To Whooves It May Concern...
“Y'sure we still need to do this? Mom already knows about him, and we all got back our flyin-”
“-That’s what makes it extra important, Zipp! We’re not supposed to forget those who helped us fly before our wings worked! Now sssshh!”
Of course, you’ve heard them long before Pipp Petals tried to hush her sister. Duty keeps you from acknowledging them until they’re right in front of you, though. Your eyes blink achingly, very aware of the thoroughly excessive amount of hours you’ve spent awake yet nevertheless locked on the circuits straightened through your hooves. Your take in another breath and the leathery, loamy air stings at your lungs, but the heart nestled between them still beats fitfully.
Waiting.
Working.
Hoping.
“Oh… hi, Doc.”
Finally, the tapping of your working hooves stops. A tiny spark accentuates the din that’s fallen over your workstation. And slowly, you turn to face them.
Ironically, yours might be the only eyes in this Equestria that don’t widen at the sight of two pegasi flying. Yet the cool breeze Zipp and Pipp's wings give off warms your soul all the same. It pulls you away from the mustiness, the rows of numbers, the tortuous, neverending regret-
“Ah,” you speak, your voice loaded down with appreciation and anxiety in equal measure. “It seems that the miracle your books spoke of has occurred. I’m… very happy for you two. For all ponykind.” It sounds grand coming from your lips, but again, you know better. Hope to do better, if the contraption in your clutches can just work again.
And damn it all, Zipp’s eyes are locked on it, as she had even before true flight had graced her. “Guess not all the wings in Zephyr Heights are workin’, are they Doc?”
You let out a defeated sigh. “It seems not.”
Zipp’s eyes then turn down to the work before you, just before yours follow suit.
You almost don’t want to look at it. If these two curiously floating next to you even knew how much trouble your obsession over these innocent-looking arcs of bronze had brought them! How much it had brought to magic itself, these wire-thick panels and oil-tainted pipes!
But you solder the gashes in your own soul and clear your throat. At least maybe now they can help. Maybe now, that flight is again accessible to ponykind.
Maybe now it’s time to direct their paths somewhere besides the sun.
As you have flown too close to one time too many already.
“Actually… have you heard of motor oil?”
The second that very samespark flashed through Zipp and Pipp’s eyes - the one they’d first seen when they saw the wireframes you’d once gifted them - you knew you had your answer. It wasn’t just that specter of knowing, something so rarely sought from those so young yet treasured like the finest grains of sand in time’s hourglass when recognized.
It was curiosity being rewarded.
It was the realization that, in the center of this dark cubby that they’d only seen their mother’s hoofsteps vanish into, laid something that could shake Zephyr Heights to their core.
“Oh yeah,” Zipp said, puffing out her chest despite Pipp’s squeak of discontent. “Not just what, but where.”
Your ears perk, now maddeningly aware of how little you know of the world outside Zephyr. So much fear of befouling the timeline more than you already had. So much worries about the hate that would flash in the Queen’s eyes if she ever realized. So little… time, ironic as it was considering your namesake.
“Is that so?” No time like the present to find out what you’re missing, then. “Then bring some here. As well as the state of the land you found it in.”
“S’more like town, but… sure thing, Doc!” And Zipp turned for the opening to the cavern you’re in. Already it seems like you’re going to be alone again. “Guessin’ it’s for that Naturally-Energised X-ternal Thrusters, Gene-
“-the NEXT-GENN, yeah!” And Zipp nods, as you turn back to your work.
However, Pipp is the one whose curiosity strikes your heart again. “Um, Doc.. .can I ask a question?”
You nod, unsure where this will lead but trusting the concerned glint in her stare.
“These wings… are they for you?”
You want to lie again. You want to say they aren’t, which would have the courtesy of being technically true. But ‘technically’ has always been a term you’ve been pushing the envelope of, even deep in your lab in a village, and a word teeming with more life than these two could ever know of. And despite all your words then, all your comforting dialogues to the last pony to bear these wings despite having her own, it was your spirit that felt like it was on the clouds as she took them aloft. That your name, not hers, would be indelibly etched in history.
Perhaps it is still.
Just not in any way you want to see.
“...yes.” you half-lie, looking to the edge of these bronzed appendages. To the NEXT-GENN proudly stamped across the last ‘feather’. “They were. But not now.”
~~~~
You didn’t give Pipp any more words beyond that. With your heart already feeling like a jackhammer in your ears, you doubt you’d hear it anyways.
Yet when those two pegasi kids left, the pallor around your little lab felt all the heavier. As if your burden, your sin, was again about to crush you whole.
Your mind drifts back to better times, and you scold yourself in the in-betweens for how easy it is to lose yourself in memory. But soon, the darks and browns of your study fade to the glittering golds and pinks of Queen Haven’s throne room.
Before you took your first steps outside this floating city, and your heart rent over how empty the rest of Equestria was.
Before the Queen laid a hoof on your shoulder, sure your tears were from joy over the unmolested greenery stretching between the mountains, and not the town called Ponyville that had once filled that lush impasse.
Even now, Queen Haven never knew. Why would she, struggling as she did to remind pegasi-kind of how they once conquered these clouds? What sort of pony would you be, to bring up how much they had all lost before they even knew of it being a loss?
Was it not bad enough you were Icarus, bringing down the hopes of one generation with your hubris?
No, this had to be fixed. For all their sakes.
And so, you turn to the cause of-and solution to-all your puzzles. Those soothing words from Haven - of taking this opportunity to continue your science, to find your own peak and stake it - bring you back to the present.
And your hooves flick over this piece of work yourself.
Slowly, you bring in the wires again, sure that no tear or imperfection would prevent anything injected into it from spilling out. Then your hooves drift to clear the grime from the ring at this invention’s center, the thing that once hummed with electric and magical life.
And again, you wonder when it’d light up. When you’d have a sign, just one, of the past you may have condemned as solidly as you have this new present.
Until then, it seems, you have as little to look forward to with these un-flapping wings as those twins did when theirs did no-
“Look out, comin’ through!”
Was that Pipp and Zipp already? Even now, your mind reels, they’re almost as fast as D-
But you silence the thought, and pull your jaw off the floor, and curtly nod at them as they return with a heavy urn tinkling between their hooves. “Izzy did say… unicylcling makes everything better…” huffed Zipp, her teeth bared in exertion. “And when we’re done with haulin’ this… she can tell that to my spine!”
“H-here you go, Doc!” Pipp proffered, her own mighty wingflaps blowing your mane back. You should really see about getting that shaved soon, it feels like a mop some days. “Didn’t know how much you needed, so…”
You hold up a hoof. “It is… more than I could have imagined. Thank you two so much.” And you offer a towel to both of the struggling mares; just because this place is dark doesn’t mean it’s not clean.
“So, I’m guessin’ this old thing’ll finally work now?” Zipp panted, heaving herself onto a bench nearby. “S’gonna rock when Mom sees you diving through the clouds with us.”
You gulp. “She still speaks of me?” The surprises keep on coming, it seems. The two weeks you hadn’t seen her shadow at your cavern’s entrance had been quite uncanny. That it’d still involve keeping you in a good light, however, bring some color back to your cheeks.
“She’s… currently in council wondering if they should erect a statue of you in the square.” Pipp pipes up. “You’ve… done so much for Zephyr Heights, even before Sunny…” And she turns away, almost like she’s injured herself.
You, however, sit up straight in your seat, the oil nozzle still listing in your hooves. Forget the fuel, this is the first time these two have mentioned another pony in their lives. And it seems like the reverence they once held in their bated breaths for you has started to spread to this ‘Sunny’, as well.
“Sunny?” You ask. “Tell me more.”
“Well, I mean… she’s really stubborn and slippery, but…” Zipp begins. “I mean, wow! You shoulda seen it. She was fighting this big robot, and then there was this flash, and she grew wings and a horn, and… and we got our flight back too! And all because of this stuff she saw in our study!” Like those books we had about those stones; they were real! Not some myth!”
Pipp takes up the lead Zipp gave her, her own meek voice picking up strength as she continued. “And she’s really generous and determined. I didn’t think that we’d get up to all we did when we met, but… I really appreciate all you did for us even more in light of it. Did you… did you know that this day would come for ponykind, Doc? Like she seemed to?”
Already, images of another winged pony - the center of your life, even now - flicker through your mind. You welcome them with far more gratitude than the last memories, knowing no gold could ever compare to her eyes, no plasma globe to the life that pumped through her every muscle.
“I… had hoped so ,yes.” And that truth finds a way to wind the key in your soul that you didn’t even know needed winding. “But it seems this ‘Sunny’... is somepony you’re meant to treasure. As much as any invention I made.”
“Had to flap before we can fly though, Doc.” Zipp merrily adds. “Those wireframes, the TVs, those electrical generators… that was all you! I mean, I didn’t believe it at first, but like.. .you’re a star all your own, Doc! Just step outta this dark cave once in a while, and see for yourself!”
Slowly, you stare back at that trickle of light as you finally hook up the NEXT-GENN. You don’t dare speak to Zipp about why you feel unworthy of climbing those lofty heights, but the truth in their statements have you wanting to try anyway. Perhaps, just once before the field test. Just once.
To remember what it felt like when only the gain of science was burning bright in your brain.
“And I thought that this wasn’t really all that at first too, but… if you’re really hankerin’ to take flight yourself, I’m happy to help.”
And such generosity, too? Such an unyielding, determined spirit? It really does seem like, succeed or fail, at least this future is in good hooves.
“I see.” Your eyes drift toward the oil gauge, happy it’s full. “Well then, let’s see how it works.”
Slowly, you turn back to the cabinets next to you, drawing out the final ingredient to this invention that would help make it go. It’s a purplish shaving, brought from a horn belonging to a pony of a far stronger heart than you’d once thought before she’d gained her wings. But even now, the vibrant spark of magic still flows through it, invisible to the gathered pegasi’s eyes but ever-flourishing at its tapered tips.
You attach this bottle, cap and all, to a tumbler inside your bronze contraption. Then, with one last look at that NEXT-GENN logo, you flick the switch.
The effects are immediate. “Holy horsefeathers this is aweeesoooome!” howls Zipp, her eyes almost as filled with crazed light as the electricity flashing through this invention’s ring. Zipp is more silent, her hooves to her lips, but she’s hopping in anticipation, and so’s your heart, and you’re absolutely certain the smoke from this invention’s pipes are messing with your brain but it really does look like it’s a success-
And then that light cuts away, the cavern thrown into darkness again. Stars dance before your eyes but you shake them away, looking only to the soft putter behind those wings. Yes, NEXT-GENN would fly again. But only between the currents of air, not time.
“Guess it didn’t work, did it Doc?” Pipp said.
Silently, you shake your head, slumping back in your chair. You don’t even make eye contact with them this time, feeling like you failed instead of just them. All these miracles, all this preparation, and it still feels like any hope of redemption is just beyond your hooves.
“Hey, that’s funny.”
You almost want to chuckle at that-‘the true sentence said before scientific miracles’, as a certain princess once said-but your eyes widen at what you do see.
Right in the center of that ring of bronze, there’s a lump of paper. And as Zipp unwraps and reads it, the words strike a chord of your heart you’d thought lost to your own guilt and shame.
‘Doc? You there? It’s the second day you’ve been missing, but I’ll keep writing till you come back.
I know you’ll find your way back - you always do!
D. H.
“Uh… what’s a D.H.?” Zipp asks.
With a chuckle betraying your years, you set back over the invention. You’re certain you know where the flaw in it is this time, but you still give Zipp some words to sate her curiosity.
She’s already seen this light unknowingly flung into the future; it is now up to you to use it to find your present again.
“It’s who’s a D.H. And…I think I’ll be seeing more of her soon, my friend.”
