The Knife

Scootaloo stared at the sliver of red against her orange coat. It had stung a little, but she dealt her tears dry up in her eyes. Emotionally, she was starting to feel a bit better. She once again carefully lowered the knife she had stolen from the kitchen to her skin. She applied only a little pressure. Enough to feel pain, but nothing that couldn't heal with time and a bandage or two. She was sure that it wouldn't scar or anything. She finally felt like the pain had done its job in calming her down. She washed the blood away from her coat and applied a bandage to the spot on her foreleg that she had made the small incisions. She then washed off the knife, and took one last look in the bathroom mirror.

  The tears had completely dried up, and she no longer looked as if she were crying. She quickly returned the knife to its proper place in her foster parent's home. It would be like it never happened.

  The students in the Ponyville School House waited excitedly for the clock to read 11:40. At that time was everypony's favorite time of the school day, recess. Finally, Miss Cheerilee finished her (rather boring) lecture on the ecosystems of the Everfree Forest. All of the colts and fillies rushed out the door to get in as much playing time as they possibly could in the forty minutes of recess. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon could be seen eating a lavish lunch together at the picnic tables. A few of the colts and fillies started a game if basketball. All of them were having a good time talking and laughing and playing without a care in the world. Scootaloo, Applebloom, and Sweetie Belle decided to quickly eat their lunch together and then jump rope.

  "So, Scootaloo," Applebloom said between bites of her apple sandwich. "How'd ya hurt your arm?"

  Scootaloo quickly covered the band-aids up with her other hoof. "N-nothing. I-just... scraped myself in the Everfree Forest," Scootaloo replied, thinking up a quick excuse.

  "What were you doing in the Everfree Forest?" Sweetie Belle inquired, taking a sip from her grape juice box.

"I-um..." she had to think of something fast. "To see Zecora! Yeah, I was wondering if there might be a potion to fix my wings so I'll be able to fly. Turns out she doesn't have one," she said with a fake smile, as if all was totally normal.

  Sweetie Belle shrugged, seeming to buy Scootaloo's lie. "'Kay. Hey, guys, I heard Countess Colorotura is coming to Ponyville and-"

  Scootaloo tuned her out after that. She was once a huge fan of that singer's music, but recently she had stopped caring about it. Recently, she had become fixated on her flying, or, rather, lack of flying, and nothing else. She still ate, but she ate very little. Eating got in the way of training. Or the hopeless flapping of her wings that she called 'training'.

  After a while, the three friends finished their lunches. "All right! Who's gonna be 'it' first?" Applebloom said, standing up.

  Without warning, Sweetie Belle playfully tapped Applebloom's shoulder. "Tag!" she exclaimed, then ran off.

  Scootaloo also ran away from Applebloom, pretending to laugh.

  "Hey, that's not fair!" Applebloom shouted after Sweetie Belle, sprinting across the small field in the playground.

  But while Scootaloo was watching this, she wasn't paying attention to where she was going, and tripped on a loose rock. She fell over, landing on the arm with the band-aids. The skid she took managed to loosen the band-aid's hold on her skin. Luckily, the ground in the field was soft, and she didn't get any injuries. Sweetie Belle and Applebloom noticed her fall, and ran over to her.

  "Scootaloo! Are you okay?" Sweetie Belle asked her worriedly.

  "Here, let me see it," Applebloom said. She had learned about healing and medicine from her time with Zecora, and was now quite knowledgable in the treatment of injuries. "That's odd. The cuts are really clean. Like, in really straight lines. How in the hay did that happen?" she wondered.

  "Oh, I just must've cut it on a thorn bush or something," Scootaloo ensured her.

  "Alright, if you say so. You don't seem to have any new injuries, though. But you should go to Miss Cheerilee for new band-aids. Wouldn't want it to get infected," Applebloom said wisely.

  "Okay. You can keep playing while I'm gone," Scootaloo said, trotting over to the school house, where Cheerilee was watching the students from the porch.

  "Scootaloo, are you alright? I saw you trip. I was just about to go over there," the elementary school teacher said worriedly.

  "I'm fine. But my band-aids fell off, and Applebloom said I should get new ones," Scootaloo informed her.

  "Alright. Wait here." Miss Cheerilee went inside the school house for a minute while Scootaloo did as she was told. Miss Cheerilee came out, holding a disinfectant wipe and a box of band-aids. "Here you go. Do you need help putting them on?" Miss Cheerilee asked.

  "No, thank you. I'll be fine from here," Scootaloo replied, taking two band-aids from the box, along with the disinfectant wipe.

  "Okay," Miss Cheerilee went back inside to put away the box of band-aids.

  Scootaloo dabbed at her wound with the wipe. It stung a little.Just like when I first cut them in, she thought to herself. She shook her head of those thoughts and applied the new band-aids, testing her arm's movement in them before she galloped back to where her friends were playing.

  Scootaloo didn't feel like doing her homework right at the moment. She had a whole paper of math problems to do, but all she did was lay on her bed. Her foster parents weren't home yet, as her foster daddy had to work a little later than the time Scootaloo got home on Tuesdays at his job as an engineer, and her foster father was almost never home, as he was working for the royal guard.

  Scootaloo felt bored as all heck, but she didn't feel like doing anything about it. It was as if she were weighted to the bed. She looked around her room for something to do that would amuse her. She had a small bookcase/nightstand next to her bed, and in it were some books she had borrowed from Twilight Sparkle. If only her arm was not refusing to work, she could reach out to one of those books and spend a quiet afternoon reading.

  She was hungry. Her foster parents always made sure there were snacks and leftovers in the kitchen when they couldn't be home when Scootaloo returned from school. But she didn't feel like getting up from her bed to go all the way downstairs to the kitchen. So she just lay down and thought. It wasn't specific as to what she thought of. Her mind flipped from one thought to the next, pondering each one until she was bored of it.

  She wasn't sure when she went to sleep, but she felt herself being woken up by a gentle hoof. She drowsily opened her eyes to find the kind, blue eyes on the face of her foster daddy, Astral Light. "Hey, kiddo," he said, smiling.

  "Hi, Daddy," Scootaloo said, finding the strength to lift her head from her pillow. She stretched out her legs and wings with a tiny cracking sound.

  "Did you have fun at school today?"

  Scootaloo shrugged. "It was fine."

  "Did you get your homework done?" he questioned, raising his eyebrow.

  Scootaloo immediately remembered the page of uncompleted math problems. "Uh... Maybe?"

  "So, no." he said.

  "Yeah."

  "Alright. Make sure you do it. I got a call from Miss Cheerilee saying you haven't been doing your homework. Is everything okay?"

  Scootaloo shrugged. "I just didn't want to do it."

  Astral Light looked at her in a fatherly sympathetic way. "Okay. If you need to talk, I'm always here," he said, walking out of Scootaloo's bedroom.

  Scootaloo laid her head back down on the pillow. I need to train, she thought. But she made no move to get up. Oh, Celestia I'm so pathetic. I can't even do what my pony race was evolved to do. Scootaloo had learned all about the evolution of pony races in Miss Ceerilee's class.