Big (horse)Shoes to Fill

Stellar Flare walked past her son with a cheerful bounce in her step. Her bubbly demeanor was the antithesis of her son's dull melancholy. "Why the long face, Sunny sweetie?"

Sunburst leaned against the zeppelin window with his cheek in his hand, watching the landscape drift by below. The monotonous drone of the engines were hypnotic and was making him drowsy. What should have been an exciting time for him was marred by disappointment, and a little bit of dread. The fact that he knew that he should be excited, but wasn't, only made him feel worse. Sunburst shrugged without even looking at her. "I don't know," he replied.

"You don't know or you don't want to tell me?" she asked.

Sunburst bristled. His mother knew him better than he ever would have cared for. It was no use lying to her. "I guess I'm just disappointed," he said.

"What for?" she asked. "You just graduated college with your degree! You have your whole life in front of you!"

Sunburst groaned. "I don't have a job yet. I still don't even have my own place. I don't even have a girlfriend! What I have is debt!"

"Is that what you're worried about?" she asked, dismissively. "You know you can always work at your father's company. After all the time you spent there, you know how to do his job almost as well as he does!"

"Probably better," Sunburst muttered. But despite his crippling self-esteem issues, Sunburst was still prideful and his arrogance of youth made him want to make his own way in the world, rather than taking the easy path of nepotism.

"Is it something else?" she asked.

Sunburst shifted in his seat. "College was- it wasn't what I was expecting."

"College is a means to an end," Stellar said. "You go there to get a good degree, to get a good job, to have a good life. What else were you expecting?"

"I mean it wasn't what I was hoping for. The college experience," he said.

"What? You mean parties with drugs and alcohol?" she asked. "You're better than that."

Sunburst snorted. "Girls."

Stellar chuckled and tousled his hair with her fingers. "Such a boy. You're just like your father. I remember what it was like when I was your age. I was-" Stellar thought about it for a moment and her expression shifted into one more serious. "Actually I was already pregnant with you."

Sunburst glanced at her. He knew full well that his mother had him as an unplanned pregnancy when she was very young. That meant that she didn't have a career of her own like she otherwise would have wanted. So she projected that onto him, always emphasizing that he have a plan and 'not make the same mistakes she did'. As much as she would deny it, he knew he was undoubtedly one among those mistakes. At least his father did right by her, getting married before Sunburst was born.

But it also meant that Steller was still young and objectively quite attractive. Were she any other woman, Sunburst would go so far as to call her a milf. "But I never regretted having you," she added, leaning over to hug him. She wrapped her arms around his head and squeezed him against her considerable chest. She broke the hug before she literally smothered him. She held his cheeks in her hands and looked at his face. "I swear, you look more and more like your father every day. It's like he cloned himself with you. Speaking of, I should go check on him."

Stellar Flared walked to the bow of the dirigible, where her husband, Sunspot, was piloting the craft. "How's it going?" she asked.

"Our coastal tour of the South Luna Ocean is well underway!" Sunspot announce with pride. He leaned and looked over his right shoulder, back at their departure city, Las Pegasus. The iconic 'APPLEWOOD' sign was just barely visible on the hillside. "Tomorrow morning we'll have a great view of the sunrise over the mountain peaks on the port side."

"I'm got a good view of some peaks for you right now," Steller mewled, undoing the top button of her blouse.

"Mom, don't distract Dad while he's driving!" Sunburst yelled from the passenger lounge. The cab of the zeppelin was of a modest size. With two sleeping quarters, restroom facilities, a lounge and the cockpit. It meant there was very little space to be away from anyone. And it was hard for him to not overhear his parents.

"Oh please," Steller scoffed. "The autopilot does all the work. With the navigation set, you don't even have to touch the controls until we get to Mount Eris."

"Yeah yeah, and I'll turn it on once I'm done here," Sunspot said. "But still, it's pretty cool flying a zeppelin. You want to try taking the trim joystick for a while?"

"That's not the joystick I'm interested in," Stellar purred into her husbands ear and she ran her fingertips down along his chest.

Sunspot shrugged off her advances. "Stel, come on. We can do that at home. Just let me have some fun with this, okay?"

Stellar refastened the top button of her blouse and briskly walked out of the cockpit in a huff, closing the door to their sleeping cabin a bit harder than was explicitly necessary.

Sunspot rolled his eyes. "Pft. Women. Am I right?" Sunburst ignored him, in no way able to relate to the man who would so flippantly reject the advances of such a beautiful woman. "Son, come on up here!" Sunspot beckoned him to the cockpit. Sunburst could not pretend to have not heard him and begrudgingly joined his father. He sat in the co-pilot seat beside him. "Women. Am I right?" he asked again.

"I heard you the first time, Dad."

"Oh. Well you didn't laugh."

"Well I wouldn't know," he said, pointedly looking anywhere but at his father.

"What are you so pissy for?" Sunspot asked. "You mother is the one with her cycle coming up. I didn't think you'd be on your period too."

"It must be nice to be able to take Mom for granted like that."

"I was being polite," he retorted. "You really want to listen to your mother giving your old man a hummer on our family vacation?"

"...No."

"Come on now. Switch seats with me and take this thing for a spin." Sunburst and his father switched seats. "Go on now, give it a try."

Sunburst grabbed the flight control yoke. Giving it a push, and pull, pitching them down into a dive, and up again. He turned to the left, making the craft roll into a banked turn. He brought it back in the other direction, making it lean the other way. There was a thud behind them.

"Are you boys having fun up there!?" Stellar screamed from the bedroom. "Because you just threw me out of the bed!" She slammed the door closed harder. Sunburst leveled out the airship.

"Here, use the rudder pedals," Sunspot said, pointing at the flight deck floor. Sunburst pushed each of the pedals with his feet, making the craft turn left in right in yaw without rolling to either side. "There you go. Feel nice being in control, huh?"

"Yeah..." Sunburst agreed, knowing there was more to his father's words. There always was.

"I haven't felt that way in a long time," Sunspot lamented. "Ever since your mother, bless her... but ever since she got pregnant, I haven't felt like I've been in control of my own life."

"Thanks," Sunburst groaned.

"I'm not blaming you!" Sunspot said. "But someday, you'll understand. When you have a kid of your own, your whole life changes. You stop being the center of your own world. You know? Bah, I don't expect you to understand yet. I know your pissy about not having a girlfriend, but trust me, you don't need that kind of leech on your wallet yet! Just wait a few more years, once you've got your career, and life established, everything will turn around for you. You'll have girls lining up for you."

"Do you... regret me?"

"Of course not!" he answered immediately. "I love you and your mother. I wouldn't trade this life we have for anything. I just... I just wasn't ready to have to settle down when I did. There was other things I wanted to do. Like this, for example!" he said, motioning to the zeppelin around them. "Always wanted to fly an airship!"

"Would have been nice to help pay for school instead," Sunburst grumbled.

Sunspot nearly choked with laughter. "Buddy, this is a rental! For the cost of your tuition, I could have bought this thing outright!"

"Not really making me feel better."

"Son, I'm telling you, come for for my company. Put off buying your own place. Save your money. You'll have those loans paid off in four, six years tops!"

"I'm pretty sure bringing girls home while still living at your parents house went out of fashion in high school."

"You need to stop thinking with your dick. It ain't gonna do nothing except get you into trouble. Believe me."

"... I really can't help but feel like that's resentment," Sunburst said.

"Oh for fuck's sake. You really are you mother's son. I go through all this trouble of setting up this vacation and all anyone does is complain. Un-ass that seat." Sunburst got up and Sunspot took back the pilot seat. "Go eat some chocolate and cry into a pillow if your uterus hurts so much. I can watch the sunset by myself!"

Sunburst grabbed his book from the lounge coffee table and retired to his sleeping cabin for the night.

Sunburst awoke some time later to a loud boom. His cabin was so dark he couldn't even see his hand in front of his face. He reached over to turn on his bedside lamp, but nothing happened. In a flash, his whole room lit up bright white for an instant, and then dark again, followed by another loud boom of thunder.

"Mom!?" he called out. His hand fumbled along the walls of his room until he found the door. "Dad!?"

"Shit! Shit!" Sunspot cursed as he ran from his cabin up to the cockpit.

"Spot, what's going on!?" Steller's voice called out in the dark.

"We lost electrical!" Sunspot said, fiddling with the controls. "We must have drifted into a storm!"

"But there were no storms forecasted for our flightpath!" Steller said.

"I must have forgot to switch it back on last night!" Sunspot said. "Fuck!"

"Well switch it back on!" she said.

"What part of 'no electrical' are you not getting!? We must have gotten hit by lighting when we drifted into the storm!" He pointed out the window at the engine props, sitting silently motionless. "We're at the whim of the wind right now! Who knows how far off course we could be!"

The next flash of lightning lingered long enough to show the flat horizon of the ocean in every direction around them.

"We need to radio for help!" Sunburst said.

"What the fuck do you think the radio runs on, hopes and dreams!?" Sunspot shouted.

"Spot!" Steller pleaded.

Sunspot ignored her. "If I can find the breaker box I can get the engines restarted and-"

The next crash of thunder came in the same moment as the lighting as it struck the starboard engine strut, setting the engine ablaze beneath the zeppelin's gas bag.

Sunspot ran to the cockpit and leaned into the flight yoke with his entire body weight, without the aid of the powered hydraulic pumps. The ship pitched forward into a dive.

"Dad, what are you doing!?"

"I'm taking us down as fast as I can before we lose all control and fall out of the sky like a damn meteor! Get your mother to the aft port and ready the life raft!"

"But what about-"

"DO IT!"

Sunburst took his mother by her arm to the back of the airship to the docking port hatch. He opened it and the rain and storm blew inside. Sunburst pulled the handle on the emergency life raft compartment and the panel blew off its hinges and the connected raft began to rapidly inflate. The pitch of the dive steepened and the forward bilges burst from the heat of the flames. Everything began to glow orange in the light of the growing fire.

Another bilge ruptured above them. The roaring wind of the storm was drowned out by the wind rushing past them as they plummeted through the sky. Sunspot braced his legs against the console and pulled back on the yoke with everything he had. The altimeter spun down at a dizzying pace. But he didn't let go. The cabin and cockpit began to fill with smoke. But he didn't let go. He could feel his shoulders dislocating as the airship's elevators fought him. But he didn't. Let. Go.

Sunspot screamed in agony as he fought to level out the ship one last little bit. The bow of the cabin smashed into the rough surf of the sea, breaking the spine of the ship. Sunburst and Steller Flare were thrown from their feet into the floor of the raft from the impact.

The raft automatically detached from the inflation port as the hull hit water. Steller screamed out to her husband again and again as the front half of the ship buckled and was subsumed by the surf. The aft of the ship lifted out of the water for a moment. The awning of the air bladder burned a bit longer before being pulled under along with the rest of the cab, leaving the mother and son alone in the dark of the raging storm.

Steller cried out into the storm and surf for her missing husband until her throat was sore. The next flash of lightning gave Sunburst a glimmer of hope. A shape on the horizon. Maybe it was an island. Maybe it was just another dark cloud. But anywhere was better than where they were. He grabbed a plank of wood from the water to use as a paddle and tried with all his effort to make their way out of the storm.

The muscles in Sunburst's arms were burning by the time he managed to get them out from under the rain bands. Away from the clouds, the dark shape on the horizon was only silhouetted against the stars in the moonless sky. He couldn't tell if it looked a little bigger, a little closer, or if he was just imagining it. But he was too tired in either case. He pulled the plank into the raft with him and rolled over onto his back, panting on the raft floor, slumped against the inflated inner-tube with his limp arms at either side of him. His mother had already cried herself to sleep. His exhaustion had him soon joining her.