The Distance In Your Eyes...
It was stupid for Lightning Dust to think she could make it.
Lightning Dust stumbled on her landing into Cloudsdale, her hooves carrying her way farther than she thought. She didn’t want to return home yet, so she decided to make a pit stop here, in a city where the majority of pegasi live. They’d all see how stupid she was, how much of a failure she was, how much of an upset pile of feathers she was. A cadet, roaming out here at this time of night? It was a guarantee in her mind. A dead giveaway.
She gritted her teeth and folded her stupid wings away. She kept them locked to her sides, wishing they’d never open up again.
It’s not just about pushing ourselves, it’s about pushing ourselves in the right direction.
In the right direction—
Lightning Dust walked into the night. There were still quite a few ponies out, but when they saw her, how frazzled her mane looked, how her face looked, and how her flight suit was torn up; they scooted over appropriately. They didn’t want to help her. They thought of her as a failure. A stupid one going in the wrong direction of the Wonderbolts Academy.
It should’ve been her. It should’ve been her standing proudly in front of Spitfire, in front of the cadets, in front of everypony. She should have been the lead pony that everypony wanted to see, wanted to praise, wanted to be like.
Yet here she was, standing alone, in the dark streets of Cloudsdale, where the buildings ascended far beyond her potential, beyond her, a little pony who distanced herself from Rainbow Dash, from Spitfire, from everypony. She felt her dreams had turned into ash, a once proud treasure that no longer meant anything to anypony else. It meant nothing.
Just like her. A strike that drifted in the wind. A nobody.
She thought of this as her tears trailed down her face. It was what she deserved, right? It was what she deserved—
“ACK!”
It was as if her muzzle was sent right back into her eyes. The impact sent her to the ground again. Through the haziness of her vision, she attempted to look up, but the black silhouette that stood in front of her gave her no hints as to what she just ran into. She thought it was a pole at first, but then she felt the silhouette move, lighting up the area a bit more. She rubbed her muzzle, wincing as she felt a bit of pain ooze out of her nostril.
She shakily sighed. “I-I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be, it was my fault. I wasn’t paying atten—”
“No, it’s mine. It’s always my fault and—”
“No, it’s not always yours. It’s mine. I’m a big tall alien that ponies don’t always see for some reason and—”
“Wait… a-alien?!”
Lightning Dust wiped her eyes and looked up this time. She looked up and saw in the nightlight a tall, disfigured diamond dog. It had a bit of hair on the top of its head, and it was strong, if running straight into the thing was anything to go off of. It was like she had run into a brick wall, and now she was paying the price.
The pain oozed more from her muzzle—
“Oh, shit, are you okay?”
The diamond dog’s low voice tickled her eardrums. She blinked. “Uh…”
Its paw was over her muzzle like her muzzle was a diamond in the rough. It was tilting her probably bruised gem to get a better view of her injury in the night light. Its—er… his scent was different. She could smell him and she definitely could tell it was a ‘him’. His scent was intoxicating, in a weird sense.
Lightning Dust blinked again. She could feel his breath tickling her fur on her muzzle. Was that alcohol she smelled on his breath? She couldn’t quite place it, but all she could focus on was him, and how his paw gently wiped something off her muzzle. Was it liquid pride, or was it the pain?
She did not know.
“A-Are you done?”
The diamond dog froze, choosing to look at her eyes. His were shining in the night. Hers probably looked stupid.
“Yeah…” The dog’s paw left her muzzle, and he stood up. He was tall again, just like the buildings around them. “Sorry,” he began, craning his arm behind his neck. “Celly’s been telling me I should be more considerate and I’m pretty sure grabbing somepony’s muzzle out of nowhere doesn’t fall into that category.”
She thought he said something else under his breath, but she shook her head. “No, no, it’s okay. I-I was just… confused. Thank you.”
“N-No problem. You should be fine if we get you a clean rag or something to stop the bleeding.” He took a deep breath. “Sorry I ran—”
“—let’s not start that again,” Lightning Dust interrupted. She gritted her teeth again before sighing. “I didn’t expect to run into a diamond dog in the middle of Cloudsdale, but that’s just my luck, right? On a day like this, getting my muzzle smashed like that.” She shakily sighed. “I totally deserve it, don’t I?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Lightning Dust said with a raised brow. What type of response was that?
“Yeah. I don’t know you. I can’t make that assumption. It’s… rude.”
Lightning Dust blinked hard. “Uh, didn’t I make an assumption that you were a diamond dog?”
“A diamond dog? What do you mean by that? I’m not going to bark for you if that’s what you’re implying.”
“No, I just thought you looked like one.”
The not-diamond-dog rolled his eyes. “Well you are waaaaay off. I’m a human.”
“A hooman?”
“No, hue. Like the color wheel. Hue-man.”
“Oh!” Lightning Dust said happily. She could feel her tail starting to swish behind her. “Like a color wheel! Okay. Whoman!”
Anon threw his arms in the air. “What am I, Doctor Who?”
“Actually, Whooves lives in Ponyville and—”
“Alright, now you’re just fucking with me. His name is Whooves?”
“Yep. Although, that’s what I saw when I was in Ponyville. I could be wrong, it was quite a while ago…” Lightning Dust’s voice trailed off, and she suddenly remembered Rainbow Dash. She was from Ponyville. She was a lead pony now. She was not like her. Lightning Dust. A lose—
“Uh… ma’am?”
“Huh?”
The who—human was laughing at her. “S-Sorry! You were just spacing out and I wanted to make sure you were alive there. Got your head in the clouds?”
Her muzzle scrunched up at his question, making her wince. She rubbed her snout. “Ugh. I wish I was, it would be way better than being in pain right now. You really did a number on my face, human—”
“Anon.”
“Anon?”
“That’s my name! Don’t wear it out!”
Lightning Dust rolled her eyes as Anon laughed rather loudly. “Okay, Anon. Pipe down. It’s not that funny.”
He snorted before bending down again to her level. “It’s okay, I was only laughing at how you looked like a deer in headlights.”
“Headlights?”
“Think of a candle, but much bigger and brighter.”
“Oh. So you’re an alien, huh?”
Anon sighed, his gaze looking elsewhere. “Yeah. An alien. The only one.”
Lightning Dust tilted her head. “Really?”
“Yep. Have you lived under a rock or something?”
“If you mean flying so intensely everyday to the point that newspapers were just an object in the wind, then yes.”
“Oh,” Anon said, his eyes widening slightly and his brows raising. He brought one of his fingers up to her face again to wipe away something. “Were you trying out for the Wonderbolts?”
Wonderbolts. That word stung. It stung so much that she felt her eyes water again. “Y-Yeah.”
Stupid voice. Stupid Wonderbolts. Stupid—
“Okay, you definitely aren’t okay. Come on, let’s go hit a bar.”
“Hit a bar?”
“Yeah, you definitely lived under some rock. Maybe your spirit animal is named Patrick in some parallel universe.” Anon got up and held out his paw. “Let’s go.”
“Do I have a choice?”
The big tall guy named Anon smiled. It was interesting, interesting enough to get a little closer to see it. “I won’t force you. But I want to talk to you… miss?”
“Lightning Dust,” she said. She put a forehoof in his paw and smiled back. “Lead the way, big guy.”
Anon nodded. The two walked down the road and into a nearby tavern. Its rickety signage dangled in the wind, with the smeared name The Wild Lotus greeting them. The rusty chains that held it begged for release, and Lightning Dust was happy. She was happy that someone else noticed her.
Someone may have had a bit of faith in her.
“Was it okay for you to feel that way?”
Lightning Dust shrugged. “I don’t know. Part of me wanted to go back there and knock this guy right in the muzzle. But the other part of me didn’t want to catch an assault with a deadly weapon charge.”
“Did you just call your hoof a deadly weapon?”
A smirk wormed onto her face (at least, that’s what she hoped. Her lip was probably twitching out of this world). “Do you want to find out?”
Anon waved his hands at her, as if to say ‘spare me’. “I already know how it feels. Trust me. Never be on the receiving end of a flying horseshoe of a princess. I swear, they made those things out of steel or something. My ears were ringing for days.”
Lightning Dust let out a boisterous laugh. She laughed, and laughed, and laughed, much to the chagrin of Anon, who quietly sat by her in the bar. They had sat up front, next to the tavernkeep. He was a rugged stallion, probably seen as many ponies come in and out of there as aliens and griffons. But yet again, that’s all that Lightning could assume, she had never been to one of these places before.
Apparently, Anon had been to some, though. Through their conversations, Lightning Dust gathered that he had been in Equestria for quite some time. He was friends with the Princesses, and to even some of the nobles. She had never liked the nobles, mostly because they sounded more annoying than they were worth, but they had bits, they had the prestige, and most importantly, they had the honor and the glory. She craved that life, only in the form of flying and competition. To be at the top meant everything to her.
It reminded her of how much she screwed up recently. It made her anxious, as they still haven’t talked about it. Anon probably noticed her worry, and tried to distract her, but nothing has kept that lingering thought away. Anon told her about the time he had met Spike the dragon and the poor guy puked out a letter that said in bold the words ‘buck off, I’m drinking hard apple cider right now’ from none other than Princess Celestia. It was funny, until it reminded her of how hard it was to stand there while Spitfire ripped her lead pony badge off in front of everypony.
He also told her about the time one of the chefs in the castle had spiked Luna’s soup with poison joke. Granted, the chef had gotten a blessing from Princess Celestia, but hearing that the stallion was ‘put on leave’ had her bursting out laughing. That is, until she remembered how she was escorted off the Academy’s premises. Then everything felt worse.
Heck, even the story he just told her about, the one where Princess Luna had slipped on an ice cube in the castle and her hoof shoe had hit Anon square in the noggin; none of those helped. The thought still lingered. It still told her she failed. She was the stupid loser in teal hooves. The gold maned featherbrain whose frazzled appearance became the definition of defeat. That was her.
Yet she was here, losing with someone who also had lost. A guy named Anon, alone in a world unlike his own.
She wondered if he missed it.
“Hey, Anon?”
“Yeah?”
“I know we’ve been talking about random stories but… you haven’t talked about where you’re from.”
Anon froze, holding his glass of whiskey in his hands. He had taken a sip when she said what she had said, and he was holding it there like he was holding on for dear life. Had she caught him at the wrong time? Was this wrong for her to ask?
“A-Anon?”
“Sorry,” Anon said, setting the glass on the counter beside them. He pushed it closer between them, their glasses clinking together. “You caught me off guard there. I… was making sure I heard what you said.”
Lightning Dust nodded. “Was that wrong to ask?”
He sat there ramrod for a few moments, making Lightning Dust wonder if it was wrong to ask what she did, but then he shook his head and placed a hand of his on her withers. “Not at all. You’re curious, and I’m… comfortable enough to talk about it now.”
“About it now?”
“I… I was like you out there. Granted, I’m glad I didn’t sustain a bloody nose like you did—”
“You didn’t have to get Old Red over there to give you a towel with ice on it!”
Anon rolled his eyes. “It was the only way it was going to keep it from bleeding. Well… that and the paper towel he also gave me to plug it up a tad.”
Lightning Dust felt her face heat up. She didn’t know why, maybe because the impromptu muzzlebleed was finally staved. Or maybe because of how he had helped her.
“I’m glad you did it though. My muzzle isn’t going to split in two now thanks to you.”
“It’s not a big deal. Besides, you really rammed into me. I probably got a bruise on my leg to remember this moment by, but I won’t know until I get home.”
“Oh you big foal, you’ll be fine,” Lightning Dust said, patting his leg with her hoof. “But still, spill. I’m curious about where you’re from. You said you were an alien, after all.”
“Yeah… an alien from a planet called Earth,” Anon began, sucking in a big breath. He continued, “Was from a small town in the middle of where God lost his tennis shoes. That’s probably why I was the only one who fell into this place. Right after I did, the portal closed—” Anon stopped himself, coughing. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, you didn’t ask for that. But yeah, I was from a small town that had a McDonalds, a Walmart, and some random Dollar General store whose owner absolutely hated my guts. Not sure why he hated me so much, but hey, when you own something that far out from civilization, you kind of start building your kooky backstory and that apparently involves hating me.”
“Sounds like he really wanted to be the main character.”
Lightning Dust felt like she just called herself out, her wings tingling. She felt her lips sag, but she kept her image up.
“Like you wouldn’t believe, Lightning Dust. They were really full of themselves. The Dollar General was about to go out of business when I was still there. They probably left at this point.” He shook his head. “I had a bit of family. My mother and father were your average parents: caring and not caring at the same time. They cared when my grades came back looking like a fire had seared my report card, but when I did well, they just expected it. They treated my sister with a bit more love, but hey, she wasn’t spoiled. That’s all that mattered.”
“Have you ever felt like you were unloved?”
Anon let out a low hum. “I don’t know if I’d call it unloved. Maybe more like I was given the tough love treatment. It’s complicated.”
“Tough love?”
“You know, you get pushed down for failing but you get propped up once you succeed? There wasn’t any in-between. Yet again, that could also be said for pole dancers, but I wasn’t a fan of strip clubs.”
Anon then took a sip of his drink. Lightning Dust tilted her head.
“Strip clubs?”
“Don’t ask. That would require you to wear clothes.”
“I am wearing clothes. It’s a flight suit.”
Anon looked at Lightning Dust for a second and scoffed. “Looks like you tore that thing up.”
“Pfft… it’s fine.” Lightning Dust waved him off with her hoof. “A hole or two is just to show that I flew better today.”
“Or you crashed into a bunch of bushes and one of them just so happened to rip part of your flight suit off.”
Lightning Dust mentally cringed. She couldn’t tell him that Spitfire did that to her. Not one bit.
“It was a good crash, okay?”
“Alright, alright. Still, anything else you wanted to ask me?”
Lightning Dust took a sip of her own drink. Some white wine whisked in her glass. She licked her lips. “What about your job? What did you do on Earth?”
Anon sighed. “It wasn’t interesting. There was a warehouse that specialized in shipping urinal mats and—”
“What are urinal mats?”
“They used them in bathrooms. Made sure to protect the floor in case someone decided it was time to paint the walls yellow.”
Lightning Dust almost gagged reflexively, but she burped instead. She giggled to herself. “Sorry, that’s absolutely gross.”
“Hey, you’re the one who asked. I just delivered it.”
She gasped and let out a long devastating groan. “Aaaaaand now I hate you.”
“Guilty as charged,” Anon said, throwing his hands up. He then turned and took another sip of his whiskey. “Life back on Earth was good, but it also had its moments.”
“Maybe it was great that you came here then.”
The words had tumbled out of her. And when Anon heard them, his eyes widened. He had leaned up against the counter like he was just hit by a blast of magic. His arms dangled against his sides. “I… I don’t know about that.”
Lightning Dust raised a brow. “Do you…?”
The words died in her throat. She was afraid to say them.
Anon got it though, as he nodded. “Yeah. I miss them. I miss everyone I knew. I even miss the job I had back home. It gave me a reason to wake up in the morning. Now I just wander around from city to city with an allowance that Celly and Luna gave me. I… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do other than just exist.”
“The Princesses don’t know how to send you back?” Lightning Dust said, scooting her stool closer to his. She unfurled a wing and offered it to him, to which he immediately leaned into.
“They can’t. The… the portal was not opened by them. It was some rogue magic that tore open the fabric of time I fell right into.” Anon nuzzled her wing. “I’ve been stuck here ever since. My family probably thinks I died in a ditch somewhere.”
“A-Anon…” Lightning Dust murmured. She clutched him and pulled him closer to her chest. “I highly doubt they would think of you like that.”
He whimpered before taking a deep breath. He looked at her, his brows furrowed. “Well, I’ll continue thinking that way until you stop doing it first.”
Lightning Dust felt her stomach doing backflips, while her nerve endings were practicing magic. “W-What?”
Anon peeked out from her wing cocoon she had him in. “You know what I’m talking about. Now spill. If I’m going to be miserable, you are too. It’s called the miserable tax, where we suddenly bust out the good old playwrights in us and we start acting out scenes in a prison.”
“Really?”
“No,” Anon said with a grin. “I just want to be miserable together. It’s better to be miserable with someone than to be miserable alone.”
Lightning Dust chuckled and kept those wings wrapped around him. “That makes sense. I guess I’ll be miserable with you.”
“Good, now spill.”
The furrowed brows that Anon had, they reminded her of Spitfire’s when she—
“I… got tossed out of the Wonderbolt Academy.”
Anon froze. He looked like his head was spinning. “Uh… wow. And you said you had flown well today.”
“Well, that wasn’t entirely the truth. I… I thought I did.”
“You thought you did?”
Lightning Dust gulped down her pride. She washed it out with some wine. “I did. I thought I was doing everything right. The Wonderbolts, they only take the best of the best flyers. And I’ve worked my whole entire life for this moment, to finally get a chance to try out. After nailing the first time trial, I was assigned the role of lead pony, and I was going to capitalize on it.
“The flag hunt made me even more confident because Spitfire told me that I had exceeded her expectations. The ability to push myself like I do… she liked that at the time. Heck, Rainbow Dash (she was my wingpony) and I were given some time off since we had passed the other cadets’ times at our third event. Yet…”
Lightning Dust felt those feelings churn up inside her. They were burning and they were asking for her to just burst out in tears. But she kept herself together. Not yet.
“For our final task, we were told to take out as many clouds as we could. Rainbow Dash and I were paired up again and we were smoking the rest of the competition. However, I was wanting to take out as many clouds as possible in the fastest way I could, while Rainbow was more… conservative. She was worried about the safety of the others and what not.”
“Safety of others?” Anon asked.
Lightning Dust nodded. “I don’t know why that matters still! I’ve always trained by myself, so I didn’t have to worry about other ponies. It wasn’t on my list to think about that.”
“Not even for the safety of yourself?”
Now that made Lightning Dust pause. “Uh… no. I always operated on skill first. Jump before you could even think about jumping.”
“That’s… dangerous. If you jump off something very high up and you get injured, what are ponies going to think?”
Lightning Dust’s eyes widened, before cringing, looking away from Anon. “I… I don’t know.”
She closed her eyes and felt a hand grip her withers, before petting it gently. “Lightning…”
“I…” She took a gulp of air. It tasted dry, and then it tasted like copper. “I guess they’d…” Lightning Dust frowned. “They’d… think nothing of it?”
“A mare that injured herself over nothing, huh?”
“What do you mean? I’ve worked my whole life to get to where I am and—”
“And you just told me that you jumped off things for no reason. For nothing.” Anon shook his head. “You need some reason to jump off, yet you had that reason the entire time, but you disregard the most important thing next to it: yourself. You. You can work for something your whole entire life, yet you don’t care enough to make sure what you’re doing is going to benefit you in the end?”
“Well, the Wonderbolts would benefit me—”
“That’s not what I mean, Lightning Dust. I mean that whatever stunt you pull isn’t going to send you into a casket with your name engraved on it.”
She felt the copper on her lips and on her tongue. She felt it in the air that she took in, and exhaled out. She felt it in her wings, how they shredded against the wind, battered by a tornado gone wrong. She had caught herself from spiraling to the ground, but if she hadn’t…
…who would have remembered her?
“I…”
“And not to mention yourself. I mean, if anyone happened to have died or gotten injured too, you would’ve been at fault.”
Dying. That word hit her harder than it should’ve.
She blinked. She thought about Rainbow Dash. About what she had said.
Awesome? My friends could have been smashed to pieces!
And how Lightning Dust responded… she just… disregarded them. Yeah, they didn’t get hurt, but they could have.
They could have, and if they did…
Lightning Dust felt her muzzle tingle. Her eyes began to water. Her hooves were tingling too, but she twiddled with them as she felt the situation slip right out of her hooves.
“I… I really screwed up, didn’t I?”
“Did you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I did. I just…”
Anon patted her on her head. “You do know you can still fix this, right? They may not want to hear from you right now, but who knows? Maybe in the future you could go back to who you wronged—”
“It was Rainbow Dash and her friends,” Lightning Dust muttered. She hung her head, and looked away from him. “All the cadets, Spitfire, and everypony else that could have been there.”
“Now you’re thinking, Lightning.” Anon pulled her into a hug, her wings fluttering before settling at her sides. “You can go back to them some day and apologize, ask for another shot at the Wonderbolts, and then do everything right.”
Push ourselves in the right direction…
“You really think I can make it?”
Anon pulled away from her for a moment and nodded. “Pretty sure. You don’t seem like a bad pony. Unless you’re bullshitting me and you actually murdered two ponies before you ran into me.”
Lightning Dust shook her head, smiling. “N-No! I didn’t do that, Anon!”
“Sounds like somepony who murdered two innocent ponies would say,” Anon said with a smirk.
“Now you’re messing with me!” Lightning Dust pointed her foreleg at him, her hoof shaking in place.
“Well, someone needed to put a smile back on your face. Besides, you said it yourself. All you need is someone to believe. I’ll give you that, as long as you can prove to me, and to yourself, that you’re worth it.”
Lightning Dust’s heart was doing complete three-sixties. It pumped rather loudly in her chest, thumping to the rhythm of her mind as it conjured up a world where she could fly with the Wonderbolts, with Rainbow Dash, with the cadets who make it in, and—
She sniffled and shook her head. “Yeah! I can do that!” She hopped off the stool and stood proud in front of Anon, her chest puffed out. “But you’re right, I need to work on things first. I need to figure out what I should do.”
Anon smiled. “Glad I could help you see that your failure isn’t the end result. It’s just a possible new beginning.”
She felt her heart flutter again. “Thanks, Anon.”
“No problem.” The human stretched his arms and sighed. “Wow, how long have we been talking for?”
“Probably for way too long, but… still.”
“Still what?” Anon said with a raised brow.
“Don’t you start thinking that now you helped me that we should just disregard your little homesick comments.”
Lightning Dust saw Anon’s eyes dart around. He was definitely looking elsewhere. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“If you’re going to promise me that you’ll believe and that I need to prove it, then I need you to prove to me that you’re not going to do something you’d regret. There are ponies out there that care about you now too—” Lightning Dust hopped up on her stool again and scooched close. She wrapped those wings of hers around him again. “I care now. You’re not going to be alone here, even if you feel that way, okay?”
She could feel Anon go limp in her grasp, before he resolved to return her hug. “Okay. Okay, Lightning. It’s a deal.”
The two sat there in the tavern, a watering hole smack dab in the middle of Cloudsdale. Two broken souls held each other, comforting one another under the comforts of a bright light. The two empty drinks beside them on the counter were scooped up by the rugged stallion. He stared them down, his brows furrowed.
“Hey, stop making out and get your sorry asses out of here! We’re about to close.”
Lightning Dust felt like she was cosplaying as a tomato. “We’re not making out!”
“Oh, we were totally making out, Old Red. Did you see how she was all over me?”
Author's Note
And here we are. Round 2. Goal of this year is to bust out some fanfics, updates, and just overall be more active.
We're just getting started. Stay tuned.
Music for this fic:
Amenra - A Solitary Reign
Foxblood - Bittersweet
