Life Is Only Real When You Are Near

The next day Rainbow got serious about Derpy.

After a morning shower, hot, and light breakfast, milk and oats, Rainbow stood in the entrance hall, looking from the window left to the main door, waiting for the mailmare to arrive. She didn’t have any special delivery. She just wanted to leave worry free, secure that her daily news were inside her home, not outside under the influence of winds.

When she saw Derpy zigzagging, wobbling, through the sky Rainbow couldn’t hold back her smile. It wasn’t a cruel grin, of all innocence bereft, but the smile of a friend giggling at the antiques of one’s old buddy who despite graduating from school decades ago still had that juvenile gay touch. Rainbow guessed it was Derpy’s optimism which in the beginning she had thought as foolishness but later recognized as a life approach. She should really get to know her.

What surprised Rainbow this day was Derpy’s companion who followed Derpy in her twisting path across the morning sky, cloudless and light blue, and carried the maroon bag filled with newspapers in her hooves.

Dying from curiosity, Rainbow didn’t wait till the mailpony and her friend landed. She went outside to greet them.

“Ocellus, what are you doing with Derpy?” Rainbow asked the landing changeling.

Ocellus put her feet on the cloud, folded her inner wings, thin as gossamer, shimmering like silk, then her carapace and said, “It’s trade month, teacher Rainbow Dash. Did you forget?”

Rainbow tilted her head and rubbed her neck. “I was kinda busy with the Wonderbolts to get the latest news. On the bright side, you had pretty short days, thanks to me.”

“Headmaster Twilight said that we, nonponies, must observe ponies at their every day work to get a deeper knowledge of pony culture. The next month the pony students will examine ours.”

Rainbow looked at Derpy standing near Ocellus, happy, smiling, eyes shining, a folded paper under her right wing.

“Don’t get it the wrong way, but why did you choose the postal services?”

“It’s the safest, quietest, job out there,” Ocellus said.

“Why not librarian?”

“Yona got it first. This one’s not bad, either.”

Ocellus took the paper from underneath Derpy’s wings then presented it to Rainbow Dash. “Here’s your Daily Eagle.”

Rainbow stretched her hooves, ready for the take, when a strong gust of wind accidentally blew from right to left. The newspaper flew, flitting, swirling, into the air and went down slowly to the hills and troughs beneath Rainbow's personal cloud.

“I’ll get it,” Ocellus said, turning left, spreading her wings.

When Ocellus shifted her hooves she tripped over the newspapers’ bag, toppled, and fell down from Rainbow’s porch. The straps of the newspaper's purse tensed around the changeling's legs and then he bag rolled to the side and in a flash disappeared beneath the border of the cloud.

In less than a second Rainbow was airborne and tense. After a single look down, however, she exhaled and relaxed. Derpy held Ocellus in her left hoof and the newspaper bag, brown, swollen, with papers pregnant, in her right.

With eyes wide open Rainbow watched how Derpy put Ocellus with utmost care on the white patio in front of her home. Derpy had been nothing but a blur a few moments ago. In a blink she had disappeared. Another blink and she had already caught Ocellus, who hadn't even had the time to spread her wings, and the purse.

“Sorry,” Ocellus said, her voice so quiet almost a murmur in the wind. She rolled her forelegs over each other and did her best to avoid Derpy’s crooked gaze.

Instead of showing annoyance, even a tiniest bit of a frown, Derpy patted Ocellus on her neck.

“It’s okay,” she said. “When we’ll get back to the office I tell you about my first day. It was a terrible disaster. Now let’s get going.”

“Hey, before you go, can I ask you something?” Rainbow quickly said.

“Yes, of course.”

“Would you like to train with me?”

It was Derpy’s turn to open wide her eyes and stare at Rainbow in total shock.

“Why? I’m not a good flier at all,” she said, eyes darting left and right, ears pressed to her head.

Ocellus nudged Derpy beneath her wing. “That’s not true. You caught me before I could even open my wings and you caught the bag before it spilled all the newspapers. You’re a good flier. If Rainbow sees that, then it’s true.”

“She is right,” Rainbow said, then put her right foreleg on Derpy’s shoulder. “So, how about today at five?”

Derpy nodded, coyly.

“Then it’s set,” Rainbow, smiling, said. “Thanks for the newspaper. See you later. Be more careful, Ocellus.”

Ocellus nodded, then spread her carapace and wings. With a quiet flap she lifted herself in the air, then flew across the rolling hills and fields towards Ponyville, a conglomeration of red dots and stripes of gray smoke floating up and disappearing into the air so far to be almost near the horizon, looking microscopically small against the background of the sole snow capped mountain of Canterlot.

“I’ll make sure to have the bag from now on. See you,” Derpy said and with a powerful swing of wings catapulted herself next to her young and alien student.

Rainbow closed the door, thick and sturdy, made from magically thickened and hardened clouds, and smiled at the thought of training Derpy. There was something magical and wonderful in seeing that unlucky mare with wrongfully tilted eyes smile. Rainbow hoped she would manage to make Derpy smile more.