Author's Note

So, I talk about this a lot, and it's very true when I say this plot just smacked me in the face. The idea started out as an RP idea to do with a friend, and coincidentally I've been working on my own novel in my free hours, and I realized I could somewhat enmesh the two ideas. So most of this chapter is from that novel, but edited, of course, for MLP purposes.

I don't know where this story will go in the meantime, but I know how it ends. I don't know when I will update next, but if providence favors me perhaps the next chapter will come tonight. If nothing else, I will try and update regularly. Hope you all enjoy it :3

The Nearly Empty Nest Blues

The maternal instinct is one unequaled in human nature. For mothers everywhere, that is the one truth in life that cannot be questioned. From the moment they feel their child growing inside of them, from the first ultrasound to the first kick, and finally the moment they are able to feel their child’s touch, the overwhelming love and newfound protectiveness is one that cannot be quantifiably measured by man. The need to protect, to love, to nurture their baby is intense and strong. More than that, the sudden intensity of needing them to need her is one that cannot be understated. The depths of a mother’s love can sometimes border on insanity, but their reasoning for their actions, whatever they may be, is rooted in that love and that instinct to protect and be needed.

The one enemy to all mothers, however old or young, was time. Too much of it, too little of it, and the inability to stop it. So many times, they wish they could rewind it, or freeze a moment of it and live in it forever, or even fast forward it when their child was going through a difficult stage. But the passage of time was a source of fear for every mother, because although they knew change in time was inevitable, the knowledge of it’s passing, of their children growing up and not needing them anymore, was a source of constant anxiety and pressure. The need to make every moment perfect, to remember every little thing because they knew someday all they would have would be their memories, was so pressing that many times they felt as though they might break.

Such were the feelings of Sky Streak, mother to Soarin, the famed Wonderbolt. As she looked out the window on the bright, sunny day playing outside, she couldn’t help but think that it greatly contrasted her mood. Her mind was brooding, stuck in the past with the knowledge that her present was so far away from it. There was an ineffable sadness in her, one that perhaps every mother on the planet felt when their child was getting close to the time of leaving home. Memories of her little boy played on her mind. It seemed like only yesterday she had brought her little Soarin into the world, and was doing everything for him, and now her baby boy was spending his last weeks at home before he would move into his own place.

The sense of time passing her by stirred up an innate restlessness for Sky. The need to do something plagued her like a sort of recurring nightmare. She desperately wanted some more time with her son, but as was the par for these sorts of things, her son only wanted to spend time with his friends and go to practice. It was only natural, she supposed, her little boy growing up. Certainly it meant that she had done her job if she had prepared her son for the world, and he could now care for himself. But all the time, as steady as the beating of her own heart, the desperate desire to be needed cried out in her mind. Many a time she had been able to simply tamp it down, but today, alone in her home, the voice would not be silenced.

That voice, the one crying out for her to be needed again, was what was entrapping her in her memories of the past. She could recall so vividly her little boy at age one, babbling up at her with curious joy in his eyes as he discovered a brightly colored building block, or at age four, playing in the yard and getting a scrape from flying too quickly toward the ground and asking her to kiss it better. Those moments, so precious and so fleeting, were all she had to hold onto. No longer did her son need her help with such simple things. It felt like, lately, he hadn’t needed her at all. Soarin flew, cooked, had a job, and could do laundry. Could being the operative word, because when Sky had come to his room the evening before to bring him some boxes for his things, she had found a pile of dirty clothes in the hamper that had yet to be washed. Said clothes were now hanging on the clothesline to dry, and would soon be put back into the hamper, and left in her son’s room for her to fold and put away.

The restlessness inside of her finally pushed her to the point of needing to move. She crossed the house to the back door, and got out to the clothesline. After feeling everything to make sure it was dry, she took the clothespins off one by one, hefted the clothes into the hamper, went back toward the house, and closed the back door with a resounding smack. Dully, she made her way to her son’s room, all the while desperately wishing for something to happen.

Aside from the few and varied objects strewn across the floor, the surfaces in the room were fairly clean. Everything was dusted, and things were in their rightful place. There was a collection of glasses on his nightstand, never rinsed out. He drank a lot of water, as he should considering his job, and had eight glasses there, filled to the brim in the morning and then slowly emptied throughout the day to make sure his fluid intake was sufficient. This didn’t include the water he drank at his work, of course, but that was another story. A few books and pens were on the floor, having fallen from the bookshelf and desk. A stray toy, the one vestige from his childhood that Soarin had chosen to keep (a purple stuffed dog named “Doggie Do” he’d gotten at the age of five not long after the Daring Do series had begun) was also on the floor. When she set the hamper down on his bed, she picked up the old toy and felt a twinge of sadness in her heart at seeing it there. Certainly, she was glad he’d kept it, but to see it uncared for and unloved after once being the focal point of his life was more than a little saddening for her. She wondered, maybe a bit morbidly, if he would leave this behind when he moved out. His childhood would be entirely left behind, with not even one keepsake to remember it by.

Sighing, she held the toy gingerly, and set it lovingly back in it’s place, wishing desperately that things wouldn’t end. Feeling her sense of purposeless particularly acutely in this room, she was quick to make her exit and start on lunch.