Beneath Your Wings

Torque Stripe looked over the layout of his shop on its blueprint and wondered for some uncounted time if maybe his problem was that he was trying to do too much with it. Part sports spa and part first aid and general health clinic, he needed at least half a dozen different licenses to keep it "legitimate" and keeping some of the equipment and commodities up to date left him with barely enough to feed himself. Of course he lived where he worked. Trying to cover rent and utilities on top of business expenses would have been ghastly impossible.

He still didn't understand why he had virtually no business. He had used careful and thorough calculations to place his shop in a location that was readily visible from Cloudsdale regardless of the flying city's location over Equestria. He had crafted for himself a set of prosthetic wings so he could fly to Cloudsdale and try to bid for a contract with the Wonderbolts, and to advertise in general. Typically with flyers because those were all he could afford and also because those felt like the most fitting approach. And just like one of those dumb romance novels the bookstore owners and librarians dedicated entire aisles to, he had met her just when he thought he'd reached the peak of despair. To nopony's surprise, he was rendered oblivious to the much greater heights of that dark emotion by the hope she instilled in him.

The word on many ponies' lips was that Lightning Dust was a candidate for the Wonderbolts Academy. Not only that, but she was such a sure "in" that many Cloudsdale residents were already starting to call her Cadet. She had aced the written exam and was most definitely certain to do the same with the physical one in a couple weeks. Like her rival Rainbow Dash, she seemed to generate hopes and dreams wherever she went. But unlike Dash, Dust's intelligence held the promises of leadership, and she had never been ashamed of reading. The former had once berated Torque for having "too much word, not enough picture" on his flyers and left him in a puff of cloud dust (who knew that was a thing?) and shredded paper. He had to give up for that day and ended up rejecting her advice out of spite.

However, Torque's encounter with Lightning was totally different from top to bottom. For starters, he was making a point of avoiding her. Not only because of his trouble with her peer, but also because he believed that reaching for dreams was for ponies with a solid foundation from which to do so, and he knew he lacked that. Well, as it happened, there was a certain characteristic borne by flying aces and other ponies of similar disposition that rendered his efforts futile. Said trait was that when those kinds of ponies notice that somepony is deliberately ignoring them, it is regarded as an unforgivable sin that must be corrected. So it was that Torque's focus returned from yet another sigh to find the fledgling idol's face way too close to his.

"All right, Jerk! Just who the hay do you think you are, blowing ME off like that?" she demanded, going to butt her head against his until she noticed his horn. Lightning gasped, already aware of his "wings" since he had to keep them flapping with his magic, as he'd never learned of the Cloudwalk spell which would have made his life only about a million billion times easier. "Sweet Mother of Celestia! You're an ALICORN!? ARE YOU SOME KIND OF ROYALTY? HOW COME I NEVER HEARD OF YOU?"

Torque full-body cringed when she bellowed, not just because of the force and flying spittle of her shout, but also because he was pretty sure that every last pony in Cloudsdale looked in their direction, what she just said was made extra awkward by a surprise audience, and he was accustomed to solitude. Shaking, he impressed himself by not stammering or mumbling his response.

"No no no no nononono! Are you NUTS, or just STUPID?" he shouted back before he realized what he was doing and to whom, and where. Figuring himself for sunk, anyway, he soldiered on. "Only mares of royal blood can be alicorns! That's elementary foal stuff! The wings aren't real. ...I made them."

Lightning Dust shut up so hard that he could hear her teeth clack through her closed lips, and Torque Stripe imitated her before he knew what he was doing and struggled to process the expression on her face. It was a pretty one, but also both seemingly out of character for Lightning and one he'd never seen before, so he dismissed it as a freak of his imagination. But then she looked him over. And then she looked him over again, this time so hard he could feel her eyes raking through his mane and coat like a zealous cat's claws. He looked around nervously, but the rest of town seemed to have moved on with their daily lives. The relief he felt at learning that was immediately killed when he returned his attention to her and saw on her face an expression that he had seen before.

On Timberwolves and Changelings, when they thought they had him cornered. But they made it far less threatening than she did.

"Nopony ever talks to me like that. I'm Lightning Dust. And today's your lucky day, Chump. You just got yourself my undivided attention!"

*Three weeks later.*

Torque hadn't wanted to put all of his eggs in one basket, but he only had one "basket", and was already barely holding things together before he found her. For most of his time leading up to her, he was subsisting largely on the "disposable arts and crafts" he made and sold to his fellow ground-bound ponies. He had started making them out of boredom from waiting for customers, but apparently mail-order merchandise had a sustainable if not livable following. Most of the bits that went into maintaining his unused TLC equipment came from ponies who apparently believed that his store, which he'd named "Beneath Your Wings", was a fluffy romance novel. And those who found out that it wasn't were quite put out about that. He stopped telling ponies the truth because it somehow convinced them that he was previously lying.

However, with Lightning Dust, Torque had his real foundation. A high-profile, high-performance pegasus that demanded "The Works" with her every weekly visit. As one might expect, "The Works" was where a client paid wing-over-hoof for the finest treatment he could muster. There were, of course, a handful of significant differences between the theory he had and the practice he had to engage in, but he did well enough the first time that she made a point of returning to roost. Now if only he could convince her to stop the distractingly suggestive moaning and whimpering while he worked.

She paid him enough bits in her first couple of visits that he was able to commission the big sign he'd always wanted to have out front. Lightning even posed with him for it, and the artist did a credible job of rendering the two of them as he held her aloft by her majestically spread wings with his magic. Of course, with her qualification and training meets, she didn't get to see the finished project, so he covered it with a tarp and planned to surprise her with it as congratulations for her entry into the Wonderbolts Academy, and as thanks for putting him on the map by proxy.

The morning he planned to show her the sign, he felt more than heard a deafening clap of thunder. Literally shaken out of bed, he scampered out to the front of his store where the sound originated, his heart and face full of fear. When his eyes confirmed the destruction he'd feared, his expression joined his heart in a storm of rage, especially when he heard little hooves intentionally smashing the pieces into smaller pieces and powder. That, however, was also not meant to last. The dust surrounding the devastation was gently swept away by the deceptively soothing breeze, leaving in its wake a familiar winged mare wearing a distinctive blue uniform. One which had an even more distinctive hole in it, revealed by her turning to face him.

Torques expression went blank as he felt what he was sure must have been his soul dying. He didn't see Lightning cross the distance between them, but not for the usual reason. He was sure he imagined her burying her face in his shoulder. He was even more sure that he imagined her breaking out sobbing. This was so out of character for her, it must surely be a dream. So rather than speak to her the words of comfort he was no good at and didn't even know if she wanted, he stood there while she cried and internally screamed at himself to wake up from this Celestia-forsaken nightmare.