Chasing the Wind

You awaken, from dreams of your childhood, to a soft pressure resting against your chest and the cold in all four of your legs that is the result of sleeping without a blanket over you. Without opening your eyes, your hoof searches for your blanket, and when you find it, you throw it over yourself. The immediate warmth of the heavenly blanket lulls you back into a state of semi-consciousness.

It’s not until a pair of hooves wrap around you and lightly squeeze that you realise you’re not alone and that the weight resting on your chest is a pony. A pony who is now nuzzling into your mane. In your mind’s eye, it’s the filly you fell for that kisses you gently on the lips, without knowing you’re awake. Taking a chance, you wrap your hooves around her back, and when you gently squeeze her, her hooves do the same. When she rests her head in the crook of your neck, her breath begins to tickle the fur on your chin. You let out a contented sigh, a smile making its way onto your face.

You lay there for Goddess knows how long before you feel like actually waking up. What finally draws your mind back from the land of listlessness is a pair of warm lips being softly pressing up against yours. The kiss is quick, soft, and almost chaste. As what you can only imagine to be Scootaloo’s lips part from yours, you can feel the heat of her breath on your lips as she speaks something that, even in the morning silence, is too quiet to hear. You manage to pry your eyes open and catch Scootaloo staring down at you. A soft smile adorns her face, all the way up to her eyes, and with her light blush, she wears it well. It’s been years since you’ve actually seen her smile, and seeing this specific one, radiating an air or caring, is something you’d given up on long ago. Your stomach seems to do somersaults as you plant a gentle kiss on her nose.

As soon as she realises what you've done, the morning’s serenity is shattered. She cringes, forcefully pushing out of your grasp and rolling off of you.

“Ughh… dude, gross. You smell like shit. Go take a shower.” And with that, she walks out of the room, leaving you completely confused, yet again. You sigh, crawl out of bed, and mope your way to the bathroom. You slide the door closed as you stare at yourself in the mirror. The light filtering in from the skylight above you draws long shadows across your face, exacerbating the worn look you currently wear.

“Buck me,” you mutter, feeling your stomach tie itself in knots. You can’t believe that that one little chicken joke, from so many years ago, somehow made you stupid enough to dare your friend to do what she did. Something you did hurt Scootaloo enough to put her in this state of mind. She doesn’t deserve this. She was cool. She was so talented.

You shake your head violently, trying to clear the image of her cutie mark from your mind, but all you succeed in doing is giving yourself a headache from your brain rattling around your thick skull. You sigh, and step into the shower.

Flicking on the tap, the water hits you like a cart full of bricks. Somehow, it has managed to stay in liquid form even though it feels like it should be flying forth from the shower head as a stream of icicles. Still, you stand in the water, hoping the chill that makes its way into your bones will wash away the guilt in your heart. As time passes, the heavy hits of the pressurized water raining down on you fade into the numbness that the cold has brought to your body. Though, even when you start to lose feeling in the farthest tip of your hooves, the painful lump in the pit of your stomach persists. You’re not sure how long you stand there, staring at the distorted reflection of yourself in the chrome relief surrounding the tap, but when a hoof pokes your shoulder, you nearly jump out of your skin.

"Move over," Scootaloo flatly says as you turn to look upon the mare that has no sense of privacy. You sigh and take a step back, out of the shower’s spray, and just as you are out of the way, she steps into the bath in front of you. “Dear Goddess, that’s cold!” she exclaims as soon as the water begins to wash over her. Her hoof quickly cranks on the tap, causing the water’s temperature to slowly climb to a much more bearable point.

Without so much as batting an eyelash, the orange mare squirts some soap in her hoof and begins to wash herself right in front of you. Though, you’re not sure why you’re so surprised by this. You begin to climb out of the shower when Scootaloo speaks up again.

“Dude, you’re not taking me out to lunch smelling like that, so get back in here and quit sulking.”

“Huh?”

“Ever since you started stalking me, yesterday, it’s been written all over your face. You want to be my coltfriend, and I might just let you. You were pretty cool when you weren’t trying to kill me.” That last little quip sets a fire in your stomach, setting you off.

“Scoots, you’ve been nothing but a mule since I met you yesterday. Your little trick nearly got me killed, and then you come back to my house, bragging about it, and then… I don’t even know how to describe what happened last night. All I know is that it ruined something I’ve fantasized about for years. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? I ruined something that was supposed to be special for you, and now you came back to do that to me.” You turn, trotting towards the door. “You win, Scootaloo. You’ve made me feel worse about what I did to you in the past, and destroyed the only thing I’ve ever cared about in the process.”

Just as you reach out and envelop the doorknob in your magical aura, a wet hoof brushes barely across your shoulder, causing you to stop. It’s now that you notice the silence that has taken up the room.

“I’m sorry.” You barely hear it over the furious beating of your angered heart, but her voice with its shattered bravado draws your attention back towards the source of your anger.

“I think we’re way past the point where that phrase fixes everything,” you say, shaking your head to try and rid yourself of the emotions that have overtaken you. You never imagined that you would be breaking your longtime friendship, and the pain in your heart doesn’t make it any easier. “It’d be better if you just went back to Manehattan.” Those words only made you feel worse. Even through all your anger, you still did want to work this out, but your mouth, apparently, worked faster than your mind. You couldn’t manage to bring yourself to look at her as you walked out of the bathroom.

You don’t stop walking until you were deep within the Everfree, overlooking a raging river. The layers of stone that made up the cliff below you were mostly smooth, carved out by Equestria’s most powerful natural force. Nearly a hundred feet below, you idly watched whitecaps and eddies. You felt nearly as carved out as the rock and stone below you must. And now, in the place that started it all, you wonder what it would be like to see that water rushing up towards you.