but Flitter always came prepared with a hoof-held compact. Cloudchaser admired her reflection through the tiny glass, turning this way and that.
“Just how you like it!” cooed Flitter.
Cloudchaser nodded, but coolly. “Yes, yes, it is.”
“There! Now you look like your glamorous self again.”
“Er… That I do. Yeah.”
After too much hanging around, Flitter’s expectant glee lost a few inches of smile.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
Where should I start? Cloudchaser thought glumly.
“Just thinking.” A random name popped up and saved her. “About visiting Thunderlane.”
“Right now?”
“It can’t hurt to check on him, I suppose.” Yet still Cloudchaser shuffled uncomfortably where she stood. The unnatural, fresh feeling of her mane wasn’t helping any.
She wanted to say something, but being Cloudchaser had its price. Some things she couldn’t say. What she needed was some kind of run-up, or a way around.
“So!” she said. Flitter stiffened dutifully at once. “So… you know what? I was thinking. When I go to the Academy. Like Thunderlane. If he’s going. Which he might not be. But say he is. So I’d be like him. So I’d go to the Academy with him.”
“Uh huh.” Flitter’s smile found a few extra inches again.
“And when I go to the Academy…” The instant Cloudchaser caught the worry storming across Flitter’s face, she seized her chance. “Well, I wouldn’t want you to feel upset, so maybe instead of you staying here and me going off on my own for a long time, how about we cut that time apart down? Just a little. To stop you worrying.”
Flitter’s worry twisted the other way into puzzlement. “Huh?”
Too roundabout. Too roundabout!
“So…” Cloudchaser threw up a laugh as a screen whilst, behind it, she changed into something more sensible. “Ah! Right! You know what, I might be OK with some company on my way to the Wonderbolt Academy. Let you see me off. My treat. If you’re free, of course. Don’t go out of your way if it’s a nuisance or anything. I’m cool either way.”
Worry and puzzlement switched off. Flitter’s smile ran ahead full steam.
“That’s amazing! I’d love to come with you. Maybe we could take pictures of the Academy and all the other recruits.”
“Pictures! Right. Just what I was thinking.”
“And I’d send you a care package every day. Your favourite glitterberry jelly sandwiches, with the little happy faces cut in.”
“OK, maybe not the faces.” It’d been a few years since that had been cute. “But the sandwiches idea is working for me.”
“Right! Because I heard the food at the Academy is awful, so I got my own food all on my own, just so I had something tasty to eat. You can have it if you like.”
“Sounds cool.”
“And I’ll give you my gel grooming kit, so your hair stays the way you like it even in all that turbulence, and I’ve got a Pony Trotmare magic music box if you can get it into your barracks, and then I’ll pack you some Manehattan Dolls music disks, and then…”
Good little Flits, thought Cloudchaser as they headed for the door, Flitter doing the talking for the two of them. Always looking after me.
It was still raining, but on her way to the door, she heard the patter fall much, much more gently.
