It was easy to blame the bed. Everything could be the bed's fault, because it certainly wasn't hers. She had, in what Scootaloo viewed as the most absolute sense, done nothing wrong. She had done everything right over a period of --
(She didn't think about it.)
-- some time, keeping everything going exactly as it should be. And when the adults had found out, they had come to the same stupid conclusion which so many had reached regarding the Crusade: that a filly who was doing everything right (even if the mark-related subset of those efforts hadn't paid off yet, but Scootaloo knew she was galloping down the correct track) had to be stopped at all costs, because to let her proceed would just prove everypony else had been doing it wrong.
So she could blame the bed, because the bed was there and most of the adults weren't. She hadn't been sleeping well, to the point where she'd been waking up before anypony else in the household -- and since she'd been told to stay on the Acres, that was really saying something. Awake for at least an hour now, because it was the wrong bed and the wrong bedroom, all she could really do was lie stupidly in place because it wasn't her house and watch the yellow body on the other side of the gap, because Apple Bloom could sleep.
But Apple Bloom was in her own bed. Scootaloo wasn't.
She tried to tell herself that it had been a choice. The stupid adults had decided that just because she'd been living on her own for -- a while -- she'd been abandoned. And that was a lie. Her parents mailed her a voucher every moon, and Scootaloo was utterly faithful in how she managed them. They'd never missed a mailing and in turn, she'd never been late on any payment. She was willing to wager that she'd been more careful about such things than some of the adults in town, especially since she was vaguely aware that Caramel existed and had occasionally overheard Rainbow's mutters after the weather coordinator had once again kicked the stallion's romantic advances to the curb, usually followed by the stallion. Caramel missed payments all the time and nopony was forcing him to live in the wrong house.
(She was considerably more aware of what 'eviction' meant, and why it had to be avoided. She wasn't completely sure he was.)
The adults had decided she'd been abandoned, and that was just stupid because the vouchers kept coming and her parents would eventually be right behind them. They could have come back yesterday, and there was always a chance they would appear tomorrow, but Scootaloo felt somewhat good about today. Just as good as she did before starting any part of the Crusade, assuming the talent they --
-- she --
-- was going for wasn't a boring one. The important thing was to dismiss past failures. The past had already happened and if it didn't contain glory and a dual blaze of light along the flanks, nopony should waste any time caring about it. You had to focus on today and tomorrow, which were both times in which her parents could come back and explain.
They would march into town as if they owned the place, because they were both heroes and that was the sort of thing which should really give you town ownership. (Scootaloo felt Rainbow Dash was underplaying things there, and had no idea what the other Bearers were doing.) They would take charge. They would take her back. And if they saw she had her mark, the right mark, the kind of talent which would allow her to deal with the sort of danger explorers faced every day... when they left again because their jobs were so important, they had to travel all the time, had been doing so for --
(She didn't think about it.)
-- they would take her with them.
Today was important. Today was a good day to get her mark. Because they could have come back yesterday, and you could always hope on tomorrow -- but you just never knew about today.
A day which had started long before it should. A day begun in the wrong bed, within the wrong bedroom. On the Acres. Because there had been a choice, and the other option was a cot. The kind you got in an orphanage.
She'd told herself... it would be just like a sleepover. (She hadn't slept over on the Acres much, and was receiving daily reminders about the central reason. The central reason didn't like her.) A few days away from home, and then her parents would arrive because they were coming back any day now. But the most local adults were viewing it another way and naturally, that viewpoint was stupid. Scootaloo knew it was a temporary sleepover, and --
-- the bed was dumb.
It was probably better than a cot, although she wasn't sure it had been the best bed available. The adults had taken it out of storage, and it had occurred to Scootaloo that there were probably at least a few more in various places around the Acres because they had those family reunions (hers could be today, it could always be today) and those ponies needed somewhere to sleep. But it wasn't a bed which knew her. It had no idea how to help her sleep. It certainly hadn't been intended for somepony with wings and was therefore lacking in certain vital skills. It wasn't her bed, and...
...even her bed failed sometimes, because Crusades could end in a lot of ways and most of the ones which didn't involve tree sap finished with bruises. And when Scootaloo was at home (her home, she had been keeping up the payments on it and therefore it had to be hers in some sort of legal way) and couldn't sleep, there had been an easy solution.
She would get up. Trot into her parents' bedroom. Jump up to the mattress (because it was still a jump, but she was getting some boost from the flapping now), settle down near the pillows, in the exact center...
Her daddy slept on the left. Her mother was on the right. She remembered that.
(She thought it had been the left.)
(She could have checked the nightstands. But most of what had been there was in her room.)
So she was... sleeping between them, like she'd done when she was having trouble sleeping as a younger filly. She just had to remember what they felt like. How warm they were. The shelter created by their bodies. She would lie there, trying to remember that, and -- she'd fall asleep.
But she didn't have her own bed. She didn't have their bed.
She would have her parents soon enough, because they would come back with a perfect explanation any day now, and that could always be today. Which meant today was a really good day to get her mark, the right mark, and normally, she would have been staying in the same room as another Crusader, they could have planned all night and had so many things to try during the day, but things had changed when they shouldn't, one of those had put Scootaloo into this stupid bed and...
It was just a sleepover. One which had gone on for a couple of weeks, enough time for the bruises from a strictly-accidental kick to fade. That was all it was supposed to be. But the local adults (and worse, somepony closer) thought it was about something else entirely. Especially Applejack, stupid Applejack, who had responded to Scootaloo's guest status (because that's what she was, a guest) with utter delusion, because it turned out that Honesty was perfectly capable of lying to itself. And that was wrong, so much was wrong and the longer Scootaloo was forced to stay on the Acres, the more wrongness she became aware of -- but with Applejack...
Applejack thought Scootaloo's stay was about responsibility.
And that was the greatest insult of all.
She was watching Apple Bloom sleep.
It was easy to do that, because it was the wrong bedroom. There was too much space between bed and walls, an excess of toys overflowing the storage box and most of them were older than both fillies combined, the carpet had probably been stepped on by generations of ponies before them and the floor underneath was wood. Which was the single worst thing about Scootaloo's own house, although she tried not to resent it for that because wood really wasn't the house's fault. It couldn't be a cloud house, because she was from a mixed family and she loved her father too much to watch him fall through the floor.
(She was going to have a cloud house soon. She'd been practicing molding on vapor which Snowflake wrangled to ground level for her, and he'd said she was getting better. The issue of how her father would visit that house was a question for a very special tomorrow. The cloud house itself always had a chance to be today.)
Apple Bloom's bedroom had a window on exactly the wrong wall, and that meant Moon shone in. It did so in such a way as to have that silvery light fall across the earth pony's bed, and that made it very easy to watch Apple Bloom sleep.
There were a lot of feelings involved in watching Apple Bloom sleep. One of them was anger, because her friend had made a bad decision just before everything had changed, and had yet to admit her mistake. (There were a few good reasons for enduring the sleepover, and just below 'it isn't an orphanage' was the chance to make Apple Bloom see sense. Any day now, and possibly even today.) Quite a bit of jealousy was involved, because one filly in the room could sleep and it wasn't Scootaloo. Impatience was only natural, because there were two of them in the same room and if they weren't both awake, then that was time lost. There was only so much of today to work with, and then you had to start on tomorrow.
Attraction, however... there were ponies in their class who had been talking about that. A few were even dating. Scootaloo supposed that was fine for some, but dating felt like the sort of thing which came after both mark and flight: in both cases, the important goal was supposed to have been reached far too many yesterdays ago, while the followup was...
...Scootaloo was willing to acknowledge love as being important: after all, her parents loved each other (and they loved her, because you didn't keep sending vouchers to somepony you didn't love) and without that love, the world would be suffering through a distinct lack of Scootaloo. She was sure she would love somepony, someday. But that would have to be a very special pony indeed, because Scootaloo was going to be just like her parents. A life of excitement, travel, and danger. It meant anypony she desired had to be capable of keeping up, the same way her own mark would ultimately prove her worthy --
-- anyway, love was a tomorrow thing. She just knew she wasn't attracted to Apple Bloom because she'd tried to think about that once just in the name of theory, and the ickiness had saturated her feathers. Apple Bloom was her friend. Nothing else.
Apple Bloom currently seemed to regard the relationship as something else entirely.
The earth pony's breathing changed, Forelegs stretched out, while the hind launched a series of small dual kicks at the blankets, slowly shifting the layers away. (There were two layers now, with Summer Shut-Down so close.) Warm eyes slowly opened, blinked a few times, and a head still weighted with dream heavily turned towards Scootaloo.
"Mornin'," Apple Bloom decided, which proved that no version of Honesty was passed down in the blood because Moon was still up.
"Hey," she greeted. "I've been up for a while. So I was thinking..."
The trailoff was deliberate. It was supposed to be like slowly pulling a piece of yarn past a cat. You were waiting for the pounce.
(Cat herding hadn't struck Scootaloo as a particularly exciting mark, but she'd overheard somepony saying it was impossible and any talent for doing the impossible felt like a potential qualifier. Besides, you probably got some really big cats in the wild zones. Manticores were a little like a big cat. So in the name of upping the stakes enough to manifest something good, the sensible conclusion had been to go out and herd manticores -- and then Fluttershy had just shown up with that stupid stare...)
But the earth pony just yawned a little. "Were y'now?"
Maybe she had to pull the yarn a little faster. "I was looking at that plowing equipment in the main barn yesterday. And if we brought it out to one of the tenant pastures, something where we've got some room to get a good gallop up, and then we flipped it so the blades were pointing towards --"
"-- no."
There was no sleepiness left in the bright eyes now. They were focused directly on Scootaloo, and they were doing so in a glare.
"You didn't let me finish!"
"An' Ah ain't gonna," stated the other filly. "Ah told you: Ah'm out. You're mah friend, and Ah want you t' stay that way. Gonna be really hard t' live together if'fin we ain't friends. But no more Crusades, Scootaloo. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever, 'cause Ah'm goin' for mah mark at the fix-it shop. Ah've been tellin' y'that for a couple of weeks now --"
"-- you don't have to Crusade!" She added a bright smile to the words. "That's the best part!"
The yellow head tilted slightly (and rather dubiously) to the left.
"...really."
"You just have to help me do it! Set up the equipment, watch my results! Maybe a little cheering when I'm going for the launch. Oh. About the launch. I was also looking at --"
"-- launched," Apple Bloom interrupted, "over upended plow blades."
"Yeah!"
The earth pony took a deep breath.
"Y'know," she softly considered, "before y'came here, Ah had sort of a mornin' routine. After takin' out the chores, Ah mean." (Scootaloo tried to fight back the wince.) "Get up. If'fin things went like usual, Ah might have some homework to finish off. Try t' beat somepony t' the bathroom. Pick out a bow for the day. Stuff like that, every morning. Except with you around, there's other things t' do."
Her voice remained steady. Her gaze never shifted. The back legs kicked the blankets into a wall.
"Like," Apple Bloom continued as stunned fabric slid down wood, "goin' out t' the barn an' makin' sure the plow's locked down. 'cause me not doin' it with you ain't enough t' keep you from doin' it yourself."
Apple Bloom had gone through one bad day at the failed stable sale, one bad day and the Crusaders had gone through so much more than that together, but she'd declared herself to be out, she hadn't changed her mind, and maybe there was some interesting stuff at the fix-it shop with all the enchantments around, but it was still just gears and --
--- Scootaloo had thought that if she just had some time with her friend, still her friend because Apple Bloom had come so close to having her brother taken away and --
-- she could make that friend see sense. Bring her back. But it wasn't happening, and...
"An' warn Applejack an' Mac," the former Crusader placidly continued. "'cause what with goin' after the stuff nopony wanted us t' borrow, we were all gettin' a little too good with locks."
...it wasn't supposed to be like this.
"It's my mark." It was so hard to keep the words from being a hiss, and so she didn't really try. "Even if you're out, even if you think the shop is best for you, it's still my mark. You can't tell me what my mark should be: that's a crime, that's just about the biggest crime there is --"
"-- Ah can keep you from 'borrowing' a plow," Apple Bloom steadily said. "Also a crime, by the bye. Because that's mah --"
She felt the word coming. The word which kept appearing over and over on the Acres, forcing itself into ears which had gone straight back, a word nopony understood --
"-- responsibility."
Scootaloo glared right back at her.
"You're not being fair."
"Big sisters don't have t' be fair," the earth pony stated. "Kinda nice t' be on the sendin' end of that for a change. An' Applejack said no Crusadin'."
With rising anger, "That just means where she can see me --"
"-- Ah don't think so --"
"-- and you're not my --"
"-- moon an' a half older than you," was something else Scootaloo had been hearing far too often. "Long as y'live here, you're family. So you're the little sister. An' no plows." The stronger body pushed itself upright, then jumped down from the mattress.
"Where are you going?"
A matter-of-fact statement, made on the trot without so much as a glance back. "Bathroom. Gotta pee."
She blinked. "But I've got to go!"
Still moving. "Y'said you were up for a while?"
"Yeah!"
"Should've gone."
Responsibility. It was the sort of word which seemed to have been designed for choking on and in that, it had a lot in common with that other frequently-used Acres term, the one which usually came from Applejack. In Equestrian, they had the same terminal syllable and Scootaloo had recently found cause to wonder if there was something about the trailing sound which ignored the ears to snag in the throat.
In her real home, Scootaloo had her own bathroom -- actually, there was a choice to work with and they both needed surprisingly frequent cleaning. She was good about keeping her house clean, but she tended to stick to the areas which were going to be used because a filly only needed so much room and certain closets were best off being a little dusty because that showed nopony had been dressing up in her mommy's things while that parent was away.
(Today. It could be today.)
But it was very important to keep the parental bedroom and bathroom clean, because when they came back they would be very tired, probably dirty from all the travel and things they'd done along the way, there might be some interesting monster blood dried onto her daddy's vest, and of course they were going to need a clean bedroom (and bathroom) to work with. So Scootaloo was very careful about keeping both of those up, to the point where she'd had to become something of an expert about cleaning products. There had also been an extended master-level class on how long it took for certain bathroom items to go bad, because it turned out that perfume could turn after -- a while -- and then you had to get rid of it, plus the place had to be aired out and you needed to find some way of neutralizing anything which lingered --
-- anyway, at home, she never had to wait for a bathroom. On the Acres, it was possible to get a line.
And then there was breakfast. Scootaloo made her own breakfast. She knew exactly what she liked, and she also knew when not to have it because her mommy had left behind instructions. A filly who ate nothing except her favorite foods was going to wind up sick after a while, and then those foods wouldn't be her favorites any more. So she'd stuck to the plan, because even with the right mark, going out into danger meant she needed a healthy body (with fully-working wings, but Snowflake said that would still be at least a few moons away and that was too long) and by extension, nutrition was important.
Scootaloo made her own breakfast. Also lunch, dinner, and it was usually the snacks which suffered because snacks were optional and when it came to getting money for the Crusade, the only parts of the budget which she could pull from were the optional ones. Like Hearth's Warming. The holiday and birthday vouchers always came with a little extra so she could get her own gifts, but the ultimate gift to present her parents with was the mark which would let her travel with them and so she had to think about priorities.
On the Acres, the adults made the food. Scootaloo wasn't really allowed to use the kitchen, because Applejack seemed to treat her presence in it as a potential Crusade and shooed her out accordingly. It meant she wasn't following her scheduled diet, there might not be any nutritional guide in play, and the mare was being stupid because if Scootaloo was going to get a mark for anything so boring as cooking, she would have manifested it years ago. Besides, the whole flambe' thing hadn't worked out and all things considered, it was a good thing she'd tried that one outdoors --
-- the Apples were healthy enough, all things considered. But even Apple Bloom ate more than Scootaloo did: maybe that was normal for earth ponies --
(How much had her father eaten? She should have paid more attention...)
-- but a pegasus needed to be sleek. She wound up pushing a lot of excess food around on her plate, and that was really obvious when you were doing it with your snout. It often got her looked at (usually by Applejack) in a manner which suggested some extreme personal insult. And there was talk at the table, because there was more than one pony present and so they talked to each other.
Some of the talk was about school. It would be starting in a few days, and so there would be a trip into Ponyville to pick up supplies. Scootaloo had a budget for that from the last voucher, but nopony was letting her visit the bank and so she would have to accompany the Apples. They were probably going to buy the wrong things --
-- Applejack was looking at her again.
"Huh?" Because it was a look which suggested Scootaloo had missed something. She didn't pay much attention to what the mare said, because it was frequently something Scootaloo didn't like. There were two words which kept cropping up, and when it came to how that adult saw the sleepover --
"Study sessions," the mare repeated, and the tone made it clear that it was a repeat. "Mac an' Ah quiz AB on some of her material. You'll join in."
"Uh-huh," Scootaloo placidly lied. It wasn't as if she'd still be on the Acres when school started, because that was a good number of tomorrows away and her parents could easily appear today.
"Keep your grades up," the mare added. "More than they have been. Ah know Snowflake got you a boost at the end of last term, but Ah expect you t' keep moving from there."
She tried not to grit her teeth. Studying class subjects with Snowflake was part of the terms for receiving instruction in magic. (He said she was much stronger than he was there, than he could ever be, and there was only so much he could even show her. She felt he was strong in some very good ways, and just being willing to speak with her about pegasus techniques put him ahead of everypony else in town: not even Rainbow could be slowed down enough for that kind of session.) School subjects were mostly stupid. She kept her grades at a passing level because while she was aware that parents had the option to homeschool -- or, after her ultimate victory, road -- there might be a problem in having them take her along immediately if she was stuck in extra classes or worse, held back a year. Also, failing would disappoint them, which was why the Crusade couldn't fail. And the only way it would truly fail was if she didn't get her mark.
But she didn't care about disappointing Applejack.
"Uh-huh."
The mare was still looking at her. Green eyes narrowed in the shade of the hat's brim. Mac began to clear the table.
"So here's the schedule for the morning," the mare finally said. "Scootaloo, gonna keep it light for you."
And there it was or rather, there it was again. Because it was just a sleepover, she wasn't allowed to stay in her own house and so she was sleeping here instead of the orphanage -- but the latter was starting to feel like it had some things going for it. Scootaloo hadn't paid much attention in history because professional explorers probably needed stuff like monster biology and recognizing carnivorous plants more, but she was almost completely certain that forced child labor had been outlawed when Equestria had been founded. The details had gone down the same memory hole which had swallowed the part about how it had been made in the first place, but in both cases, the results were what mattered: there was a nation and you weren't allowed to make kids work in it.
But adults loved loopholes, because those holes turned out to be in the center of a lasso's loop. It was something they could use to yank fillies away from things which were necessary. And as it turned out, an adult mare couldn't force a kid to work unless they lived under her roof and the stupid law had said the mare was responsible.
"Ah want you t' --"
As far as Scootaloo was concerned, it was a temporary sleepover with meals which were too large, lines for the bathroom, and dubious nutrition. Applejack, with the true little sister having given so many hours over to the fix-it shop, seemed to regard it as live-in replacement labor with a salary structure of 'laundry'.
(They wouldn't let her do the laundry either.)
She was about ten minutes into her patrol (aimless wander) of the Acres when she realized she had no idea what she was supposed to be doing.
In some ways, this was entirely natural and, as far as Scootaloo was concerned, could be regarded as the best possible result. She generally did her best to pay no attention when adults were talking about boring things, because Sun forbid that she become interested in the mundane. Too much of that kind of pursuit and you wound up with the kind of mark which made ponies yawn when they looked at it: actually practicing your talent in public could induce comas. It just wasn't a chance worth taking. Those were talents for stay-at-home ponies, and Scootaloo would leave when her parents did. After they came back for her.
(Which could be today. She had to find a way to get a mark today.)
...leaving.
That made her pause for a second, with coat dappled by the colors which Sun had produced by streaming through leaves. She would be leaving Ponyville any day now, because when you put enough days together, you had to reach the right one. That meant being with her parents, and that was the goal -- but it was also leaving Ponyville, and...
No. Apple Bloom was changing. (Still her friend because somepony who'd nearly lost a brother needed one, but she didn't listen any more.) Sweetie... didn't come out when Scootaloo knocked. The rest of her classmates had their marks, the townsponies didn't really talk to her because the adults resented anypony who was trying to get a cool mark when most of theirs were so boring --
-- some of them had started to check on her, after the kick. (The accidental kick. Some of them still didn't understand that.) It was mostly annoying. She could take care of herself --
-- and all things considered, she wouldn't be leaving anything real behind. Not when compared to what she would gain, when she could finally be with her parents and she hadn't even seen them in --
-- she didn't think about that.
Yesterday. It had been some number of yesterdays ago: that was the most she would consider. Yesterdays which included birthdays and Hearth's Warmings, but yesterdays which didn't ever change. It was about today, because that was the chance to make tomorrow better.
She stood still under Sun and cooling leaf shade. There were apple trees all around her and strictly speaking, her presence did nothing to help them. She wasn't an earth pony. She wasn't making the soil a little richer with every hoofstep she took. Her daddy could do that. He could also kill a plant just by giving it a harsh look, which was good magic for an explorer to have. Scootaloo had mostly given up on weeding the backyard, especially since the scorch marks from things like flambe' meant there weren't many weeds growing anyway. Or much of anything else.
A mark. A mark for doing something cool, which proved she could manage danger. And it had to be a Crusade she could conduct on the Acres, right under Applejack's snout. So, looked at strictly as the ground floor for an idea, what was she supposed to be doing out here, and how could that be changed into something markworthy?
...looking at apples. She was relatively sure that she was supposed to be checking for bugs and visible rot and other such problems. Anything which was easy to see, because Scootaloo didn't have earth pony magic. Which apparently wasn't strictly necessary, because the Apples had been talking about something called agronomy which anypony could do if they studied and if anypony could do it, then Scootaloo had already decided it had to be boring. Besides, she wasn't going to be here that long.
So. Looking at apples...
She craned her neck. Then she did it some more, and stopped when she felt as if her mane was about to ram into her tail.
...which were really high up...
It was unfair. She was going to be the last in her class to fly. (Her wings were normal. Snowflake had told her that, over and over again. He'd eventually (and reluctantly) added that she was just one of nature's late bloomers, which meant nature and, by extension, puberty were also unfair.) The apples were all the way up there and she couldn't get a good close look at them without flight, assuming there was a day when she ever wanted to and if that somehow happened, there were ponies whose marks were for treating concussions.
She was getting better. She could jump higher than ever with wings assisting in the push. Under Snowflake's supervision (he was dating Applejack, the mare wasn't good enough and a normally-almost-sensible stallion couldn't see that), she had recently managed a glide: they'd gone up Dragon Mountain, found a protruding ledge, he'd judged the winds, and...
...it had been wonderful.
Every pegasus was supposed to master gliding, because there were times when you ran out of strength and in the worst case, one of them would take place in the air. For normal travel, periods of gliding could save effort. In an emergency, when you were no longer capable of flapping, you could just lock your wings and let the air steadily bring you back to ground. They'd spent most of the summer working on the necessary feather positions, she'd finally convinced him that she had it all memorized, they'd both jumped at the same time and she'd been in the air.
He'd insisted on staying almost directly over her, ready to put her in a pressure carry at the first sign of trouble. But she'd managed on her own, even within his shadow. She'd banked, feathered here and there, found a thermal with sharpening pegasus sight and gained a little altitude. Nearly seven minutes spent airborne, seven glorious minutes before gravity had forced her to touch down again and then it had been ice cream --
-- but it was still just a glide.
Gliding wasn't flying. Gliding meant finding a high point to launch from: nopony was a good climber and Dragon Mountain was probably too far away for her to stretch out the glide all the way to the Acres. Even if she managed, it would mean hours of hiking back and forth for, at best, twenty total seconds of fruit glide-by. And if she somehow turned out to be fantastic at it, then who wanted a mark for gliding?
The apples were just too high up. It was frustrating, the sheer injustice of it all made her kick a tree, and that just gave her another reminder for the whole 'not an earth pony' thing.
After her hind knees stopped aching, she reconsidered the problem.
A mark-worthy activity, on the Acres, with only apple trees and fruit to work with...
...she'd been studying magic.
Snowflake kept putting her off on lightning and she didn't understand that: a small thunderhead could be wrangled to ground level as easily as anything else and besides, she only had fourteen pre-planned targets. But she didn't have the techniques required for weaving a fresh cloud out of humidity (which was a little low today anyway), plus then you had to ionize it and -- anyway, no lightning. Besides, knocking down one apple was asking a little too much: even somepony with a mark with lightning would be doing well to sever a single branch.
But wind was fundamental. He'd said you weren't a pegasus if you couldn't manage a little wind...
An apple's bulk hung off a thin stem. She wasn't entirely sure how that worked when it came to carrying the weight, but the support didn't look as if it would be that hard to disrupt.
Not that they'd really been working on wind yet. But if it was fundamental, then it was clearly easy.
...possibly too easy for a decent mark, especially if there was anything around which just implied mastery of light breezes. She'd have to put some effort into it.
She squinted.
Under open sky, through pegasus sight, it was possible to get some impression of the local weave, even if the threads still tended to shimmer blurry edges into each other. (Her vision had been getting better moon by moon, at the same rate she was gaining in wingspan and mass. In both cases, it wasn't fast enough.) With a tree canopy... she could barely see anything through all the leaves, and there wasn't much of a weave at lower levels: a few fading strands which might have been nothing more than the drifting remnants of recent magic. The majority of the weatherworks for the Acres were performed higher up. Still, it told her there wasn't much around which might interfere with her.
There really wasn't a breeze to work with. Anything shifting the upper atmospheric levels was well out of her range and at ground level, there was barely enough to get the grass rustling. Summer stillness, where simultaneously concentrating and redirecting everything available in the immediate area might upgrade to vibrating leaves. She was a pegasus, and so she couldn't create from nothing. You used whatever was available in the environment --
-- and when that fell short, you used yourself.
Wind came from putting your own strength into the air. Pushing. Scootaloo's field was stronger than Snowflake's: he'd told her so. Snowflake could manage wind, and he always started by flapping his wings...
Hers flared out. (She didn't glance back at them for the normal automatic measurement. It wouldn't do any good.) She started flapping.
...well, it was doing something. The grass in front of her was rippling a little faster --
-- which was probably just because her wings were flapping.
(More of a flap now, less of a buzz. Still not enough.)
She thought. She had strength within her: the power of her too-slowly-emerging magic, backed by what had frankly been too big of a breakfast. That power had to be channeled through her wings and transferred into the atmosphere. So how did that take place, exactly? She knew what it was like to push energy through her hooves into wrangled clouds, forcing them to hold a shape. She'd even done a few sculpting touches via wingtips...
...start from there. Sending power to the wings. But instead of touching the clouds, they were touching air. You almost always touched air, and Snowflake had said that could make it harder to gain awareness of it for the first time: something you were constantly surrounded by was surprisingly easy to lose track of.
She closed her eyes. Flattened ears against her skull. Tried to dismiss the warmth of Sun against her fur, the coolness of the shade. Feeling nothing but the air.
Concentrated on her breathing. Some air was essential.
Air went in. Air went out. Her lungs directed air all the time. Controlling the flow was natural. So take the sensation of breathing, the force of a hard exhale performed on command and -- consider what it would feel like, doing it via feathers. That same kind of push.
There seemed to be a rustling around her, and she took stock of it just long enough to ignore it. It wasn't important. Wind was what she needed to focus on now. She'd just knock a sample apple or two down from each tree, because some fell on their own: Apple Bloom had told her that once. Then she could look at them and tell the adult that she'd done the dumb job. Maybe she would even hear one drop and move in time to catch it in her mouth. That was a stunt of sorts, and she hoped she wasn't spectacular with it because it felt as if there could be no mark more boring than that one.
Flap harder.
Let the power rise.
Push.
Air moved anyway. She was just telling it where to go for a little while. It was good to be the one giving the orders --
(She had completely lost track of how quickly her wings were moving.)
-- when everypony seemed to feel they could just order her --
(There were so many kinds of strength. The same applied for resonance, and every emotion had its own way of distorting magic.)
-- they didn't have any right --
(She had lost track of her wing movements.)
(She never heard her own voice.)
-- something cracked.
She opened her eyes, and so saw the first branch carried by the newborn dust devil coming directly towards her face.
The prismatic tail flicked against the uppermost visible portion of the somewhat-shredded canopy, and then the pegasus sped away. Filly and adult both watched her go.
The mare took several deep breaths. The filly thought about the motion of that air, then briefly wished it wasn't available for use because that many breaths meant some of it was about to emerge as Words.
"Go into town," the mare said. The words had the forced evenness of a surface from which every protruding splinter had been sanded off, which made the sentence stand in direct opposition to all of the broken branches which littered the grass around their hooves. "Best if you're off the Acres for a while."
"...I was just trying to..."
"We're gonna have a rule 'bout tryin' out magic 'round here," the mare tightly continued. "Ah jus' need some time t' get the wordin' right. Ah'll think it over while Ah clean up a mite. Go. Into. Town. Make sure you're back before dinner. An' no Crusades."
There was also pulp. Some of that was on the ground. Other pieces were still splattered against the bark. And because branches had broken, there was tree sap. Scootaloo knew how to dodge tree sap now, but fast-flying apples had their own issues and when you got out of the way, they became pulp.
It made her realize something, and the words emerged before thought got involved.
"You could make applesauce."
Fur shifted all over the orange body. Every muscle went tight in turn, and it ended when the hat itself seemed to be resting against the grain.
"Go. Into. Town."
She couldn't get into her own house. There was a patrolpony watching it, she had to give him a reason why she wanted to go inside, and...
...it wasn't fair.
It was her house. Hers. She'd kept up the payments. She kept it clean. There had been times when she'd lit candles and lanterns because the charges on lighting devices were slow to run down, but they did expire after -- a while -- and she'd just known that bringing a unicorn in to power them back up would risk too many questions. (She'd eventually wound up at the point where she'd been waiting on Sweetie.) It was her house and the adults thought they had the right to deny her that.
She wondered what they would say to her parents, when the true owners came trotting up. She wanted to see that, and so stayed in her neighborhood for the better part of an hour, watching from an alley. Just in case, because it could always be today. That was why today existed: for special things to happen. Yesterday didn't matter, and tomorrow...
...it was possible that she'd be off the Acres tomorrow.
Traveling with her parents. Or at the very least, back in her own house.
You had to think about today and for the better part of an hour, today was the time in which her parents could come trotting up the street.
But they didn't, and so Scootaloo went to the bank to withdraw school supplies money --
-- her account was locked down.
Being managed.
There hadn't been much left in it, not for the moon. The mortgage payment had been made, she'd taken care of a few bills, her food money was -- it was still in the house, she couldn't even get to the food money and Chief Rights had told her that the house would be held in trust, but what did that mean for when the next voucher came in? Could she deposit it? What would happen to the house if she missed a payment?
Her parents always managed to get the voucher to her within a three-day window, no matter where they were in the world (and the envelopes said they went almost everywhere, places to which they would eventually take Scootaloo). That window opened at the start of next week. Without the voucher --
"It'll be deposited," a loan officer eventually told her. "The payments are being managed. You just don't have access to the account until Chief Rights finishes analyzing the records. We're looking for a pattern in the sendings --"
"-- from wherever they are! Every moon! So I'll be okay! That's the pattern!" They loved her, they looked after her, they made sure she would always have a home --
-- the big green and blue earth pony on the other side of the desk was looking at her. There was something in his eyes, something she'd seen too much of since the kick. She hated seeing it.
"We're trying to find them, Scootaloo," Mr. Blitz told her. "The same as everypony else. You'll have access back soon --"
'Soon,' coming from an adult, ran 'tomorrow' out to infinity. "It's not fair!"
The expression intensified.
"We're just trying to help --"
"-- pity isn't help!"
He might have said more, but she lost it in the sound of her own hooves pounding against stone.
Sweetie didn't answer the door. She needed Sweetie, because she'd remembered that Mr. Blitz had once been a teammate of the unicorn's father. That implied the potential for influence, and...
...she just wanted to talk. It had been weeks, and -- Sweetie wouldn't answer the door.
She returned to where she'd dumped the scooter into the dirt, got it propped upright again and started moving. She was in town. She was obeying orders, which was something which made her want to get out of town and the only way to do that without having somepony come looking for her was parents. Even getting the money out of the bank couldn't stop that, and she didn't know if she trusted anypony to make the payments if she left. She had to protect the house...
She also had to move faster. She was buzzing by adults at a good clip, and it still wasn't quick enough to let her avoid spotting their faces.
Her parents could arrive today. At any minute, to explain. And in that sense, it was best that she was in town, because it wasn't as if they would know to look for her on the Acres. They didn't know anything about what was going on. There had never been any point to writing them back, not when they had to travel so much for that most vital of jobs: by the time any letter she sent reached the last place they had posted a voucher from, there wouldn't be so much as a hoof impression left in the dirt. All she'd ever done was place her completed messages into a drawer so they could read them all when they came home and find out what she'd been doing for --
(She didn't think about it.)
-- a while. And if they trotted home in an hour, they would be coming to a town which thought they had abandoned her. The police chief was involved, they might be arrested and they didn't know --
-- the idea came.
It hit her all at once, and did so after the concept had completely failed to materialize for far too many yesterdays. It blazed through her mind with such force that she almost expected the sheer power of it to light her flanks, and it was something she could have lived with because a talent for having ideas which saved your life felt like a pretty good one.
But no mark came from her brilliance. There was just a sudden, frantic struggle to get control of the scooter back, because she'd had other priorities for a second: she mostly won. And once she was upright again, she changed course.
It was hard to read expressions on the dragon's face, and part of that was because his features weren't that of a pony: there were eyes and a mouth, but... the flexibility was different. To Scootaloo, who'd been successfully bored by corona-created puppet shows, he sometimes came across as somepony who was operating a mask at a slight distance while facing the wrong way, and so could never be sure exactly how well he'd succeeded.
And the rest was just that he didn't spend a lot of time around the Crusaders. They were aware of all the ways in which a dragon could be used to gain truly awesome marks and unfortunately, so was he.
Scootaloo wasn't used to reading expressions on his face. But the little dragon's voice was fully pony-normal, and that made it easy to hear the desperation.
"Er," he said. His arms went behind his back, and she heard claw tips skitter across scales. "Um..."
"You have to!" She didn't spend a lot of time begging, and it was the sort of thing you really didn't want to be too good at. That lack of practice was now proving to be something of a problem, but she was fairly sure she could manage the feat. She just had to keep it below markworthy levels. "Please, Spike! I know you did it the first time! Every place they'd sent a letter from, right? Asking ponies to look for them!"
"Um," he repeated. Green eyes risked a glance at the tree's closed rear exit, and the vertical pupils constricted somewhat. "That was..." He swallowed. "That was Chief Rights' orders. It was the fastest way to notify --"
She reared up, braced forehooves against his shoulders. His knees trembled.
"Anypony," she said, keeping her tones fairly low because she was asking for something which the librarian might not like. "Anywhere. You don't need to have met them or have any idea where they are, you just have to know they exist. That's what you can do, Spike. A scroll to anypony or anyone in the world. I just..."
Maybe she had too much of a natural instinct for begging. She knew she hadn't told her eyes to do that.
"...need one," she asked, and blinked the moisture away. "One, right to them. So I can tell them to come home. They'll listen to me. Please, Spike, just one. I don't even know why the dumb police didn't have you do that in the first place!"
It was possible to immediately distinguish the wince. "Scootaloo -- when you're looking for somepony --"
Thin lips slammed together, and did so at the same moment his crests wilted.
"What?"
"...nothing," he lied, and did so in such a way that she managed to guess what hadn't been said.
"It's not saying the police are looking for them," she urgently insisted, pressing more of her weight against him. "It's me. That's different. You don't..." It was her turn to swallow. "...I don't have to say anything about the police." Because she knew he wouldn't just send a sealed scroll: any contents would be read first.
But it was okay. They would clear everything up once they were back. There might be a few awkward hours to start with, but they would explain.
"I just want to write them," she managed to finish. "And this is the only way I'll know they'll get it. I'm just -- asking them to come home, or... tell me why they can't. Please..."
He shuddered. Scales vibrated against her hooves.
"I -- I have to read it first. All of it."
"That's okay." She reared back, dropped to ground level.
"I won't send it if I don't like the contents," he told her as his arms came forward again. "I won't, Scootaloo. There's nothing you can say that'll make me send into the aether if it's bad."
She briefly considered hanging around the tree until Twilight needed to send something and just kicking her own scroll into the jet -- then realized it would probably just put her words into the custody of the Princess. Things were bad enough already. "I get it. So... can I just have a scroll, please? And some ink?"
Eventually, he nodded, and went back inside.
She'd written a lot of letters (mostly in her bedroom, as opposed to lying low in the grass), and it hadn't done much to improve her mouthwriting because there was no need for the post office to identify a receiving address: she'd just assumed her parents would always be able to figure it out. But Snowflake (who had an all-day shift at a construction site and so was no help whatsoever) had been working with her on that too, and with Spike...
Maybe there was some benefit to being stuck in a library all the time, especially when you didn't have to worry about getting a bad mark out of it. He couldn't get a mark at all. But it did let him pick up on words, and so he occasionally suggested a few as she wrote. Some of them were good enough to go into the letter.
...it was a weird thought. She knew she would have her mark soon, although she'd spent enough time in town that 'tomorrow' was now the safe bet. But to go through life without even the possibility of one...
She didn't like the way that thought made her feel. She really didn't like her inability to stop having it.
"Okay," the little dragon softly said. "I think that'll do it. You sign, I'll seal. Then you write your name on the outer roll. From Scootaloo. The largest print you can manage, so it'll be the first thing they see."
She nodded. Her feathers trembled.
She was writing to them. Directly to them. They would be hearing from her for the first time in --
(She almost thought about it.)
-- a while.
"It's one-way," Spike quietly added. "There's nothing I can do about that. Twilight has a spell which allows for a return sending, but right now, Trixie's the only pony who knows how to cast it. Neither of your parents are unicorns?"
She just barely managed to confirm that. Seconds from talking to them...
"And it's complicated anyway," he sighed. "The recipient has to be the one to send back, so they can't find somepony to do it for them. And I'd need a hematite vial to put some flame in, Twilight has to help, and -- without a unicorn receiving the scroll, it won't matter. So the best they can do is an express stamp, from wherever they are."
Which might not even be needed, if they were just down the road or on the train or...
"I get it," she forced herself to say, then took up the quill in her mouth again and signed it.
Love, Scootaloo
Because that part was important.
He sealed it. She signed the exterior, stood up again, and he took the scroll up in his right claw.
"Do you... need anything before you do it?"
The words felt too soft. "I ate a gem when I went back in for the scroll."
"How long does it take to reach them?" Seconds...
Her tail was twitching. She couldn't make it stop.
"It's just like teleporting," he quietly told her. "It's not instant. If they were on the exact opposite side of the planet from us... it's a guess, because I've never tried to send one that far. But maybe ninety seconds."
She nodded. The thin lips pursed...
Had she ever been this close when it happened? Almost: a single occasion when she'd been within six body lengths, but -- that had been for a scroll coming in. This was outbound, and --
-- she was close enough that she should have been able to feel heat from the jet. But it was just a little warmer than the day, and the scroll didn't burn. It simply evaporated into light, a trail of fading green which seemed to press itself through the air.
"That's it," Spike softly said, and she barely heard him. She was counting seconds. Ninety, no more than ninety and she would be talking to them. "It's on the way."
"Thank you." She wanted to nuzzle him. She hardly ever wanted to nuzzle anypony, and wondered how scales would feel when pressed so close against fur. "It means... it means a lot, Spike." They would read it, they would write her back if they were far enough away that such was even necessary, they would be on their way home...
...she needed to make sure she had her mark tomorrow, it was completely possible that they could be in Ponyville tomorrow --
The air broke in half.
It did so with a crack like thunder, like a hoof slamming directly into a heart. It happened with a faint scent of rust, and -- it would take hours before she recognized the next part, moons before the true meaning was known -- the briefest flash of turquoise.
The air broke in half, and a dozen shredded pieces of scroll drifted to the ground.
He'd jumped. Her wings had flared, sent her backwards in a way which nearly kept her in the air, and none of that mattered.
"Scootaloo --" Desperate. It was so easy to hear when he was desperate. "-- it -- it doesn't mean they're --"
Her hooves slammed into the dirt, and the impact sent words into the world. "You can't do anything! Not even you! The one thing you're supposed to do and you're not even good for that, you can't even --"
Frantic now, "-- it would have just vanished, it never would have come back, we -- the Princess, there was one time when she asked me to -- this is a working, I've seen something like this, it doesn't mean they're --"
Getting the scooter, the helmet -- it all would have taken too long, far too long, and so she galloped because her wings didn't work yet and maybe they never would no matter what Snowflake said, all she had was her hooves and she was racing across Ponyville, adults staring at her and some tried to give chase for a while, but she just kept running and that same expression followed her everywhere she went --
Moon's light followed her through the front door, and the scents of roasted vegetables met her coming the other way. She didn't really notice either.
"That you?" sounded from the dining room. She didn't answer, and so the followup was the noises produced by a large mare getting up from a bench: the hat seemed to poke around the corner before the snout did.
"Wasn't expectin' you t' come in this late," the mare stated. "Ah was gettin' worried."
She didn't say anything. She just plodded towards the table, where there would be too much food and all the wrong kinds.
"'bout t' go lookin' for you," the adult added, then turned to follow as Scootaloo drifted past Apple Bloom's bench. "Did somethin' happen? 'cause your face is --"
"You okay?" came from the filly who had no right to tell on her. "Y'look tired. In a lot of ways --" and with a little gasp "-- Scootaloo, your chin --"
She didn't acknowledge, didn't answer. Just climbed up onto her assigned bench.
The adult looked at her for a moment, then sat back down, taking the part of the table which had a gouge in the wood. Three adults at the table: the mare, Macintosh, and Granny was watching the whole thing from her end. Those old eyes could have a certain sharpness to them, and --
-- she didn't like the way Granny was looking at her. The way anypony was looking at her. She didn't want to be at this table, because it wasn't hers. But she couldn't get into her home. Her account. She couldn't leave without somepony looking for her, and... the scroll...
"Ah'd usually ask you t' wash," the mare said. "Because some of that could fleck off on the food. Make it taste rusty."
She didn't want to think about rust any more than she wanted to think about the end of the gallop. She'd run until her right forehoof had hit something, she'd pitched, and...
...maybe she hadn't washed it all off at the stream. She thought she'd had enough to drink there. Some of it had stayed down.
"Scootaloo," Macintosh carefully began, "you're hurt. We can clean that up for you --"
"I cleaned it."
It must have been her voice. Everypony else had a dumb accent.
"Are you sure --"
"-- I'm used to cleaning up. Crusades." The last word wasn't quite spat. "Remember?"
The mare took a breath.
"We were gettin' worried."
It was amazing, just how much Honesty could lie.
"Ah was thinkin'," the mare added. "Had some time t' calm down, after Rainbow untangled the mess an' y'left for a while. Ah know Snowflake's been trainin' you out by the edge of town. An' everypony needs trainin' for their magic. Ah jus' don't want it in the trees. We can find you some space."
There was too much food on the plate, and she wasn't hungry. Her snout pushed some of it around.
"But y'had us worried. An' with you stayin' here... you're under Apple authority --"
There it was. The other word. The mare could never avoid it for long, especially in the presence of a filly who had shown she could have full authority for herself over
(She was so close to thinking about it.)
a while, and --
"-- which also makes you mah responsibility, Scootaloo. So if'fin you're gonna be out that late, when Ah told you t' be back before dinner, you've gotta be more responsible --"
Her head came up.
"What would you know about responsibility?"
Macintosh lost a mouthfood of food going forward. Apple Bloom's went the other way: the filly spent a few seconds in frantic coughing. Granny froze halfway to her drink. And the mare leaned ever so slightly forward, as the hat slipped just enough to shade her eyes.
"Y'wanna try that again?"
She was looking directly into the green eyes now, because she didn't care any more.
An overhead clockwork fan clicked. Air shifted across their fur. Heartbeats pounded in the pegasus' ears.
"I had all that money coming in, every moon," she said. "I could have used it for the Crusade. I wanted to. But I paid the mortgage. I kept up on the bills, and I cleaned the house. I went shopping, I did some of the maintenance if a door got stuck. I was doing that for... so long and nopony suspected a thing. The rent came first, the bills came first, the Crusade was tenth-bits somepony had stepped on, taken out of the dirt. That's called being responsible. Doing what I was told and staying where I was supposed to be. Where they could always find me, when they came home. But you... how are you responsible? You say you are, and you -- you --"
Nopony was saying anything. Apple Bloom's tail was flicking in all directions, those bright eyes becoming all the brighter from the water shimmering on their surface.
"-- you leave. You leave all the time, and you don't have a mark for danger. It's for farming, or apples, or something which isn't danger, which isn't coming back. You leave when there's somepony who counts on you, somepony who loves you, you just leave and it's not like anypony can follow! You just leave, and we're here wondering what's happening to you, we don't know if you're dead --"
The tiny gasp almost reached her. Nearly stopped her.
"-- if you'll ever come back, we don't know and all we can do is wait, but you leave anyway because you don't care, you're not responsible enough to care, you don't see what you're supposed to be responsible for, you could die and nopony would ever know what happened, and you still just leave. So how is that being responsible, or understanding what responsibility is?" Her forehooves slammed into the edge of the plate, right where she'd nudged a clear place, and did so because the table wouldn't have broken. "Tell me!"
And that should have been it. Some screaming to ignore, the police chief would have been fetched, and it would have been the orphanage and a cot and all the things which seemed so much better than being on the Acres. But the mare didn't scream. She didn't yell. She glanced at her brother, who hadn't been able to move. A second for the grandmother, who simply nodded. One moment of regard towards the little sister, both with eyes half-closed. And then she looked at Scootaloo and said five words in a different voice, because there were times when even the accent was a lie.
"Who are you talking to?"
It wasn't what should have happened. It wasn't what she wanted to happen.
She got up. And with nowhere to go, she walked out.
Stuck in Apple Bloom's bedroom, on a bed off to the side, and she could hear quiet discussion drifting up the ramp, but she couldn't make out the words. Curled up, unable to fall asleep, there wasn't enough noise to keep her awake and so it was so easy to blame the bed because it wasn't hers. Sure, it had only been a minute since she had come up the ramp at all, but a minute awake when she was this tired (and she'd never been so tired) was clearly the bed's fault. And now it was more than a minute because yesterday was when you'd failed, today was when you failed again, but tomorrow was still when everything could work out. Her parents could be home tomorrow --
-- ninety seconds now --
-- ninety seconds to reach anywhere in the world...
...home tomorrow...
...they could come home tomorrow
always tomorrow
it's been tomorrow for
She thought about it.
And then her snout was jammed into the pillow because it put her eyes that much closer to the case, the stuffing could absorb the sobs while the case took the tears, she didn't want them to hear her like this, anypony to hear her like this and she lost the sounds from the lower level as she tried to breathe through the stuffing, she didn't want to breathe, she was just crying and crying and she'd wind up with a mark for that and nopony would ever
there was nopony to go with
there hadn't been anypony for
they're not
they're not
they're not
She lost all other sounds, and so didn't hear the little crackle and woosh from the lower level. Didn't hear anything through the spiral of her own thoughts, dust devil upgraded to tornado as a structure of carefully-maintained denial shredded from internal wind, and she...
...she wanted to sleep. To let another miserable today end. But her body wouldn't let her, and it was the bed, the stupid bed, and --
-- she wasn't aware of sounds. Sight only existed to keep her from walking into things. No other sense was important, and so numb limbs got her up for the last time on that night.
The lost filly moved.
Solid hoofsteps, carefully moving up the ramp. At least, those were the ones in the lead. Heavier ones behind, a much lighter set followed that, and the elderly quartet carefully picked out a path at the rear.
"Scootaloo?"
There was no answer.
"We -- jus' got a scroll from Twi," Applejack softly called out. "Spike's been talkin' t' her, an' -- there's this workin' called a lockdown. We -- all the Bearers -- had t' deal with it. Can't tell you the details on the mission, but -- it keeps things from teleportin' in or out. What happened back at the tree -- that was like a lockdown bounce, only --" The mare swallowed. "-- Twi said she's never heard of one like that before. Not that jus' -- what happened t' the scroll."
Moving down the hall towards the youngest's bedroom now. For whoever the youngest truly was.
"She thinks that wherever your folks are -- maybe they can't --"
But that was when they reached the doorway, and saw no filly on the bed.
"-- aw, no..." Quickly, "Spread out, everypony. We'll start with the house." Multiple ponies started to move. "See if there's any windows open: Snowflake told me she can manage a glide now. Can't spot her 'round the Acres in ten minutes, we get the others -- breathe, AB, we'll find her--"
"-- Applejack?"
She stopped, hoofwidths away from the bathroom. Glanced towards her brother, who was -- standing at the entrance to Applejack's bedroom. Peering inside.
A thick red foreleg gestured, and the group quietly approached. The older sister was the first to reach him --
-- it wasn't a particularly small bed. There was enough space for the siblings to crowd together, looking through old photo albums: that had been proven. It was the sort of bed you could share, and it was a bed which had a tight curl of filly up by the pillows, in the exact center of the mattress.
The curl shook. It sniffled. Feathers trembled.
Then there was a warm body pressed against it from the left. Another soon arrived on the right. A smaller form wound up by the tail, and the elder simply took the hindboard end for herself.
The filly shivered. Sniffled again, curled all the tighter. And when the warmth maintained, when some small part of her felt that there was a chance for that presence to still be there tomorrow... Scootaloo fell asleep.
