Paper Cups, Trashcans Flooded
“Boss? You okay?” Soarin vaguely heard a voice in the distance, piercing through his hazy mind. He groaned, waiting for the reply. “Captain?” Soarin stirred, wondering why Spitfire wasn’t answering. “Soarin!”
Soarin shot up in his chair, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “What?” he snapped at the mare standing in the doorway.
Fleetfoot blinked, startled by his harshness. “Ah… You okay, Captain?” It took Soarin a minute to realize what she said. Then a flood of memories surged through his head. A ceremony, cheering, and applause, tears, goodbyes. Finally, the truth unveiled itself at the bottom of his memory pool. Spitfire was long gone. He was captain now.
“Ugh. Yeah, yeah… I’m doing great,” Soarin grumbled, flashing a weak smile.
“Good. I’ve got the next stack of incident reports from the academy here.” Fleetfoot pat a stack of papers at least half as tall as her. “Then you’ve got the applications to review, and… Soarin, are you sure you’re fine? You sound wiped out.”
Soarin grumbled something under his breath. “I… don’t know. I can’t do this anymore, Fleet.”
Fleetfoot frowned and pulled up a chair. “Do what?”
Soarin waved his hoof at the piles of papers cluttering the office. “Everything. Be the captain that the team needs me to be.” Fleetfoot reached over and pat him on the back.
“Hey, relax. You’re doing a great job so far.” Fleetfoot glanced over at the trash can, raising an eyebrow at the sum of styrofoam cups piled up inside it. “Yikes...”
Soarin hung his head in his hooves, muttering something incomprehensible. Fleetfoot gave a sympathetic sigh. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen a career ruin a fine pony.
“Soarin, listen. It’s late, and none of this paperwork is crucial. Take a break. Go home, get sleep. You look as if you’ve stayed up for days.” Soarin shook his head, a chuckle escaping him.
“Well, you’re wrong there. I was enjoying sleep until you came in here.” Soarin leaned back in his chair before standing. “I will take a break, though. I’m going to go stretch my wings, take a flight. I’ll be back soon.” As Soarin left the office, Fleetfoot’s worried eyes followed him.
The cool air gave a rush to Soarin’s body. He sighed with relief as he felt the adrenaline enter his body. As the adrenaline wore off, Soarin landed at the base of a hill. The Wonderbolts HQ and stadium floated somewhere high above him. He sat underneath the shade of a lone tree sitting on top of the hill, enjoying Luna’s sky.
“Tough day, huh?” A familiar voice caused his ears to perk. He detected the soft thump of a pegasus landing, and a smile formed on his tired maw.
“In a way.” Spitfire chuckled, as she trotted over to him. The moonlight bounced off of her fiery mane and coat. Soarin sighed, leaning back on his haunches. “How did you do it, Spits? How d'you handle being stuck in that office instead of up in the sky, with the others?”
Spitfire sighed and gazed up at Luna’s moon. “Well, it’s not that awful. You still lead the team in competitions and flight exercises, but the other side? Yeah, that’s the side that training can’t teach. As Captain, you see things. You'll see the best of the team, sure. But they see the worst, too. But you know what? After spending Celestia knows how many hours sitting at that desk, filing paperwork and writing reports, I got to appreciate the other half of the job.”
Soarin nodded, listening intently to his former friend. “Yeah. I remember what you said during the ceremony. You never appreciate your wings until you don’t have them anymore.”
Spitfire smirked. “Still sounds sappy, even now. But as much as I hate to say it, it’s true. A few years back, we had a recruit. Damn best flier I’d ever seen. He didn’t break any records, but he was close. And he might have done it too if it weren’t for the accident.” For a brief second, a forlorn look crossed her face. “Yeah. The accident. It happened a month before the final exams. Routine training run, except a fog had rolled in, no thanks to the weather team. He flew too low, clipped something and hit the ground hard. His team brought him to the hospital, but it was too late. Doctors said his wing had broken, in the worst way. He'd never fly again.”
Soarin, engrossed in his friend’s story, detected the sadness and remorse tainting her voice.
“I visited him. He was sitting at the window, staring out. And the strangest thing… he was smiling. It was unbelievable. The doctors had been there, told him he'd never fly again. I couldn’t figure out why. I talked with him for an hour, asked him why he was smiling. He said, ‘I realized something, Captain. You know how pegasi say they can hear the sky when they fly? I spent most of my life saying that's false because no matter how fast I flew, or how hard I listened, I always flew in silence. But the funny thing is, now I’m on the ground, and I'm not listening for it, it's there. And it’s wonderful.
Others might say it’s a calling, that the sky’s calling me home to fly again. But that’s not what it. It's a voice, and it’s telling me of love. It's telling us to love what we have but take for granted. We can’t love and appreciate how lucky we are to fly, looking down on the world, until we’re on the ground, staring up at it. It’s a hell of a song, Captain, and we should learn how to sing along with it.’ That story hits me hard, every time.”
Soarin rose from the grass. “Wow. You didn’t make that up, Spits?”
“Heh. Trust me, I'd never make up something that sappy.”
Soarin hesitated. “The recruit, what happened to him?”
Spitfire averted his gaze and took a deep breath before replying. “The doctors found him the next day. He flat-lined. They think he… lost the will to live. I said the voice gave him something to die for. I guess we’ll never find out.” Spitfire took a shaky breath. “They say when they found him… he had a smile on his mouth.” Soarin trotted next to his old friend and hugged her. "After that, I guess I thought hard about what he said. He was right, Soarin. Us ‘Bolts get distracted by what we don’t have. So distracted, we don’t take time to appreciate what we have. Our wings, each other, and a hell of a captain.” Spitfire smiled, facing Soarin.
“Thanks, Spits. I guess… I get what I should do now.” Soarin stepped back. Spitfire’s silhouette glowed in the moonlight. Giving his friend a last smile, Soarin turned around and spread his wings. As Soarin prepared to fly away, he glanced back to find he was alone on the hill. Soarin chuckled and took to the air. The only sound was the beating of his wings.
Seconds later, two more pegasi trotted up the hill. “Was that the captain?”
“Yeah, it's him, Surprise.”
“Well, Blaze, who was he talking too?”
Blaze looked around at the empty hill. “I don’t know… Himself, I guess.” Miles above them, in front of the Wonderbolts Headquarters, sat a large stone statue, depicting a pegasus in flight.
Underneath was a plaque that read, ‘Captain Spitfire. Wonderbolts. Beloved captain and friend. Flapped her wings until they couldn’t beat anymore, then she kept on flying. You win this race, Spits. We’ll see you on the other side. Good luck up there, we’ll miss you.”
Editing Notes:
V.1: Run through editing program, fixed basic errors, changed multiple sentences. Added to Spitfire's plaque.
V.2: Immediately after publishing V.1, noticed several other mistakes. Removed extra line break (no idea how that got there), added missing commas, deleted extra spaces. Woops.