“Name,” the Crystal Guard politely demanded.
“Uh... Scootaloo. I have a summons here to be a Cutie Mark Counselor for Princess Flurry Heart.” Scootaloo rummaged in her travel satchel with her muzzle before producing the endorsement. The Crystal Guard levitated the note out of her teeth and skimmed it over for signs of forgery.
“Whoa, did Princess Sparkle herself write this?” Awe was apparent in the Guard’s voice.
“Who now?” It took a moment for Scootaloo to interpret the title. “Oh! You’re talking about Twilight. Yeah, my surrogate sister is real close to her, so I guess when Twilight found out her niece needed a tutor…”
The Crystal Guard’s initial awe was visibly evaporating at Scootaloo’s list of personal connections.
“Um,” Scootaloo fumbled, “not that I got this job due to nepotism or anything.”
The Crystal Guard nodded disdainfully at this unkempt pegasus who’d been gifted a higher paid position than him. Still, her identification papers matched her Cutie Mark. That was all that technically mattered. He snorted and opened the portcullis so Scootaloo could trudge through with her head down.
Once the outer door to the castle keep slammed behind her, Scootaloo buzzed her undersized wings. It was a nervous coping mechanism she did whenever she got agitated.
“I’m a good pony,” she whispered to the empty foyer. “Not cheater at the game of life.” Despite the weak self-affirmations, Scootaloo’s mood wasn’t recovering. The guard’s contempt had hit her low and hard. Because after all, if her personal connections weren’t what got her here, what did?
Hoofsteps echoed off the dazzling walls and Princess Cadence herself hurried in. Scootaloo straightened her posture, determined to make this exchange more reassuring than the last one.
“You must be Scootaloo from Ponyville!” the Queen of the Crystal Empire cried, joyously crossing the room towards her daughter’s new tutor. “Twilight wrote ahead. I’m so pleased to meet you!”
Scootaloo bowed to Cadence, as was customary for a commoner to greet a Princess. “We actually did kinda sorta meet once,” she commented. “When I was a flower filly for you and Shining Armor’s wedding.”
Cadence tapped her lip thoughtfully. “You were? Well, it’s certainly been awhile, then.”
“Over ten years.” So much for reassurance. "Look, it’s okay that you don’t remember me, Princess.”
“I promise, it’s definitely not okay,” Cadence insisted. “I strive to know and care for all my little ponies, from long ago flower fillies to my own flesh and blood daughter. Oh! That reminds me, I should probably take you to her.”
Scootaloo nodded and followed her new liege up the stairs.
“These are the living quarters of the castle,” Cadence explained as they climbed. “Which is why I made a point to meet you myself instead of just sending a waitstaff escort. Sure, I may be high royalty to the citizens outside, but in here I’m a wife and mother first. And you’re the very welcome guest whom I hope will help bring Flurry out of her shell.”
The sight of Cadence’s perfectly styled mane swishing as she walked made Scootaloo painfully aware of how uncombed her own was. And the less she dwelled on those voluminous, Alicorn-sized wings, the better.
“Thank you for giving me this opportunity,” Scootaloo said, wincing as her voice cracked.
“Thank you for accepting it,” Cadence replied as the two of them reached the top of the stairs. “And we can both thank Twilight Sparkle for connecting us, one to another.”
“Yes,” Scootaloo murmured, her wings buzzing again. “I’m here because of Twilight.”
Cadence failed to hear that defeated remark over her own knocking on an ornate bedroom door.
“Your Cutie Mark Counselor is here, Flurry Heart. We’re coming in.”
An anxious yelp echoed from inside, followed by a thud. Mother and tutor exchanged glances before Cadence tutted dismissively and pushed open the door.
“Wait, No! Hold on, I was almost ready!” A pink blur roughly the size and shape of a filly fled to a walk-in closet built into the far wall.
“Flurry,” Cadence scolded from the entryway, “I told you to pick up your room before I came back.”
“I did,” the closet whined.
“There’re clothes everywhere!”
“There weren’t until you scared me into knocking over the armoire!”
Peering over Cadence’s shoulder, Scootaloo saw that a tall armoire was indeed lying on its side in the middle of the rug, contents strewn about like the aftermath of one of Rarity’s failed sewing sessions.
“I’ll prop the dresser thingy back up,” Scootaloo volunteered, trotting over to it.
“Oh? Are you sure?” Cadence’s horn glowed, her nonverbal offer to telekinetically lift it.
“Yep. Totally sure,” Scootaloo tossed her travel pack onto a chair. “I’m stronger than I look.”
With an unfeminine grunt, Scootaloo propped the armoire up on her withers. Flurry Heart’s permed head poked out from the closet depths and watched wide-eyed as Scootaloo heaved up a piece of furniture nearly three times her own size. Cadence was smirking cryptically by the time Scootaloo’s labor ended.
“Well, it appears you two have everything completely under control. I’ll leave you to it.” The door eased shut and confident hoofsteps retreated down the hall. Scootaloo stared for a moment at the spot Cadence had been. Then she turned around to face her new client.
“Hello there, Princess Flurry Heart.”
“Flurry. Just Flurry.” The filly’s head was still protruding from the walk in closet. She hadn’t made any move to re-enter the bedroom, but hadn’t retreated at all either.
“Well ‘Just Flurry,’ is there any particular order that these things need to be hung up in?” Scootaloo gestured to the clothes still littering the floor. When Flurry Heart shook her head, Scootaloo began gathering the garments up one by one and draping them over her outstretched wings. When she ran out of space (which didn’t take long, given their stunted size) Scootaloo trotted back to the armoire, hung her haul on hangers, then went back to gather more. “You have a lotta coats and jackets,” she observed.
“Mm-hm,” Flurry Heart’s head replied. “It gets cold in the Crystal Empire.”
It took less than a minute for Scootaloo to gather and replace everything. When she finished, she saw Flurry had been telling the truth earlier: the room was spotless.
Well, almost spotless.
“Hey Flurry, there's still one empty hanger out here, What shoul-“
“I’m wearing the garb that goes on it.” Flurry interrupted. “No worries. You can just put it away.” Scootaloo nodded and wordlessly did as she was asked.
“Okay,” the visibly excited foal chittered when Scootaloo was done. “Are you ready to see what I have on?”
Foalhood memories flared in Scootaloo’s mind of Sweetie Belle prancing around the old clubhouse in clothes she’d swiped from Rarity’s workbench. Those impromtu fashion shows had been annoying at the time, but presently Scootaloo was feeling amused anticipation for whatever Flurry Heart was planning. She gave the junior princess a permissive nod.
“Okay, teacher mare. Check this out!”
Flurry loped into the bedroom and posed to show off a maroon shawl. Scootaloo peered quizzically until Flurry pirouetted in place, revealing the insignia on the shawl’s back: A blue shield with a yellow rearing silhouette inside.
“A Cutie… a Cutie Mark Crusader cape,” Scootaloo managed. She was stunned.
“You really like it?” Flurry Heart looked about to burst with pride. “I had one of the servants make it.”
“Uh-huh.” Scootaloo mumbled. It had been a long time since she’d even thought the phrase ‘Cutie Mark Crusader.’ Sure, she certainly saw Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle around the School of Friendship, they were all professional social workers now, not a trio of goofy club members. Seeing somepony emulate an old chapter of her life felt...strange.
Not the bad kind of strange, though.
“It looks good,” Scootaloo finally decided. “But, you know capes only tie at the top, right?”
Flurry Heart glanced down at herself. It was true that while the cape’s upper corners were knotted tight around her neck, the lower corners were knotted even tighter around her abdomen. The result was an uncomfortable-looking bulge on Flurry’s back that made her look like Rainbow Dash's old pet turtle.
“Oh,” the Princess said sheepishly. “Yeah, I was just… hm.” She wasn’t making eye contact.
“Flurry Heart,” Scootaloo said gently. “You don’t have to hide your flank from me. Cutie Marks - or I guess lack of one, in your case - are my specialty. It’s okay.”
Flurry Heart didn’t say anything, instead bending her gaskins a bit to expose her hips. It appeared she actually did have a Cutie Mark: one that matched the Empire’s most famed treasure, the Crystal Heart.
“Huh,” Scootaloo remarked in surprise. “Okay, scratch the blank flank assumption. That was my bad. Guess we’ll be skipping all the skill-search exercises I’d outlined.”
Flurry Heart stood where she was, looking forlorn. “I’m sorry,” she said meekly.
“Sorry? For what, being ahead of the curve?” Scootaloo sat on her haunches and rolled her shoulders to relax them. “There’s way more to special talents than just getting the coveted butt stamp; In fact, there’s a lifelong process of practicing and keeping your skills sharp once you discover them. And I would know, cuz my talent is helping other ponies do just that.”
Flurry Heart looked slightly encouraged. Slightly. “So you’re okay with me?” she ventured.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
The young princess didn’t answer. She just looked away, tugging subconsciously at the neck of the cape still bound tight around her barrel.
“I can tell that thing’s bothering you,” Scootaloo observed. “You don’t have to wear it for my sake, you know.”
Flurry inhaled anxiously and held it for a moment.
“Fine” she finally relented in a voice that was so wobbly, Scootaloo felt her ears prick with concern.
“Flurry..?” she inquired.
“Buck it!” the young princess cursed with sudden bitter resignation. “I don’t know why I even tried hiding them in the first place.”
Scootaloo hopped to her hooves in concerned alarm, but before she could ask what was the matter, Flurry Heart arched her back and two very well developed appendages burst from underneath the cape, sending a gust through the bedroom. Scootaloo wasn’t sure what surprised her more, this pair of wings whose combined span was more than twice their owner’s height, or the expression of absolute shame on Flurry Heart’s face having finally revealed her full self.
“I’m sorry,” the princess whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Completely at a loss as to why Flurry Heart looked like she was about to cry, Scootaloo nevertheless wrapped her forelimbs around the foal and pulled her close. “I’m sorry,” Flurry’s shaking voice repeated from the folds of her tutor’s embrace.
“Shhh,” Scootaloo cooed. “You haven’t done anything wrong squirt, I promise. Kinda curious what’s got those big honking feathers of yours all ruffled though.”
Flurry Heart looked up, bewildered. “Wait, you don’t hate me now?”
“Flurry!” Scootaloo gasped. “We just met, and you seem like a real sweet kid. Why in Equestria would you be so worried that I wouldn’t like you, let alone hate you?”
Flurry burrowed her head into Scootaloo’s shoulder and began blathering. “It’s just that I’m a princess with a Cutie Mark and big wings and a pretty face and parents who are always there for me, but you...” she hiccuped anxiously. “You… you didn’t have any of those things at my age and it’s not fair. If I was you, I would hate me. I would hate my guts for all of that.”
“Wait, hold on,” Scootaloo said, barely keeping up. “How did you find out all that stuff about me?”
Flurry swallowed nervously. “Fr-from Aunt Twilight.”
“You had Twilight tell you all about me after she picked me to be your tutor?”
“Huh-uh,” Flurry Heart shook her head vigorously. “I had Aunt Twilight tell me all about you because I wanted you to be my tutor.”
Now there was a surprise. Scootaloo thought Twilight had simply assigned her this position on a whim. Never had she imagined she’d been specifically requested by Flurry Heart herself.
“But why?” Scootaloo asked. “Don’t get me wrong squirt. I’m flattered, really I am, but why me?”
“Are you kidding?!” Flurry Heart broke the hug, galloped over to a desk drawer and pulled out a wrinkled old flyer. “Because you’re awesome! You carried the flag at the Equestria Games when you were even younger than me right now,” Flurry presented the flyer with a faded but visible image of Scootaloo from almost a decade ago when she was the flag bearer for Ponyville. “And you wrote and performed music even before that!”
Scootaloo cringed at the second pamphlet Flurry Heart produced. It showed Scootaloo and her friends in the gaudy glam rock outfits they wore during a long ago school talent show. She quietly thanked Faust that Flurry hadn’t been born at the time of the performance; their singing had been so bad it very well could’ve been heard anywhere in Equestria. “And then there was the time you caught that infamous Apploosa outlaw, and that other time where you did a rocket stunt with the Washouts and that other time where you organized a camp for blank flank foals…”
“Hey, settle down squirt. I think you have a kind of inflated idea of me.”
A look of defiant shock passed over Flurry Heart’s face. She looked like she’d just been told blasphemy.
“N...no!” she declared. “No! You don't see it all from the outside, so you… okay, look! Look at this!” Flurry Heart’s horn glowed and she levitated a pressed and preserved newspaper clipping over to let it fall in Scootaloo’s lap.
It was a massive group photo in Ponyville central square, with a young Scootaloo herself in the center.
“Oh my gosh,” she breathed. “This is...”
Scootaloo remembered the time her parents were going to relocate her out of Ponyville to live with them. As a last ditch effort to dissuade the move, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle organized the entire town to come out in support of keeping the Cutie Mark Crusaders together. ‘Scootaloo Day’, they’d called it. And sure, the event made the local newspaper (an archived copy of which was now sitting in her lap), but all the hurrah was summarily forgotten afterwards.
At least, Scootaloo thought it had been forgotten.
“You got a whole parade because you did so many amazing things that ponies from all over showed up because you touched their lives, and I… I…” the babbled praise coming from Flurry Heart’s mouth reached its zenith before the filly completely deflated.
“Compared to you, I’m...” she finally fell silent.
Flurry’s tired eyes were fixed longingly on the discarded Crusader Cape on the ground, but it was her wings that drew Scootaloo’s attention. The huge things were reflexively shaking with agitation, just like Scootaloo’s had done when the Crystal Guard had made her feel like a sham of a pony. Like an empty, undeserving product of nepotism.
And Scootaloo realized that an empty, undeserving product of nepotism was what Flurry Heart felt like all the time.
After all, why wouldn’t she? Flurry Heart’s life was a cushy one, but not because she’d worked hard or earned it. Cadence and Shining Armor did love her unconditionally. Twilight was able to send her any tutor she asked for. Not that she needed a support network in the first place; Everypony in Equestria knew Flurry was a prodigy spawned by prodigies. She was the only natural-born alicorn on record, an instinctively talented mage who’d hit the ground running and got her Cutie Mark delivered to her practically gift wrapped.
In her short life, Flurry Heart had visited every mountaintop without ever experiencing the thrill of a climb. And even if she wasn’t old enough to put that regret into words, she clearly felt its emptiness in her gut.
Scootaloo understood completely why this cloistered kid collected and fixated on the old papers strewn about the floor. Papers detailing the life of a crippled Pegasus who’d made a mare of herself from nothing. Yes, Scootaloo grasped why someone like Flurry Heart would feel so inspired but at the same time so ashamed stacked up next to someone like her.
And Scootaloo also understood, probably even more than Flurry herself, what type of ‘tutoring’ this sheltered foal was craving: Tough Love.
“Flurry Heart!” Scootaloo scolded in her best Spitfire impression as she ambled over to the Crusader Cape lying in a heap in the floor. “Is this any way for an aspiring Cutie Mark Crusader to treat their uniform?!”
Flurry blinked uncomprehendingly. “A what now?”
“Don’t ‘what now’ me, missy! Your uniform is on the carpet collecting more dust and lint by the second. Move, move, move!”
Scrambling as fast as she could, the junior princess made it to her homemade cape and scooped it up using one of her oversized wings. Then she looked up at Scootaloo, openly hungry for approval. Those big doughy eyes were almost enough to make Scootaloo break character, but she kept it together.
“Affix it ‘round your neck,” she commanded. Her order was clumsily obeyed.
“Sit!”
Flurry Heart’s rump hit the rug instantly, wings pooled limply on either side of it.
“Hmph.” Scootaloo strutted circles around her cadet, making sure the steps she took were as clownish and exaggerated as possible. Catching on to the game, Flurry Heart pinched her lips tight to keep excited giggles from escaping.
“Don’t you laugh at me, yearling!” Scootaloo tripped over her next words as she worked to reword Cadence’s earlier wisdom into drill-sergeant vernacular. “The othe-ahem!- The other Crystal Ponies might think you’re Hot Manure, but when you’re here with me, your titles mean nothing. Ya hear that? You’re a Parasprite stuck to the bottom of my horseshoe. Still think you’re Cutie Mark Crusader material??”
Once Flurry realized the question wasn’t rhetorical, she nodded resolutely.
“Speak!” Scootaloo demanded.
“I’m Cutie Mark Crusader material, ma’am! I am, I am!”
“Ha!” Scootaloo stopped and bore down over Flurry Heart with all the affected swagger she could muster. “You’ve got a long climb ahead of you, missy!”
“I do?” Flurry’s excitement was palpable.
“You do. It’s gonna take hard work and guts if you wanna get to my level.” Flurry Heart’s eyes grew wider and more dazzled as Scootaloo continued. “You’re gonna fail, fall down, get dirty, and chip your little pedicured hooves on this very long upcoming journey to being worthy of that mark on your flank. Are you prepared to struggle to earn your right to be called a Cutie Mark Crusader?”
“Yes. Oh my gosh, yes I am.”
“I said: Are. You. Prepared. To earn your title of Cutie Mark Crusader?!”
“Ma’am, yes ma’am!”
“Then,” Scootaloo softened back to her regular tone of voice. “Spread those wings and give me a winning smile, squirt.”
Flurry Heart obeyed. She closed her eyes and beamed brightly as her remiges and primaries fanned out behind her like rays from the sun.
To be teased and jostled like any other filly felt more freeing than Flurry could have ever imagined. And for her long-awaited hero to be the one who gave this release to her? Flurry had no words. She simply wanted to keep basking in the moment.
Scootaloo gave a melancholic sigh and glanced down at her own wings. What was she? A parasite caught in a Crystal Guard’s stare? A welcome stranger, as seen by Cadence? Or a fabled hero reflected in the bright, hopeful eyes of Flurry Heart? Scootaloo hoped it was the last one. But even if it wasn’t, well, the cape around Flurry’s neck was proof that anypony could forge a new path whenever they wanted. All they needed was encouragement from a friend.
“Alright squirt, good session. I think that’ll do for today.”
Author's Note
Cinnamon and sugary and softly spoken lies.
We never know quite how we look through other ponies' eyes.
SEQUEL FIC!
EThe Tale of Maredusa
Flurry Heart has requested a very unusual bedtime story. Shining Armor senses something is up, but he also knows that children occasionally come across feelings they don't have words for yet. Books can supply those words.
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