Seven-Ten Split

The quiet night was ripped apart by giggling and the throaty roar of dirtbike engines. Indigo felt like she was flying as the brush whipped the body of her bike, caressed her legs, her trail jacket whipping behind her like wings.

She was happy, carefree. Her big sister best friend had returned from the MotoCross circuit to take her trailriding for her birthday. The reunion had been teary, with Dust kneeling in her road leathers and telling her she was big enough for her own bike. Zap’s heart had stopped and she'd begun denying- there was no way. Dust had taken her out to the garage and there she was- a gleaming turquoise bike only slightly smaller than her big sister’s gold-painted one.

A jacket a couple sizes too large for her dropped over her shoulders, smelling like motor oil and gasoline. Dust’s jacket, with the winged skull across the shoulders. Their mother told them to be back by supper and they'd torn off, immediately racing into the heart of Everfree National Park.

She was a little scared, the trail they were riding had a steep drop to one side and climbed the embankment of a gorge towards a lookout. She wouldn't show it, as Dust never felt fear and neither should she.

“You look good on a bike.”

Those words echoed in her head, her smile vanishing as she screamed. She lost control of the bike and slid, picking up a few bruises as she laid her dirtbike down. The jacket kept her safe.

Turning back to see what was wrong, Dust never saw what Zap had. Up ahead the trail had washed out. Dust looked like she was flying for half of a terrible second as her wheels tried to run on open air.

Rainbow sucked in a breath and stared at her hooves. The sisters were still clinging together, Zap swallowing a knot of emotion before continuing.

“I-I found a way down into the gorge and… S-She’d hit a tree. It was a mess. I barely managed to get on the phone with emergency services and… there's nothing they can do if you take a tree branch through the chest.”

Rainbow and Dash wordlessly turned to look at Dust. Unsurprisingly, she wasn't nearly as forthcoming with the tale of how her Indigo had met her end.

“I'd just gotten back from flight camp. She was… I-It was like you and the squirt, Dash. She followed me everywhere, I was a fucking hero in her eyes. We… We flew Ghastly Gorge.”

A turquoise hoof scuffed the carpet of the trailer, golden eyes staring a thousand yards and ten years into the past.

“Q-Quarry Eels. Th-there was a rock slide and… a-a boulder fell. I wasn't strong enough to move it.”

Both ponies took a deep breath.

“I told myself that Dusty would always be with me. I kept that jacket, wore it every damn day for a year. I slept in it. With the smell of gasoline and Morley’s, there wasn't any nightmares… just my big sister holding me. I had to live for her. Walk in her footsteps.”

“Something inside me broke. I… That was when you finally won first, Dash. I didn't have a cold, I had Chromatic Diminishment Syndrome. Those hairpin turns I can pull off? I flew Ghastly Gorge every day until my feathers started falling out. I begged the Quarry Eels to snap me up. I wished for a boulder to snuff me out. I wanted to fly faster than that last scream. To become so strong that the world could never hurt me again.”

Sitting together, the resemblance really was uncanny. Like a miscolored Xerox or a particularly unskilled Changeling. Indigo was smaller and orange-gold while Dust was larger and turquoise, but otherwise they were identical. Dust was the first to break contact, rising and carefully strapping back into her helmet.

“I've gotta get back, they're probably up to the next set in the routine by now.” She paused. “There should be some empty spaces in the front row, you guys should move down. Mean a lot to me.”

With a beat of her powerful wings, her hooves left the ground and Indigo watched her leave with an expression of quiet wonder. She fixed Dash and Rainbow with a Look.

“We can do that, right? These things actually work?”

Rainbow rolled her eyes and gave her wings a flick. “Uh, duh. But I think we should wait until after the show. Flight pointers are kinda a big-sister thing.”

Indigo nodded and followed the other two out, but not before pausing to breathe in the air of the trailer her otherworldly sister called home. Different, with a distinct pony scent and with a tang of ozone rather than machine oil, but not very much different than the jacket.

They were promised a good show, and it was.