Flimsy and Flapper Fall a Fair Famount
Mister Flimsy and his cotton-stuffed family fly out the window, tumbling like ragdolls. Fear takes hold of my wings, and I’m paralyzed at the windowsill of my second-story bedroom. Have to jump, I think. Have to save them.
By the time I force my wings open and scramble over the sill, it’s too late. Mister and Missus and Lil’ Flimsy and strewn across the ground, seemingly no worse for wear. I, however, am perched on the windowsill. Now the tables are turned. Mister Flimsy stares at me with his sad, sewn-on eyes. He understands. His wings don’t work, either.
Momentum takes hold, and I fall.
It’s a short trip down the yard. I land on a pillow of soft clouds and burst into tears. Untangling my legs, I crawl to where the Flimsy family landed and scoop them up one by one.
Everything hurts, but not from the fall. My heart is where my head should be. My legs are all tangled up. My fur is matted with tears. My wings are nowhere. Not the physical ones--those are on my shoulders, shut tight against my back.
My real wings--the wings all pegasi have, the wings that grant you courage and speed and flight--are nowhere to be found.
I walk inside with my Flimsy family, where my real family see me. My mom notices the tears on my face and scoops me up in a big hug. My dad notices the front door I forgot to close.
“Did you see her come down the stairs?” he asks.
“Not important, dear,” my mom replies as she strokes my mane. The attention paid to my mane feels good, and soon I’m minicking the motion with Lil’ Flimsy.
Dad walks over and shuts the door. “How’d she get outside?”
I whimper again, and mom shoots him a sharp look. “What’s wrong, my little butterfly?”
Between more sniffles, I detail the scruffle in my bedroom that led to the Flimsy family’s fall. Mom and dad seem really concerned, even after I reassure them all the Flimsies were unscathed.
Dad scrunches up his eyebrows real low. It would look funny, except he only does it when he’s really really upset. Laughing when he’s making that face just makes him more angry, and then his face gets worse, and it’s even funnier. But it’s not worth it to make a mad pony madder, so I stifle my laugh.
He storms off upstairs and returns a few moments later dragging my brother Zephyr by his ear. “I didn’t do it!” he insists between cries of pain. “She did it!”
“She did what?” dad says. “Don’t lie to me, now.”
Zephyr seems to weigh his options. “Okay, so maybe she didn’t do it.” Dad’s eyebrows get lower. “Maybe I did it. But I was just teasing her. I threw her dumb dolls out the window. She didn’t have to jump after them.”
Mom and dad both turn to look at me. Their stares make me wilt. “You jumped out the window?” my mom asks.
There’s something I don’t usually see in her eyes. It’s more than concern. I see it in pictures of animals in the nature books I read. It’s fear.
I don’t like it at all. It makes me want to cry all over again, even though I can feel I’m all cried out by now. Instead of bolting or crying, I shrink into my mane.
A comforting presence envelops me, and my dad carries me into the living room. Together with mom on the other side and my brother peering in from the other room, I get a stern lecture on how important it is not to jump out the window.
“Everypony jumps out windows,” I say.
“But dear, your wings haven’t grown yet,” my mother says. “We don’t want you to hurt yourself.” She seems undeterred when I point out that my landing was made safe by the cloud fixture we live on. “You’re not jumping off anything taller than a chair until your wings grow in.”
Until my wings grow in. I hate that thought. The words sit on top of my brain and squeeze all the other thoughts out. They don’t want to say it because they think it will hurt my feelings, but I know all the same. My flesh-and-bone wings have grown in just fine. It’s my real pegasus wings that haven’t grown yet.
Dad gets up and hauls my squirming brother into the room. “Apologize,” he commands.
“But I didn’t do anything!” he insists.
“Apologize.”
“But--”
A harsh stare quashes any further retort. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, his eyes locked on the ground. “Sorry for ruining your tea party and throwing your dolls out the window.”
Dad seems satisfied with his apology. “No flying for the rest of the day, now. That will teach you not to be so mean to your sister.”
“What?” Zephyr’s wings buzz anxiously. “You can’t do that. It’s such a nice day!”
“It’s always a nice day if you move enough clouds,” my dad says. “You’re gonna spend this nice day inside thinking about what you did.”
Zephyr seems so upset. It’s so unfair telling a pegasus not to fly. Even I know that. That’s what pegasi do. They fly. “Um, dad?” I speak up. “You don’t need to be so harsh on him. He didn’t make me jump out the window.”
Dad’s stern look loosens a little, and he kneels down next to me. “Dear, he has to learn that it’s not nice to throw ponies’ things out the window. He’ll be fine.”
“But--”
“No buts.” He looks over his shoulder. “Zephyr, go to your room.”
Zephyr groans before buzzing away to his room. The slamming of a door indicates the beginning of his confinement. I can’t help but feel bad for him, even if he was being rotten to me.
My mom asks me, “Do you want us to help you redo your tea party?”
I shake my head.
“We could make you fresh tea. And make dad wear a tiara.”
I giggle at the look on dad’s face. The tears are all gone now. Another tea party would be nice, and I know mom would break out her fancy tea just for me and the Flimsies, but right now I think it would be nice to be alone for a bit.
I tell my parents, and they understand. Together they carry me upstairs to my bedroom and settle me in my bed. With all my stuffed animals surrounding me, it feels like nothing can hurt me.
Distant discontented noises from Zephyr’s room float to my ears. Maybe if I could convince myself to feel mad, I could think of something to get revenge on him for being such a meanie. But the very word makes my stomach turn. Instead I turn inward like I always do. Deep into the covers and the comfort of my stuffed animals.
To get my mind off things, I try a thought exercise my dad taught me. I think of all the negative things that are in my mind and pack them into a box one by one. Then I seal it up with packing tape and ship the box away forever.
It’s a nice thought. Dad says it’s good to think about the things that upset you, as long as you keep it in the right context. I’m still not entirely sure what context means, but the exercise helps a lot.
As I’m packing all the mean words and sad feelings into my box, an idea comes to me. I shoot out of the covers and over to my little drawing desk, where I keep my arts and crafts. Stuffed animals go flying. I make a mental note to apologize to them when I’m done drawing out my new idea.
There’s an old pegasus saying that goes, “You have to fly before you can walk.” I know I need to be up in the air, and if I can’t fly there myself I’ll just find some other way to get there.
Mister Flapper is a nice old pony who delivers our mail. He flies by once every few days, always saying, “Hello,” and, “How are you?” Everything mom says nice ponies do. She calls him a role model of politeness.
Last year I asked him if he gave Hearth’s Warming presents. He said he just delivered them, but he forwarded my wishlist all the same.
Mister Flapper is old, though not ancient. His eyes are bright like mine, and even though he has a ton of grey hairs and a hunchy back he still carries two saddlebags full of letters day in and day out. He’s got strength. He’s got real pegasus wings.
That’s why I don’t feel so bad about what I’m gonna make him do.
First, I find a box big enough for a filly. Lucky for me, there’s one in a trash can a few houses down.
Next, working in the secrecy of my bedroom, I mark the address in bright red crayon. Halfway through writing a return address like mom said you should, I realize I didn’t leave enough room to get it all down. So I scribble it out with red crayon, just so everypony knows it doesn’t count.
Next, I stock it with a bottle of water--just in case I have to wait awhile.
Next, I hop in and seal myself inside with tape.
Then, I realize I should have gone out to the curb before sealing myself in.
Next, I kick and tear a hole in one side of the box. I have to rip the last bit out with my teeth before I’m able to fit through. The taste is awful, and I have to use some of my water bottle to wash it out of my mouth. Things are already going wrong!
Next, I patch the hole in the package with duct tape.
Next, I walk the package out to the curb.
Next, I seal myself in.
Finally, I wait.
As I’m waiting, I think about my plan. If everything else goes right, Mister Flapper will take me to the next neighborhood over and drop me off at the house of one of my flight school classmates, Rainbow Dash. Dash will be too busy napping to notice the arrival of a package, so I won’t have to worry about her telling her parents--not that she ever would.
Once I land, I’ll kick and tear and bite my way out again. I’ll make my way to the edge of the neighborhood and then fly my way back. Since I don’t know the layout of Dash’s neighborhood, I’ll have to fly if I want to navigate my way back.
The plan ends there. If I put myself in a situation where my wings have to work, they’ll have no choice but to unfurl. I’ll get my real pegasus wings, finally.
It’s a long wait before Mister Flapper picks me up. While I’m in the box, I sit patiently and picture all the different species and genuses of butterfly that I can remember from my books. I don’t even run out. There’s that many different kinds of butterfly.
When Mister Flapper finally arrives and picks up the box, my heart soars into my throat like it just found its real pegasus wings. The rest of me doesn’t, though, which is disappointing.
Mister Flapper paces around the box for a moment. He pokes the duct tape patch job on the one side, then waits a long moment on the side where the address is printed. He’s probably having a hard time reading it, what with all the scratching off I had to do.
The next moment, I feel the ground shift beneath me, then disappear.
Though I can’t see outside my box, I can tell we’re in the air. I guess it’s a pegasus instinct. I can also tell that Mister Flapper is struggling a little to balance the box, which I assume he’s carrying in his hooves. I feel kinda bad, but this plan of mine is all so new and exciting and scary I hardly have any room in my mind left to contemplate it.
It feels like it’s forever before we touch back down. The box skids a little, sending me tumbling into the side. Mister Flapper grumbles under his breath. I’ve never heard him grumble before. Today is turning out to be a day of many firsts.
Everything in my brain is telling me to get out of the box, but I hold my breath and wait until I’m absolutely sure Mister Flapper has flown off. Finally, I tear away the duct tape covering the hole in the side of the box and emerge, bleary-eyed and stumbling, into the sun.
It takes a few minutes for me to regain my bearings. I’m not sure how high up I was, but it sure did a number on my tummy.
When everything feels right again, I go over the plan again in my head. Fly up. Regain bearings. Fly home. Real pegasus wings. I repeat the whole list in my head several times.
Repetition fails to make me fly.
I go through the exhausting process of prying my wings off my sides what feels like a hundred times. When I relax enough to unfurl them, they’re too loose to fly. When I jump up and flap them, they slap right back to my sides. Jump, flap, slap. Jump, flap, slap.
After twenty minutes of trying, tears are brimming in my eyes. With every failed attempt to fly the rows of cloud yards and cloud houses get more confounding. Just looking down the street makes me dizzy. Eveything is so huge. How am I supposed to find my way home if everything is so huge? I would have to fly up so high to see clearly. Higher than even Mister Flapper had carried me. I’d have to fly all the way up into space, and even if I made it up there somehow I’d float away into nothing before I could find my way home, and I’d be stuck in space forever. Floating in space didn’t count as flying--everything in space floats. I probably can’t even float right. I’d plummet back to earth as a meteorite and make a big Fluttershy-shaped crater in the ground.
I crawl back into my box and sob a little. Tight quarters are comforting. No sky above me. No drop below. It feels safe and solid.
The ray of sunlight coming through the hole in my box marks the passing of time. When the yellow afternoon glow goes away, leaving darker evening oranges behind, I crawl back out. My whole body is exhausted, but I try one final time to fly. I jump, flap, slap.
This time I add an extra step--give up for good.
I trudge over to Rainbow Dash’s house and ring the doorbell.
Dash peeks her head outside. “Oh, hey Fluttershy,” she says in her squeaky voice. “Were we supposed to have a playdate or something? It’s kinda late.” Her ears perked up. “Did your mom finally say we can have a sleepover?”
I shake my head. “I tried to fly, and--I had this plan.” A lump forms in my throat. It takes me by surprise. I thought I was all cried out. “I was going to come here and then fly home.”
“Did it work?”
“No. I wouldn’t have flown back just to tell you it worked. Oh--not that I don’t want to see you or anything. I probably couldn’t have.”
Dash nods knowingly. “Do you need me to fly you back?”
I shake my head.
“It’s no big deal. I can just carry you.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s nice out. I’ll walk.”
“All the way back?” Dash scrunched up her nose. “The bridge is like a mile up the road. Let me fly you. You’ll be home again in ten seconds, flat.”
The lump in my throat doubles in size, and the more I think about what she’s saying the more it hurts. She’s got her real pegasus wings. It would be no problem for her to do what I can’t do to save my life.
I look down at the clouds and kick a tuft up. “Really, it’s fine. My parents might be mad if I’m home late, but I’ll just tell them--”
Dash tackles me. I squeak and screw my eyes shut. My stomach drops, then leaps, then turns over and over like it did when I tumbled out the window.
My next thought is weightlessness. I open my eyes to see the ground speeding by ten lengths below me. Dash has her arms wrapped around my midsection so I’m pressed awkwardly against her.
I can feel her heart beating. Her real pegasus wings make it strong.
When I get home, I say goodbye to Dash (who didn’t tell her mom she was going out, the daredevil), race to my bedroom, and lock myself inside all night. I don’t even come down for dinner when my parents call. They try to come in, but I shoo them away, and after awhile they let me be. In a way I’m grounding myself for being so silly.
Sleep steals me for a little while.
When I wake up, it’s the next morning. My tears have fled, and they’ve taken my sadness with them. I’m not sure how emotions can be so powerful but so temporary. When I glide down the stairs and ask them how feelings work, they’re left at a loss for words. They must be really powerful if not even parents can explain them.
The memories of yesterday are no longer tinged with sadness. I think back to them as I eat breakfast. Failure is oddly motivating. It creates an anger that makes you want to never go through another failure ever again. Maybe this is how Rainbow Dash feels when she crashes. Maybe that’s how she found her real pegasus wings. Trial and error. Crashing and getting back up time after time, until her real wings sprouted from inside her and she took flight.
Maybe it’ll happen to me. Maybe today. Maybe this afternoon, when Mister Flapper comes by to pick up the mail.
When my breakfast is complete, I set off to find another box.
With the experience of my first trip under my belt, it takes almost no time at all to outfit my new box. Before I seal myself in, I stylize the interior walls with crayon-drawn birds and butterflies. On the floor, I use up my brown crayon on several beetles and a squirrel with a bushy tail. If I get scared, he can keep me company.
The flight is bumpier this time. I brace my legs against the sides of the box and press my face into my squirrel companion. His unblinking eyes and wax-drawn fur offer little comfort.
All of a sudden, the box shifts again. All my weight gets thrown against one side of the box. My leg dents the wall. Butterflies buckle. I freeze. It takes all of my courage not to cry out.
Then, like a boat caught in an ocean storm, the box rocks back and forth again. This time, my leg breaks through the cardboard. I try desperately to pull it back in, but the box is tipped in such a way that I have no leverage.
I hang there for a moment, crushed against the side of my cardboard prison, wind biting my one leg. Then, finally, Mister Flapper rights himself, and I slide back. I hit the other side of the box and let out a small, “Oof.”
Instantly I snap my hooves over my mouth, but it’s too late. My stomach lurches forward. The blurry landscape visible through the hole in my box halts.
Above me, I hear Mister Flapper say, “What the devil?” He rotates the package until he can get a good view of the hole. “Is somepony in there?” I curl up with my squirrel companion, whose fur smears on my cheek. Evidently, he can feel my movement. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he mutters, and starts towards the ground.
When we land, he wastes no time opening my box and hauling me out. I’ve never seen Mister Flapper anything other than radiantly happy. Annoyance looks foreign on his face. His eyebrows are bunching up sort of like Dad’s, except this time I know I shouldn’t laugh or I’ll get in even worse trouble.
“What are you doing?” Mister Flapper asks me. “Do you know shipping yourself is dangerous? What if I had dropped you?”
“I knew you wouldn’t,” I whimpered.
Some of his anger deflates. “That was very irresponsible of you.” He glances at the shipping address on the side of the box. “You could have walked to the other neighborhood, dear. There’s a bridge.”
“I needed to fly.”
“What?” He leans in. “You have to speak up.”
“I needed to fly,” I say, louder this time.
The anger in his face changes into something else. It’s a strange look, like the look on a grown-up’s face when a foal gets their cutie mark. I look at my flank, and no cutie mark has appeared. So what’s making Mister Flapper look at me like that?
He kneels down next to me and puts a hoof on my shoulder. “You have a funny way of flying,” he says. “Do your parents know you’re out here?”
I shake my head. “I don’t really care about flying, Mister Flapper. I just want my real pegasus wings.”
“Real wings?”
“Not the ones that make you fly.” I tap my chest. “The ones that lift you up.”
He opens his mouth to speak, but the first few thoughts get all jumbled up. Finally he settles on an adult-ish, “I’m taking you home to your parents, now.”
I hang my head. This failure is almost as bitter as the last one. “Yes, Mister Flapper.”
“And you’re not going to ride in a box. It’s simply too dangerous.”
“Yes, Mister Flapper.”
“So...” He grunts and laid down. “You’ll have to hop on my back.”
I look up, my heart fluttering with excitement. No one but mom and dad have ever let me ride on their back before. Even then, it was only to ride around the yard and take me on errands. “Really?” I ask.
“Really. I’ve still got to tell your parents, though.”
“Oh.” The flutter fades. For a moment I thought I was about to sprout real pegasus wings, but I guess it won’t be today. With a dutiful nod from Mister Flapper, I climb onto his back and throw my arms around his neck. I feel his heartbeat through his soft fur. The heartbeat of a strong pegasus.
“Okay, hang on now,” he says, and leaps into the air.
The wind beats against my face immediately. Flight feels so much faster when you’re not stuck in a box. So much more real. So much more scary. I keep my eyes shut the whole way home, and only allow myself to open them once I felt the turbulent motions of flight come to an end.
Mister Flapper sets me down in front of the house and walks to the door. I follow him silently, still somewhat dazed from the flight. My mane is everywhere and my eyes won’t stop watering, and the flutter I felt has transformed my heartbeat into a hurricane, and I am gonna be in so much trouble.
But even if it’s only sort-of flight, I’m still one step closer to the real thing.
My grounding lasts for two whole weeks. It feels like two weeks’ worth of years’ worth of lifetimes’ worth of infinities. By the end of the first week, even Mister Flimsy is bored--and he can’t even move!
I notice my parents keeping closer tabs on me once my grounding is over. It seems so unfair to make them work extra to keep me in line. I don’t like to make trouble. But I feel compelled. I have to do something.
My parents, while keeping great tabs on me and my whereabouts, fail to watch out for filly-sized boxes lying around. When a package from our distant family in Whinneapolis arrives, they put the box by the recycling bin and leave it there, unguarded. That is their big mistake.
This time I decorate the box to be as stealthy as possible. I borrow a black pen from Zephyr and wrote the address in cursive, just like mom does it. I put the hole in the bottom of the box so you can’t see it on first glance. No stickers rainbows this time, either--not even a squirrel or beetle on the inside. This is no time to be flashy. This is serious business.
I wait patiently in my box until I hear the sound of Mister Flapper arriving on his route. He trots around the box once, noting the fancy mouthwritten address in black ink and the lack of filly-sized holes and the undecorated sides of the box itself. I hold my breath.
The top of the package pops open. Sunlight hits me. I squeak and try to dart out the hole in the bottom, but since it’s facing down I get nowhere with a faceful of cloud to show for it.
“Out you go,” Mister Flapper commands. I comply slowly, hanging my head low. I hope this grounding doesn’t last as long as the last one.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble.
“What? Dear, you have to speak up.”
“I’m sorry for trying to trick you,” I say.
“But you still tried to trick me,” he replies. “Three times, now.”
I have no answer. My hooves kick up little tufts of cloud. I feel so weak, so useless. I can feel Mister Flapper looking at me. One day, I hope I have a stare as strong as him.
Instead of yelling at me, Mister Flapper kneels beside me. “Listen here. I can take you back to your parents, and they’ll probably ground you again. Or you can sit here for a minute and let me give you a piece of advice, and we’ll call things even.”
I look up. Hope flutters in my heart. Maybe I won’t get grounded again after all. “Can I choose the second one?”
He laughs in that low and slow kind of way older ponies do when they catch a foal’s hoof in the cookie jar. “Only if you tell me first why you’re trying to ship yourself to the other neighborhood.”
I fumble for a response. The right words won’t present themselves. The failure to fly infects my attempts to speak. Finally, I eek out, “If I go over there, then I have to fly back here. I have to fly.” I sniffle a little. “I need real wings.”
Mister Flapper nods. “Way back when I was young, I had trouble flying too. It was my mother who taught me how to fly. But I was scared then, too.”
“You were scared of flying too?” I ask, astonished. “But you fly for a living!”
“I know. I’ve come a long way. When my mom encouraged me, she told me that no matter how far I fly, no matter how high up in the air I get, if I keep my wings open and put all my trust in them, they’ll carry me safely to the ground.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, these wings of ours are just flappy chicken wings and feathers.” He shook his wings out, and I laughed. “They can make you fly, but they can’t give you the courage you need to take off.” He looks up, and I follow suit. “The sky and the clouds and the air in between--that’s where you’ll find all the courage you need.”
Mister Flapper’s advice doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and I think he senses it. He reminds me to recycle my box and sends me off to my house. I break the box down quietly and slip it into its original resting place by the trash bin before sneaking back inside. My parents are still at the breakfast table sipping their coffee, none the wiser.
I feel like I’ve gotten away with something I shouldn’t have. It feels nasty. I go to my room and sit by the window for a long time, trying to remember exactly what Mister Flapper said. Old people are supposed to be super wise, but all that wisdom isn’t so clear to me right now.
I figure, if I do what old people do, maybe it’ll put me in the right frame of mind. So I sit around for a bit and stare into space.
As I’m sitting there, I look at the swirly tufts of cloud forming my earth. Somewhere between those clouds and the big blue sky, Mister Flapper thinks my real pegasus wings are hiding.
Time rolls along. The more I stare, the more it starts to make sense. My real pegasus wings aren’t on the clouds, where I’m stuck right now. They’re not in the sky either. No matter how much I tried to convince myself that’s where I belong, I just don’t and never will. I’m no natural-born flyer. But I’m still a pegasi. Where does that leave me?
As slowly as clouds drift through the sky, an idea takes shape in my mind.
I creep down the stairs silently as a mouse to check on my parents. They’re still sitting at the table, engrossed in the paper. Down the hall, Zephyr is still in his room.
I shut my bedroom door slowly and zip over to the window. I prop it open, and a wave of warm, sweet air rushes through the room. I wish this moment could last a hundred years.
As my plan takes shape, so too does Mister Flapper’s strange advice. It was never about flying. Real pegasus wings can’t keep you up in the air. Real pegasus wings are the bravery of that first frightening leap into space. Not quite in the air. Not quite on the ground. Though I may have to fall to find them, they’re not out of reach.
I grab Mister Flimsy from his perch on the bed, whisper an apology to his family, and throw him out the window. He hands with a soft thud on the clouds below.
“Oh no,” I say loudly. “Mister Flimsy fell again! I have to help him.”
I hop up onto the windowsill. The height is scary, but I remember what Mister Flapper said. The sky and the clouds and the air in between--that’s where you’ll find all the courage you need. His words keep me focused.
I relax my back, and my wings unfurl. Trust in them, I think. Your wings can make you fly, but only your real pegasus wings can make you leap from your perch in the first place.
Momentum takes hold, and I take off.
