Laws of Motion

Chapters

0. An object is inherently egotistic.
1. An object at rest tends to stay at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force.
2. The change in motion of an object is proportional to the force it experiences.
3. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
4. The application of external forces changes the energy type of an object.

0. An object is inherently egotistic.

I got my fifth letter that morning asking me, politely, to vacate the premises. In the fifth letter, the order to comply was printed in bold:

It has come to our attention that your Cloudsdale home has not yet been grounded, despite repeated reminders that airborne structures dependent upon cloud-walking dynamics are now considered illegal under the new Thaumagenic Radiation Reduction Guidelines (TRRG). We strongly urge you to take this matter seriously and to cooperate fully with all directives from the relevant authorities. Your prompt attention to this matter is crucial to avoiding further legal escalation of the situation.

Next time, it would be in red ink.

I’m not the only pegasus who’s refused to be grounded. Of course, most of the others are even older farts than me. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be the last one up here. Maybe I’ll be the only one watching when those stupid rattle-trap spaceships take off for parts unknown. Boy, would that piss off the old squad.

I crumpled up the letter and chucked it out, just like the last four. If the HOA wanted me out, they could drag me out. Kicking and screaming.

The coffee maker beeped. I hauled myself out of my chair by the window moseyed across the pillowy floor to pour myself a cup, every step a frivolous waste of magic. I could practically hear Soarin’s wing-belted voice in my ear telling me to quit it already, to just move into an apartment on the ground—you got that nice new coffee maker, Spits. See? You do liketechnology. New things are good. This is just new, Spits.

I wished I had a horn so I could waste even more magic carrying my stupid cup of coffee back to my stupid chair by the window. I wished I could carry it with me on my stupid recreational flight later—also illegal, also had faceless ‘we’s threatening legal action. I wished I had the balls to punch a stupid hole in the stupid clouds and let the stupid morning sun spill over the stupid table while I drank my stupid coffee. But that would almost certainly have me thrown in jail.

So I just shambled back over to my chair and looked out the window at the dingy, sunless sky. A few months ago, that may have been a nice passtime, but the silhouette of the Middle-Equestrian ship was beginning to take shape on the horizon. It made it hard to forget all the crap I wanted to forget.

The doorbell rang. I jumped and spilled coffee all down my front—not quite scalding hot, but enough to make me wince and hiss and pat myself off delicately with a tea towel in a way that reminded me of a granny even more than the crow’s feet at the corners of my eyes. I had been hiding from doorbells the past few weeks, on account of the threats of legal action, and so I slid my chair quietly out of view of the window. Then the doorbell rang out a second time, followed by a flurry of knocks and a bellowing voice:

“Spitfire!” she screamed, a familiar lisp nipping at the front of my name. “Get your flank out here now!”

I let the tea towel fall to the floor, a disgusting splotchy beige from the coffee.

“Don’t make me drag you out of there!” Fleetfoot pounded the door another dozen times. “I’ll do it! Just give me a reason!”

She hardly waited a full minute before kicking down my door and barging in. The flaps of her wing-belting vest hung open, dangling limply from her sides and exposed flared wings as she appeared in my doorway to my kitchen.

“Spitfire!”

I shook my head and took another sip of coffee. “Guess you found a reason, huh?” I set my coffee cup back on the table and gestured to her flared wings. “Who let the girls out? I thought you were the absolute poster child of the wing-belters. Tsk, tsk, Fleets.”

“The Cloudsdale Grounding Board called us.” ‘Us’ surely meaning the old squadron. “I—I can’t believe you’re this selfish!”

“I’m not selfish—I’m stubborn.” I ran a hoof through my rumpled mane and re-adjusted my robe. “And it’s nice to see you, too. How long’s it been?”

“You’re coming down with me.”

“C’mon, Lieutenant. A little effort would be nice.” I once again rose from my chair and crossed the room. “How do you take your coffee, again?”

“I’ve got more important things to do than help the Board evict you,” Fleetfoot said.

“Like what?” I asked as I poured. “Like build spaceships?”

“Yeah, actually.” Fleetfoot lifted her rear leg and let me see her cutie mark: what was once a speeding horseshoe was now a rocket with a vapor cone in its wake. “I’m in engine design—Blaze, too. You could help, y’know, if you just—”

“Nope.” I used a wing to flip back my robe, revealing my own, un-changed cutie mark. “My flank’s just as stubborn as I am.”

Fleetfoot’s eyes ran back and forth over my flank, searching for even the tiniest of differences. She found none. “You should go to destiny counseling,” she said.

I shrugged. “Don’t want to.”

“Well, I compel you.”

“Well, you ain’t the boss of me,” I said. “You don’t get to pull rank just ‘cause you’re a rocket scientist now, Lieutenant. Do you want coffee, or not?”

“No, I don’t want coffee!” Fleetfoot pounded her hoof on the floor and a little puff of cloud popped loose. “What happened to you, Captain? You used to care so much about bettering yourself and your team. Now there’s an actual crisis and you’re just hiding up here in your stupid cloud mansion?”

“I’m too old to better myself,” I said.

“We’re the same age, you idiot.”

“Congrats on your youthful glow,” I growled. “But I guess I’m the old dog you can’t teach new tricks—and the flank agrees.”

“Spitfire, please.”

“Look.” I slammed the coffee cup down on the counter and whirled to face Fleetfoot. “I know my rights. They can’t kick me out of this place—I own it. I don’t care how many threatening letters they send me! I’m staying.”

Fleetfoot shook her head. “First off, you clearly don’t know your rights. The Princess signed a bunch of executive orders at the beginning of the shift. She can seize any magic-dependent property with or without warning. You’re lucky you got so many courtesy calls,” she said, kicking the wastebasket filled with crumpled-up letters.

I shrugged.

“Second,” she said, “let’s say you’re right. You’re old and you don’t have time to change, so the best option really is to just sit back and let it happen. Fine. But do you really want to alienate all your friends trying to make a statement?”

I shrugged again. “What does it matter?” I asked innocently. “Sounds like the cloud of magic radiation or whatever is gonna choke us all out either way.”

Fleetfoot clenched her jaw. Then, maybe so that she didn’t say anything she’d regret, she glanced at her watch. “I promised myself I wouldn’t stick around for more than five minutes,” she said, her voice low. “Maybe you’re fine with all this… this waste, but I’m not.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve got thirty seconds,” Fleetfoot said. “Are you coming or not?”

“Not.”

“So you want the royal guard to drag you out of here?”

“Yup.”

“Fine,” she said. “Maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll still be willing to let you crash on the couch when they do.”

When the thaumatologists first established the link between magical radiation and the slow death of our planet, one of the biggest questions everyone had was what, exactly, was radiating? Magic was efficient and clean. There and gone. It didn’t have a smell or a taste, most of the time it wasn’t even visible. How could it be choking us all? How could something with no substance, something entirely intangible, be weighing us all down?

It’s more complicated than I really get. I’m not ashamed to admit that. I’ve had four years to get it, and still I only have the basics: every magical process—telekinesis, flight, weather control, transformations, illusions, all of it—is just the teeniest, tiniest bit inefficient. There’s some fraction of a fraction of a percentage of wasted energy that we all shed doing the stupidest things, like walking across the kitchen to get a cup of coffee or tearing open a threatening letter. Those extra wisps of magic have to go somewhere, and where they’ve gone is everywhere. The world soaked them up like a sponge into some other space—some extra-dimensional pocket, some invisible swollen thing none of us ever knew was there—and now it’s all full up. It’s taken on too much and it’s starting to leak back out. The more we fight it, the more it fights back. We don’t know how to undo magic without more magic. It will only get worse.

It’s hard not to feel it now; some eddy curling off my primaries and building up in my wake, searching for a place to land, finding nothing. Leaching into the clouds and weighing them down with unplanned storms. Soaking into the earth and springing up as weeds that grab at legs. Making magic less clean, less efficient, less reliable. Spreading like little fingers of chaos through everything, everywhere, always. The whole planet—toast. Not right away, but soon. Another few decades. The estimate kept changing. The thaumatologists were working really hard to get it right. In the meantime, we would build our spaceships and prepare to run away. All of us. Planet Equus was no longer liveable—thanks to us—and so we’d just leave it behind and search for greener pastures. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater, huh?

However you sliced it, the planet’s expiration date was further in the future than my own. Therefore: not my problem. And yet, somehow, it had been made my problem.

The first pony to make it my problem was, perhaps unsurprisingly, my debilitatingly self-aware cousin. This was maybe two or three months after the first news stories broke—back when ponies were still hotly debating the ethics of wasteful things like scheduled rainbows and magic fireworks shows. The precise meanings of “frivolous” and “wasteful” had not yet been decided. The beginning of ‘the shift’ as some called it.

Sunburst called me one evening, and opened with this little number: “Spitfire! I am so sorry.”

I was at the grocery store shopping for brownie mix, and the sorrow in his voice caught me so off guard that at first I didn’t respond—I just clamped the phone against my ear with one wing and continued reading ingredients to myself.

“I-I should have called sooner,” he said. “I just—well, as I’m sure you can guess, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the lab with Twilight and… n-not that that matters, of course. Just… I mean, first your injury, and now this? I’m just so, so sorry.”

“Well, ‘hello’ to you too,” I grumbled. I put down the box of brownie mix and briefly surveyed the cake flavors. “What exactly are we talking about, Sunny? You lost me.”

“Oh.” Sunburst’s trademark surprise-concern. “I, um… I heard there were cancellations.”

“Use more words.”

Sunburst heaved a sigh. It crackled over the cheap cell phone speaker. “Your airshows?”

I furrowed my brows. “My airshows?” Then, for the first time, something clicked. “My airshows.”

“I’m sorry, I really thought that—” Sunburst stammered. “I-I hope I haven’t—”

“Who said so?”

Sunburst’s mouth ran forward another few words or so before he managed to stop himself. “Excuse me?”

“You heard about cancellations,” I said. “From who?”

“U-um…” The line was so quiet I thought it might have gone dead. “The numbers are public, Spits.”

“Numbers?”

“The radiation.” The sound of paper shuffling came through the phone in little static bursts. “Reports have been coming out almost daily with magical radiation outputs for… well, everything. About a week ago, a report came out about sporting events. Wonderbolts airshows topped the list.”

He started spewing numbers around that point. I’ve never been good at math, so it all went over my head. I was able to tell that the numbers for us—for the Wonderbolts—were high, and higher than a lot of stuff considered necessities. Higher than a magically-induced rainstorm. Higher than a magically-collected harvest over so many acres. Higher than the cumulative telekinetics used during a six-hour surgery. It was some fraction of what it took Celestia to raise the sun—an eighth, I think.

“Well,” I said in the first lull I sensed. I’m not technically sure that Sunburst was finished talking. Maybe he was just taking a breath. “Thanks for letting me know.”

This struck my cousin briefly mute. “I… I assumed you already knew. Or at least thought. But I guess you’ve been… away.” His voice was tiny. “I’m sorry.”

I snorted. “Between you and me, I think I’d already had my last airshow,” I said. “On account of the wing thing.”

He could only repeat himself: “I’m sorry.”

“No, no. That’s fine,” I said, trying to bite back my own anger. “I may as well just rip off the bandage—why should I try to keep the glory days alive as a coach when my legacy could just crumble overnight? I’m getting old, anyway. Probably gonna die soon.”

“We’re the same age, Spitfire.”

“Numerically, maybe,” I muttered. “But a middle-aged athlete and a middle-aged magician are two different beasts.”

Sunburst sighed again, this time tense.

“Oh, what now?”

“I’m not doing magic anymore,” he said. “It was… I couldn’t. I just couldn’.”

“Oh.” I sniffed. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He sounded so dismissive and tired. “I went to destiny counseling. The scans found thaumatology in one of my tributaries, so they… nudged me over. M-maybe that’s why I forgot to call you—I know the counselors said there can be some, ah… memory stuff.”

I tried to picture Sunburst with a new cutie mark. I couldn’t really imagine what a magic-studying cutie mark—as opposed to a magic-doing cutie mark—would look like. My mind just got caught there. I wanted to ask questions, but I couldn’t. I wanted to tell him something comforting, but I couldn’t do that, either. Instead, I just said, “Gotcha.”

It clearly wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but he hid it well. “Sorry for bothering you.”

“I wasn’t doing anything important.”

“I love you, Spits,” he said. “And i-if you ever need some distraction, we could always meet up for coffee sometime.”

I shrugged. “Yeah. I guess we could.”

He waited another long moment, maybe to see if I would suggest a time or show a little more enthusiasm. I didn’t really want to go out for coffee with my cousin. I didn’t want to see his stupid new cutie mark.

“Anyway,” he said. “I’ll talk to you later?”

“Maybe.”

“Um… goodbye.”

“Bye.”

I hung up. My voicemail light was blinking, so I pressed my phone back against my ear and listened to an automated voicemail from some corporate office in Canterlot. Apparently my airship cruise had been canceled. The airship I had selected used magically-powered engines, and all airships with magically-powered engines had been grounded indefinitely. To compensate, I had been given some credit to put towards a future cruise on a more sustainably-powered airship. Their tagline—have a magical day!—was unchanged.

I didn’t get a letter with red ink after all. The guard came a few days later and escorted me out of my home. They brought a team of pegasi that threw all my crap in boxes labeled with my name—which they wrote as two words, those pricks—and sent them down to the ground for me. They did this for all the remaining Cloudsdale homes. I guess I really was the last hanger-on.

It was a cloudy day. We didn’t used to have cloudy days. I stood on the ground, in the shadow of my own home, and watched the fleet of pegasi toss boxes in a chain from my doorstep down to the waiting carriages. I had been told the carriages would take my things to a storage unit—free of charge.

“We can ground your house, but I won’t lie: it’ll be expensive.” Some unicorn with a clipboard was taking notes on the whole thing, doing quick math in the margins of legal documents. “The land’ll cost you around a quarter million, and grounding construction will be another half, but the bigger expense is the thaumaturgy tax—there’s not very much land nearby, so we’ll have to tow it. You’ll be taxed for all the time spent in the air, plus the back taxes for, erm… waiting to evacuate. It’ll add up quicker than you think.”

I scoffed. “And that’s legal?”

“Perfectly,” the unicorn replied. “It’s all part of Last Gasp efforts—we need at least a little bit of magic to make it to… well, to the finish line, as it were.”

I hated everything about that sentence, so I elected to ignore it. “Do I have any other options here?”

“You do, actually!” The unicorn paused to rifle through the papers on his clipboard with his hooves, clearly an activity he was still mastering. “If you choose to donate the home to other displaced creatures, the government will cover the costs and provide you with sustainable housing credits!” He flashed me a brilliant grin full of square, white teeth. I noticed then that he had a cutie mark of a flipping solar panel. That had to be new. Whatever they called it—a tribute or something else equally reverential and moronic.

One of the pegasus movers dropped a box. I watched it tumble end-over-end through the air a good dozen or so meters before exploding at the seams when it hit the ground. It looked less like a box and more like a sack of potatoes.

The pegasus fleet froze at once. One called out, “Sorry!”

I didn’t answer, just shook my head and rubbed my temple with one hoof. “Where am I supposed to live, then?”

The appraiser flipped through another few pages. “There's plenty of rental properties in the Ponyville area. A few in Canterlot, though they’re also getting to be pretty pricey. If you don’t mind a move, Fillydelphia and Baltimare are great options!” He must have sensed my lack of enthusiasm. “Of course, you do qualify as a displaced creature. You’d be welcome to move back into your home once it’s grounded.”

I pictured my home divided up into five or six modest apartments. Sharing a bathroom with a once-seapony, now hippogriff, who took too-long showers and cried when it rained. Eating breakfast next to a changeling still adjusting to their permanent bug form who chewed with their mandibles open. Rooming with a unicorn who couldn’t even do their mane with their own hooves, and needed help from a more dextrous pony—namely me.

“As good as that sounds, I think I’ll pass,” I grumbled. “Y’know, this is some grade-A horse apples. Charging me a million bits and change for my own house…”

“Actually, my estimates put it closer to 2.3 million,” the appraiser noted, tapping his clipboard authoritatively. He noticed the look in my eyes and shifted his own gaze guiltily downward. “Apologies.”

I tried not to growl. “Great…” I muttered, bank statements with considerably fewer zeros flashing through my mind. “And how much are the… sustainable home whatevers?”

“Sustainable housing credits?” The appraiser awkwardly rearranged the papers yet again. “It’s about a hundred per creature housed. Now, we’ve taken a look at the floorplan—we estimate we can turn it into eight separate dwellings! Amazing, right? You even get paid for yourself if you decide to move in.”

I made a dismissive sound at the idea. “I guess eight hundred Gs isn't so bad,” I admitted. “Pretty close to what I'd get on the market. Before the uh… stuff.”

He laughed. “No, no. Eight hundred. Bits,” he corrected. “This is a charitable donation, Miss, not a sale.”

I tried not to wince. “Ah. Right.”

The pegasus movers had swarmed the exploded box and were working to cram its scattered contents into a new container. One of them picked up a blanket in his teeth and watched as it unfurled and another object fell from it: a trophy. I think the whole box was just trophies wrapped up in blankets. There were probably a few boxes full of trophies, actually. And yet, despite the fame and fortune they implied, I had not nearly enough money to actually keep the home I owned.

I closed my eyes and let out a warm breath. “Fine. I’ll take the credits.”

“Excellent!” The appraiser used his mouth to scribble my decision down in pen. It was hard to watch. “Your Princess thanks you. Sincerely.”

“Uh-huh.”

The movers were doing an entire slapstick routine above us--bumping into each other, smacking one another with boxes, and just generally bumbling about. I had never missed my stupid whistle more. The longer I watched, the harder it was to look away.

“I’ll just need you to sign a few—”

“Can we handle that later?” I asked. “Say, in your office? These bozos are throwing my crap to the four corners of Equestria. I’d like to make sure something survives the move. My dignity, maybe.”

“O-oh!” He seemed to take notice of the mess for the first time. “Of course! Yes.”

“Thanks,” I grunted.

I took a small step forward and launched into the air just in time to catch another dropped box. I noticed then that the pegasi movers were all wearing wing-belting vests—maybe that explained how much trouble they were having getting boxes from point A to point B. They probably hadn't flown in more than a year. Maybe some of them hadn't flown in the whole four.

As bad as it sucked, I tried to enjoy the process of slowly packing my entire life into a bunch of flimsy cardboard boxes, if only because I was aware that it might be one of the last times I got to fly without getting looks and lectures. I probably took close to sixty trips between my house in the clouds and the fleet of trucks on the ground. I tried to feel every one of them to the highest degree. I tried to feel the eddies of chaos in my wake.

Besides that, I tried not to think too hard at all. I was moving from one poisoned place to another poisoned place. What a difference it would make. My Princess thanks me.

I packed my old Wonderbolts uniforms and flight plans into a box. I thought about fractions of percentages of magic building up over every unnecessary and frivolous airshow. Over decades.

What a waste.

Fleetfoot’s laugh was so loud and sharp it was practically a bark. “Well!” She smirked and flicked an errant bit of mane back up into her coif. “This oughta be good.”

She slumped coolly into the doorframe of her shiny new apartment; everything in the complex was white, chrome, or both, and it all had a sharp and unpleasant smell of shrink-wrapped newness. The peephole on the door looked a bit like the porthole on a luxury airship, only miniature. Every sound had a small echo as it tried to fill the vacant space.

“Wait, wait—” Fleetfoot took a step back and pulled the door open even more. Then, over her shoulder, she called, “Look who it is, everyone!”

The door opened into a galley kitchen. Beyond that, a small shared living space. There, hunched over a round table and cast in artificial white light, was about half of the old squadron: Soarin, Blaze, and High Winds. All three of them were out of uniform and graying, which was enough of a shock, but Soarin had also abandoned the usual windswept look of his mane for poorly-kept bangs that fell into his face. Blaze's jaw dropped and a pencil tumbled out of her teeth, rolling slowly across the flurry of papers on the table before finally tipping over the edge and clattering to the floor. High Winds pulled a pair of spectacles away from her face.

I didn't exactly know what to do myself. I think I just gaped back at them.

“We're just studying up for a physics exam tomorrow,” Fleetfoot explained casually. “Why don't you say ‘hi’ to your old squad?”

I stammered something incoherent. Soarin managed to wave stiffly back at me, and High Winds added her own blabbering to the mix.

“Well put.” Fleetfoot’s lip curled into a little satisfied grin. “I’ll be right back,” she said to the squad as she slid out the door and shut it behind her.

The hall was quiet. Only the low whir of some distant air conditioning echoed up and down the white expanse.

“Now, Spitfire:” Fleetfoot said, that shadow of a smile still clinging to her face. “What in Equestria could have brought you here?” She said it in the air of a foal’s performer who, despite already knowing the answer, would allow her audience the fun of shouting it up to her on stage.

“Funny,” I grunted. “I guess we’re gloating now?”

“Not gloating, per se,” Fleetfoot said. “Just waiting for the punchline. You made it sound like you’d rather go down with your ship then crash on my couch.”

I ruffled my wings and looked at the floor. All the clever crap I’d prepared, the excuses and the high road lies, dissolved on my tongue.

“So the ship did go down.” Her tone was unsurprised.

I grit my teeth. “Yep. Like you said: guards and all. My stuff is in storage.” I glanced up at Fleetfoot, but meeting her eyes only made my stomach plummet into my hooves. I looked back at the floor. “And I… need to crash on your couch.”

Fleets was quiet for a long moment, I guess waiting for more. I had none. After the silence had really soaked into the cinder block walls, she said, “Okay…?” she said—not an affirmative at all, but a suspicious question. Yes, and?

“Oh, what?”

Fleetfoot’s eyebrows twitched up. “Nothin’. I just thought… I dunno, maybe you'd have more to say.”

“Such as?”

“Ah, gee, let me think…” Fleetfoot’s tone twisted downward into something hostile and bitter. “Maybe an apology? Maybe an admission that stubbornness isn’t gonna get you through this? Or would that be asking too much?”

I scoffed. “I dunno what you’re talking about.”

Fleetfoot rolled her eyes. I remembered the days when I could have scolded her for that.

“I’m not trying to be your friend,” I said. “I need a place to stay for a couple days until I get the house stuff figured out,” I lied.

Down the hall, a door creaked open and a unicorn peered out. I sort of recognized her, but sort of didn’t. She was wearing a thick pair of glasses and a magic-suppressing ring. “Hey, Fleets?” she called.

Fleetfoot looked down at the floor. “Yeah?”

“Do you have the choke point pressure data for the new nozzle?” she asked. “It’s not on my spreadsheet.”

“Yeah. I’ll get it to you in a few, okay?” Fleetfoot replied, her eyes still glued to the floor. “Little busy right now.”

The unicorn looked me dead in the eye, as if trying to divine my reasons for being here. “Well…” the unicorn droned, her eyes still locked with mine. “I’m a bit stuck until I have those numbers, so maybe you could—”

“Moony!” Fleetfoot snapped. She gestured vaguely in my direction.

The unicorn—Moony, I guess—looked at me once again. Though she still seemed a bit lost, she murmured an apology and retreated back into her apartment.

“Sounds like she needs the choke nozzle data,” I said.

“It can wait.” Fleetfoot waved dismissively towards the now-closed door. She then shook her head and let out a tiny sigh. “Y’know what we’re drilling in there?”

“Nozzles?”

“The laws of motion,” Fleetfoot corrected. “We learned ‘em back in flight camp. Remember?”

I shrugged. “Barely,” I admitted. “‘An object at rest stays at rest’, or whatever.”

“That’s the first law,” Fleetfoot said, a note of surprised pride sneaking into her voice. “But there’s actually an earlier one. A zero law. They added it after the shift, since a lot of the new physicists were having trouble learning the basics.”

“They added a law of motion?” I repeated.

That nearly got her to crack a smile. “Just to the textbooks, Captain. Not to, uh… life.” She cleared her throat. “The zero law is that all objects are inherently egotistic. Selfish. They only care about what’s happening to them, and only what’s happening at that exact instant—they don’t have memory, they don’t linger or hold grudges, they don’t act of their own volition. In a physics problem, the objects will only ever react, and only instantaneously.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re being a bit of an object, ma’am.”

“I got that,” I grumbled.

“I don’t think it’s your fault,” Fleetfoot went on, her voice low. “I know you’ve had some pretty good reasons to be selfish in the past. And it wasn’t exactly a disservice to the ‘Bolts—you pushed us in ways you wouldn’t have if you were more…” She let the thought trail off there. I guess I was thankful; more what? More kind? More understanding? More empathetic? “Y’know.”

“Thanks.”

“You can stay with us,” Fleetfoot said. “Crash on the couch. I know you need it. But you need to do something for me.”

I stuttered out a syllable or two before finally landing on what I really meant: “Yeah. Fine.”

“You’re gonna go to destiny counseling.” She said it like it was already decided. “Just once a week. There’s a few counselors on campus. It’ll be totally painless. Everyone’s going through the same thing, y’know.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“I think you need it,” Fleetfoot said, and it pissed me off how she made it sound so pathetic. Like I needed an intervention. Like I was a dog awaiting euthanization.

It also pissed me off how she made a thing for me sound like a thing for her. But I guess I’m just selfish that way.

1. An object at rest tends to stay at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force.

Fleetfoot brought me a blanket and a pillow and I fell asleep on the couch while the squad studied. No one acknowledged me. They soaked in an awkward silence for about thirty minutes before they all got in a heated disagreement about energy conservation. I tried to block them out by pulling the blanket over my head, but it was cheap and thin and didn’t help at all. I didn’t sleep well—my nightmares about airshow disasters blended with the squad’s quabbling and became nightmares about failing physics exams.

Eventually, the morning light fell over my shoulder and projected tiny squares of sunshine through the open-weave blanket onto my still-covered face and shoulder. I’m not sure if the sun woke me up or if I was already awake. But it smelled like food.

I pulled the blanket away from my face and squinted in the harsh light. Blaze stood over a frying pan, pushing something around with a spatula.

Wait a minute. Blaze was cooking.

“Hey,” I said groggily.

Blaze turned to look at me. “Hey! I was hoping the smell would wake you up.” She slipped the spatula under the thing in the pan and deftly flipped it over—an omelet. A really good-looking omelet. “Hungry?”

I pushed myself upright. “Since when do you cook?”

She chuckled. “Cooking was one of my tributaries,” she said. “Funny, huh? Some of it stuck around after counseling. They say it happens more often than you’d think—you get ‘bonus talent’ after a road test sometimes. But, as fun as the cooking stuff is, the engine stuff’s a little more useful.”

As she spoke, she lifted her wing and exposed her flank to me. Once upon a time, her cutie mark looked a lot like mine: a flash of chaotic fire, but with direction. Energy. Whipping itself in a circle, like a streaking comet with a flaming tail. Now, though, it was the tiny controlled flame of a bunsen burner.

Actually, Blaze used to look almost exactly like me on all counts: her coat and mane were only a shade or two off my own and, when we were both in uniform, the only way you could tell us apart was by the subtle ombre of my own Wonderbolts coif. Now, though, Blaze wore her mane down. When she turned her head, little threads of gray flashed near her temples. No one could possibly mistake the two of us for each other.

“Huh,” I said, at everything and nothing.

“Seriously, come eat this.” She slid the omelet onto a plate. “I can whip up another in no time.”

She didn’t have to ask again—I was starved. I tore the blanket off my lap, rolled off the couch, and crossed the room. Blaze set the plate down on the counter as I approached. Little wisps of steam curled off the omelet and into the air.

“Thanks,” I said as I took the plate. “So, uh… this whole counseling thing…”

“What about it?” Blaze asked as she cracked two more eggs into the pan.

“Must really work or something.” I pulled open a drawer and sifted through silverware. “I remember when you were a cadet and pulled a shift in the galley—gave the entire reserve team food poisoning from raw kidney beans.”

Blaze chuckled. “That was a long time ago,” she said. “But, yeah, the counseling does work. It’s been sort of a miracle, especially since I was aging out of aerobatics anyway.”

I tried not to react to that. I’m not totally sure I was successful. I filled the silence by grabbing a fork and bumping the drawer closed with my thigh.

“Are you thinking about going?” Blaze asked. “To counseling, that is?”

I shrugged. “Fleet’s making me.”

Blaze laughed again. “Or what?”

“Or I can’t crash on the couch.”

Blaze shook her head and pushed the eggs around the pan. “Right. Makes sense.” She looked over her shoulder at me. “Y’know, there’s a spare room in here, too. The couch thing was a total power move.”

I rolled my eyes and plopped down at the table.

“You can’t get too mad at her, though,” Blaze said, returning to the pan. She sprinkled in a dusting of cheese and gently folded it inside. I could see how maybe being this methodical with an omelet could translate to being pretty good with engines. “She’s… passionate. But she’s got her reasons. Good ones.”

“Sure. Righteousness and the good of ponykind, or something like that.” I took a bite of the omelet—perfectly underdone in the center, just the right amount of pepper. “Mm. You really could have been a cook in another life.”

“Ha. That’s exactly what Dr. Bloom told me.” She smiled a little. Mostly to herself, I think. “And… yeah. I happen to think those are some pretty good reasons.”

“They’re certainly lofty reasons,” I grumbled. “Self-important reasons.”

“I think most ponies would say they’re the opposite, actually,” Blaze argued, shooting me a sideways glance.

I shrugged. “She thinks she can save everyone,” I said simply. “How’s that not being self-important?”

“Maybe she can.”

I grunted. “Even if she could, what’s she going to get for it?” I asked. “I’ll tell you: she gets to spend the rest of her life on a spaceship. She never gets to fly again. That was supposed to be her purpose, Blaze—she gave it up for good.”

“Some ponies would say that a life spent on a spaceship is a life spent flying,” Blaze said.

“Eugh.” I stuck out my tongue in disgust. “Did they find a poetry tribu-whatever in your scans, too?”

She just chuckled and shook her head again. It made me feel like a foal, sitting here at the kitchen table, eating the breakfast she made me, watching her laugh and shake her head with a wistful ‘kids say the darndest things’ air about her.

I dropped my fork on the plate and pushed away from the table. “Thanks for the food. Do you know when Fleets will be up?”

Blaze glanced at the clock. “Soon. She doesn’t sleep much past nine, even when we’ve had a late night,” she said. “Why?”

“Figured she’d want some assurance I’m actually doing the crap she wants me to do,” I muttered.

“Oh, I can walk you down to Dr. Bloom’s office,” Blaze said. “It’s in the building just across the way, but the signage is a little confusing. I wanted to stop by Dr. Streak’s anyway for a few last-minute questions anyway.”

“Streak?” I echoed. “As in Fire Streak?”

Blaze laughed again. “I guess no one told you—he’s our professor,” she said. “Remember? He retired from the ‘Bolts to teach flight school. He basically got a promotion after counseling.”

“Oh.”

“Y’know, I bet he’d love to see you!” Blaze clicked off the stovetop and served herself her omelet. “You should come sit in sometime. I mean, who knows? You might be joining the class soon, eh?” She gave me a cheerful wink.

I didn’t want to say what I really thought, which was ‘there’s absolutely no way I’m letting that happen’, so I just made a small uncomfortable sound and shrugged and smiled innocently at her.

Blaze sat down beside me at the table. As she ate, she reviewed for the day’s exam, running her hoof across the notes she’d scribbled down the night before:

The first law of motion: An object at rest tends to stay at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force.

The Middle-Equestrian Scientific Campus (MESC, or MESS as some ponies seemed to affectionately refer to it) existed, quite literally, in the shadow of the Middle-Equestrian ship. It included living quarters, classrooms, cafeterias, take-out restaurants, a library, a gym, and a health center. Ponies got around either by walking or by taking small electric carts that were parked in banks just outside of every building. The unicorns wore magic-dampening rings on their horns. The pegasi wore wing-belting vests. Everything was cool and dark without the light of the sun.

Blaze led me from the apartments—or perhaps ‘dorms’ was more appropriate—to the health center along a winding sidewalk. Her wing-belting vest matched her mane and had the campus’s logo embroidered on its hem, running right alongside her new cutie mark.

When we reached the door to the health center, Blaze held it open for me. “Don’t be nervous,” she whispered as I passed her.

The lobby was enormous—large enough that my skeptical scoff doubled back on me. The ceiling was vaulted and made primarily of glass, which would have flooded the room with sunlight if not for the artificial shade that covered the campus. It probably would be glaringly bright later this afternoon, when the sun peeked out from behind the skeleton of the Middle-Equestrian ship. There was a desk at the back of the lobby, though it looked less like a piece of furniture and more like a giant, white river rock; it was long, low, and flat, every corner rounded, and its bottom edge lifted up and away from the reflective tile floor, making it appear to float.

Behind the desk, a mural spread across the white wall: an abstract collection of curving lines that started as a tight bundle on the left and slowly frayed apart as they slithered rightward. It reminded me a bit of a downed, dead tree.

The pony behind the desk looked up. “Ah, Spitfire!”

I looked back at Blaze for help, but she only shrugged and waved goodbye from the other side of the glass door.

“It’s alright!” the receptionist called, her voice echoing through the lobby. “Fleetfoot called ahead.”

“Oh, uh…” I shuffled my wings and considered darting back out the door after Blaze. Then I thought about what Fleetfoot would say if I bailed and decided to briefly play the part of an adult. “Right. Makes sense.”

The receptionist smiled at me. “I’ll just need you to sign an admittance waiver.”

“Oh, I—” My step hitched. “I’m not being admitted. I’m just, like… visiting. For an hour or whatever.”

The receptionist nodded. “That’s just fine! But you still have to sign the form before the consultation.”

I sighed as the receptionist pushed a packet of papers towards me. I was honestly jealous for a second that she probably never had to do a stupid consultation, and was adjusting to precisely nothing. Some talents, it seems, are simply timeless—we will always need receptionists. She’ll be doing the same boring crap on the Middle-Equestrian ship. If she lives long enough, she may even be doing the same boring crap on another planet. Good for her.

“Great,” I grunted. “I love paperwork.”

The receptionist giggled a little—a rehearsed, customer service giggle with a crinkled snout—and said, “don’t we all?” Then she turned back to her own work.

The papers outlined the myriad of permanent and semi-permanent changes I may or may not go through as a result of counseling. I made a private vow to not let anyone touch me with any instrumentation, drugs, or needles, and just signed the paperwork as quickly as I could. Whatever could get me to the end of this moronic—but ultimately temporary—arrangement with Fleetfoot.

“Here,” I said, pushing the papers back.

The receptionist flipped through them. Then, apparently satisfied, she said, “Dr. Bloom will see you whenever you’re ready. Her office will be the first door on your left.” She gestured to a hall with a similarly vaulted ceiling, then she turned away.

Whenever I’m ready.

I assessed my readiness. Given that I didn’t know what to be ready for, I decided that I was as ready as I could be, and marched with purpose down the hall to stand resolute before the closed door. I knocked lightly and, not waiting for a response, pushed inside.

The pony inside was young. Maybe not excessively so, but young enough that I thought, for a moment, I’d walked into the wrong room. She didn’t look like she had enough life experience to be called an adult, let alone a doctor; she had no crinkles at the corners of her eyes, no gray strands in her flamingly red mane—she was even wearing a pink bow at the end of a loose ponytail.

She looked up at me and smiled brightly, youthful amber eyes sparkling. “Well, howdy!”

“Uh.” I let the door click shut behind me. “Howdy.”

It certainly smelled like doctor in here. Doctor and, weirdly, a hint of the outdoors.

“You’re Spitfire!” Dr. Bloom said. “I mean—well, I normally ask for names, but I’m pretty sure I know a Wonderbolt when I see ‘em. Have a seat!”

Dr. Bloom shuffled papers into her desk drawers as I slunk into the room. It was decorated in a… well, the only word for it is ‘country’ theme. Everything was plaid, quilted, flannel, wooden, or some offensive combination of texture and pattern. Buried in all the rustica was an array of high-tech gadgets, including what looked like a little computer screen on a rolling terminal. A bundle of tentacle-like wires dangled from one side, each complete with a little sucker on the end. There was absolutely no way that thing would be touching me—not today, not ever.

I sat down in a small wood chair against the wall. Thankfully, it didn’t rock.

“Tell me about yourself,” Dr. Bloom said. “How’ve you been keepin’ busy since the shift?”

My favorite question. “This and that,” I replied nonchalantly.

The more I looked, the more I noticed another recurring motif in the decor: apples. There were little apple silhouettes on the curtains, apple slices in amongst the plaid, a painting of a whole bushel of apples in a wood bucket hung on the wall… and that’s what the smell was, too. Not outdoor smell—fresh-cut apple smell.

Finally, my eyes landed on the nameplate on her desk: Apple Bloom.

“Wait a minute—you’re an Apple?” I asked. “As in… an Applejack Apple?”

Apple Bloom giggled. “That’s my big sis.”

“Shouldn’t you be, uh… farming?” I asked. My tone betrayed my true meaning: I don’t believe you’re a doctor with all this crap on the walls.

Apple Bloom’s smile turned from warm to tense in an instant. “Y’know, I’ve been a fate and destiny scientist for the past decade,” she said. “I’m what they call a pioneer in the field. ‘Specially since the field only got started around, ooh… a decade ago?”

That was nicer than what I would have said: Shouldn’t you be flying?

“But that’s just an estimate,” Apple Bloom added in a coy whisper.

“My mistake,” I grumbled.

“I won’t hold it against you,” Apple Bloom said, that hint of country sass curling in the back of her throat. She shoved away the last few papers on her desk and retrieved a little brown notebook from a lower drawer. At the top of a fresh page, she wrote my name as two separate words: Spit Fire. Before I could comment on it, Apple Bloom looked up at me with her sparkly, youthful eyes and cleared her throat. “Now. Your old pal Fleetfoot told me you’ve never attended destiny counseling before?”

“Uh-huh.”

Apple Bloom scribbled something down. “And why’s that?”

“Didn’t feel like it.”

Apple Bloom squinted at me. She looked me up and down, eyes resting momentarily on my unchanged cutie mark, then on my wings, before finally coming back up to my face. “Oh?”

I shrugged.

“Even with your, uh…” Apple Bloom tapped her pen on her lips, then zig-zagged it over my entire form, lingering ever so subtly on my wings. “Lifestyle changes?”

I arched a brow. “And what would those be?”

Apple Bloom snorted. “Usually it’s me asking that questions, but… well, I happen to know that The Wonderbolts were grounded indefinitely about two years ago now,” she said. “And Fleetfoot let me know that, at that point, it had already been a few months since you’d last performed. Is that accurate?”

“I had an injury.”

“What sort of injury?”

“Wing.”

Apple Bloom gave me another knowing smile. “I’m a doctor, ma’am. Could you be a little more specific?”

“It’s not relevant,” I said.

“I think it is.”

“It’s not,” I said.

“All due respect, ma’am? I’m the one behind the desk today,” she said, tapping her pen on the top of her little brass nameplate. “Do you even know why you’re here? Do you have any idea what Fleetfoot signed you up for?”

“Yeah, actually,” I said. “She wants you to take away my talent so I stop being a problem.”

Apple Bloom sighed and shook her head. “I don’t want to take anything away from you.”

“Never said you did. I said Fleetfoot did.”

“Well, if that’s what she wanted, she brought you to the wrong pony,” Apple Bloom said with a snide smile.

“Oh, yeah?” I folded my forelegs tightly over my chest.

“My goal is change, not a cutie-ectomy. And, believe it or not, change is natural,” Apple Bloom said. “Unusual, maybe. But natural. It happened to a lot of folks at the start of the shift—no counseling required. Some purposes just aren’t permanent, and that’s okay!”

I scoffed. “You call that ‘change’. I call that not having a backbone.”

Apple Bloom’s expression changed. “Fine. If you’re gonna act like a foal, I’ll give you the foal talk.”

Apple Bloom rolled her chair to one side, revealing a diagram framed on the wall behind her. It looked like the mural behind the receptionist’s desk—a bundle of lines that slowly frayed into a tangled mess.

“Destiny is like a river,” Apple Bloom said, gesturing broadly to the image. “It starts out as one big bundle—before you get your cutie mark, you’re a little bit of everything. We get some of our destiny from our parents, some from our friends, some from the world around us. When we find the right fit, we get our cutie mark! But the cutie mark only represents one of a theoretically infinite number of outcomes—one tributary on your river. Have you learned that word in school?”

I leaned back and pressed my forehooves together in my lap. “Ha, ha.”

Apple Bloom flashed me a condescending smirk. “Destiny counseling is two things: first, it’s building a map of your river. Just like this one here,” she said, tapping on the picture. “We learn what all your tributaries are and which one you’re sailing on today. Then, if you want, I can help you hop from one tributary to another. A lot of ponies like you—ponies who lost their livelihoods with the new magic radiation guidelines—want to hop tributaries.”

I couldn’t help it: I scoffed again.

Apple Bloom pretended not to hear me. “It’s a difficult process, and it gets more difficult the further you want to travel. If you want to jump to an adjacent tributary, that’s really no sweat—in a lot of cases, your cutie mark won’t even change. But if you want to travel to the other side of the map…” she traced her hoof slowly down, across all the tributaries on the diagram. “You have to ford a lot of rivers. You have to experience a lot of versions of yourself. That can have consequences”

Her tone was dark. I thought of Blaze’s cooking skills, Sunburst’s forgetfulness—imprints of other selves that hitched a ride after fording mental rivers. Like leeches.

“But,” Apple Bloom continued, “not hopping can have consequences, too. I think you probably know that.”

I shrugged.

“I’ve had a lot of ponies come to me depressed because their purpose has been taken from them. Hopping helps,” she said. “It gives you purpose again.”

I cleared my throat loudly and authoritatively. “So ponies come to you, and you… counsel ‘em, however that works, and they walk out of here completely different,” I summarized. “New cutie mark, new brain—plus a bunch of other issues from ‘fording rivers’, or whatever you said. Sounds great. Sign me up.”

“Spitfire, your talent has been outlawed,” Apple Bloom said. “You really want me to believe you’re okay with that?”

I waved my hoof dismissively. “They can outlaw whatever they want. As long as I still have my wings, I’m gonna keep flying. That is my destiny.”

Apple Bloom furrowed her brow. “You’re still flying?” she asked.

“What of it?”

“You don’t think that’s a bit… selfish?” Apple Bloom asked carefully.

I clenched and unclenched my jaw. “A lot of ponies have been calling me that lately.”

Apple Bloom held up herself defensively. “I ain’t intending to pass judgment,” she said. “Just pointing out a perspective you may not have thought about before.”

“Listen.” I leaned forward. Apple Bloom leaned forward, eagerly, to meet me in the middle. “I get it: you’re young. You’re at the top of your game. You think you’re unstoppable. But I’m twice your age—”

“I doubt that.”

“—and I have more experience than you in the realm of neglected purpose,” I said firmly. “You get a couple good years before no one needs you anymore. Then you get dropped for a newer model—the next cutie-prodigy or whoever that beats out your research and makes you irrelevant. That’s what life is: it’s fighting to stay relevant.”

Apple Bloom offered me possibly the fakest smile I’ve ever seen. “Thank you for explaining my field to me,” she said, her voice treading a razor thin line between saccharine sweetness and utter rage.

I stammered something nonsensical. “There’s just some practical experience you don’t have yet, kiddo.”

“I’m twenty-eight.”

“And I’m fifty-six, so…” I sat back in my chair. “I actually am twice your age.”

Apple Bloom reprised her fake smile. “Great,” she said. “I’m guessing there’s no chance you’d like to participate in the mapping activity?”

“Not really.”

“Does it help if I tell you it’s a non-invasive procedure?” Apple Bloom said, though she had already moved on to her next task—she closed her notebook and started digging around for a different file in her desk.

“Does it involve that thing?” I asked, pointing to the console with the dangling wires in the back corner.

“Yes.”

“Then it’s invasive. Pass.” I stood up and stretched, making sure to spread my wings wide enough that my primaries trembled. “Nice meeting you.”

“Oh, Likewise.” Apple Bloom looked up from her files. “You know Fleetfoot paid for an hour-long session?”

I glanced at the clock—less than fifteen minutes. “I really don’t care.”

Apple Bloom pushed the drawer on her desk shut with a hearty slam. “I guess that makes sense for you, don’t it?”

I bristled. “I’ll see myself out.”

“I think you’d better.”

The squadron was nowhere to be found. No one had given me a key to the apartment, so when I got back I had to pound on the door to be let in. When that didn’t work, I switched to shouting. Then shouting and pounding together. After a few minutes of being ignored, the pony from the night before stuck her head out the door again. I have no idea how long she stood there watching me quietly before she finally spoke up:

“They’re taking their physics exam,” she said.

I paused and looked over at her. She was small and pale with a bedraggled mane, still wearing those enormous glasses. “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

I sort of hoped she would invite me into her own apartment, but she just stood there and said nothing.

“Do you know when they’ll be back?” I asked.

She blinked and adjusted her glasses. “You’re Spitfire, right?” she asked. “The old captain?”

“Uh…” I shuffled my hooves. “Yeah. From way back.”

“They talk about you sometimes,” she said.

I chuckled nervously. “All good things?”

“No.”

“Great.”

“They just wish you’d change,” she said simply.

I scoffed. “Is that all?”

“Change your cutie mark,” she corrected. “They think you’d be happier. I think they’d be happier, too. They miss you.”

I made a dismissive, wordless sound. “If they want me to change, then they don’t really miss me.”

The mare in the doorway—Moony, I think—didn’t reply. She just looked at me. She looked long enough that it started to make me uncomfortable. Then, at last, she said, “The exam ends in an hour. You should wait outside until they get back.”

And she disappeared.

With very few options left, I decided to follow her suggestion and find a place to wait outside the dormitory. The campus was still in the shadow of the Middle-Equestrian ship. It probably would be until late afternoon. It occurred to me that this whole living-in-darkness thing served as a nice preview of life on a spaceship. I hated it.

I found a bench under a streetlight that did not remotely approximate daylight and plopped down into it. After a few minutes there, I realized I’d rather not be caught waiting for the squadron to come back like a lost kitten, and instead decided to wander the campus and see all the futuristic amenities that everyone who lived here always wanted to brag about. Maybe I’d even grab a cup of coffee somewhere. That almost sounded nice.

The longing to fly hit me in the chest so hard I nearly fell back down into the bench. That is what would make this almost-nice thing into a beautiful thing: flying.

I looked around. It must have been exam season—there wasn’t a soul outside the buildings in any direction I could see. The campus was dead. Not that it had been particularly lively before, of course, but still…

It would be quick. A zip there and back. Even if I was caught, what would happen? I’d get a scolding and a lecture? I had seen far worse.

I stretched my wings. I cast nervous glances over each shoulder, waiting for someone to sneak up and slap a vest over my barrel, but no one came.

So I flew. A short trip, made exhilarating by its illicitness. The air was chilly in the shade. I felt those extra wisps of magic spilling off my primaries and I didn’t care where they landed. In fact, I took a bit of private joy in knowing I had poisoned this perfect place. I was the lone user of magic—the only one brave enough.

The coffee was hot and bitter. I drank it in one breath. I shook it down into my hooves and leapt back into the air.

It was the trip back that was the mistake. I shouldn’t have risked it. I was lucky not to have been caught the first time, but the second? I was asking for it.

The squadron was arriving back at their dormitory as I sailed around the bend. They were gathered in a little huddle and talking fervently amongst themselves—sharing test answers, I guess—when they spotted me. First Fleetfoot. Then the rest of them. I tried to hide it, but it couldn’t be hidden.

“You have got to be kidding me!” Fleetfoot bellowed. “Still?! I forgive you, I let you stay with us, I-I pay for your therapy! And you still can’t do this one thing?!”

Soarin took a small step forward. “Hey, Fleets: let’s give her the benefit of the—”

“No way!” Fleetfoot smacked away Soarin’s hoof, then refocused on me. “You have got to be one of the most egotistical ponies I’ve ever known. Do you get that? Do you get how disrespectful it is for you to stay here, on this campus, and waste magic like that?”

I snarled. “Oh, sure. Like I’m the only one. You’re way too trusting, as usual.”

“I’m not finished!” Fleetfoot reared up and pounded her forehooves on the ground. “You really are the only pony who’s acting like this—throwing temper tantrums and acting like a rebellious teenager. Everyone else is learning and moving on, and you’re just stuck. It’s sad, honestly. Just… just really sad.”

None of the other members of the squadron would meet my eyes.

“I’m sad?” I repeated. “No. This is sad. This is pathetic, actually.”

Fleetfoot faltered. “Ex-cuse me?”

“You think I’m acting like a teenager?” I spat back. “You’re the ones living in an actual college dormitory in your fifties!”

“We’re bettering ourselves,” High Winds said flatly.

“Oh, please. You don’t even know who you are,” I said. “Let alone who you’re bettering.”

Fleetfoot scoffed. “I know exactly who I am,” she said.

I rolled my eyes.

“You’re not going to be staying with us anymore, Spits,” Fleetfoot said.

Something flashed in Blaze’s eyes. “Wait a sec, can’t we talk about—”

“Like you wanted me around in the first place,” I growled. “You actually had a spare room? And you made me sleep on the couch? Talk about an ego trip.”

Fleetfoot stuck her snout in the air. “I wanted to know you were serious.”

“You wanted to punish me,” I retorted. “But fine. You want me gone? I’m gone. I shouldn’t have ever left my stupid house. You all should have just left me there to rot. That’s all I’m good for, isn’t it?”

Maybe I meant it and maybe I didn’t. It’s the sort of thing that just falls out of your mouth when you’ve spent years steeping nebulous anger. What matters is that the squadron hesitated. Not for very long—just a moment or two—but long enough for my words to echo back to me and boil in my chest. Long enough that, for a split second, I actually believed them.

This was my destiny: to burn bright and burn out. To be forgotten. To rot.

And, in that moment, something changed.

I hadn’t felt this particular change in half a century. It started as acceleration, then weightlessness at the apex of a climb… my forehooves came off the ground. I was warm. It lasted a moment, and then it was over.

The squadron was all yelling over each other. I wasn’t listening. I just looked back at my flank. A golden shimmer still lingered around my new destiny: no longer a flame, but a pile of ash.

2. The change in motion of an object is proportional to the force it experiences.

When I was sixteen, my dad died suddenly and unexpectedly. It was an accident. I don’t like talking about it.

I don’t remember a lot of what happened in the weeks after we found out, but I remember those first few minutes. First, there was shock. A punch in the gut. Denial sets in right away and you try to talk yourself through all the ways that this cannot and must not be happening. Then, when the shock fades, you’re left with nothing. You freeze. Nothing seems okay to do—like you aren’t allowed to just exist as you always have. You need permission for everything. And, when someone tells you to do something, you do it.

The squad took me upstairs. Blaze made me a cup of tea. It was something to do, so I drank it. Soarin told me to go take a shower. It was something to do, so I did. Fleetfoot only paced back and forth, over and over and over.

Soarin's mane and tail shampoo smelled like fake ocean and sharp cologne. I tried to scrub away my new cutie mark—first with just my hoof, then with a loofah, then briefly with a large hoof-file. It didn’t come off. Not even a little. I stepped out of the tub and used a mirror to look really closely at it. It was made of hair, just like the old one. Under that, the mark on my skin had changed, too. Who knows how deep it went. To the bone, probably.

When I came out of the bathroom, the squad was sitting at the round table in the living area talking in hushed tones. They all shut their mouths at once and turned to look at me. Their eyes were huge and glassy like fish.

I rubbed a towel into my mane with one hoof. “Well, don’t stop talking about me on my account,” I growled. “Have you decided what you’re doing with me yet? Am I enough of a charity case to keep around now?”

“You’re not a charity case,” Soarin insisted.

“Speak for yourself,” High Winds replied softly. Blaze gave her a light smack on the shoulder and a cold glare, though it didn’t phase Winds. She never really liked me anyway.

“Wow. How generous of you all,” I grumbled. I tossed the towel back into the bathroom and watched it land in a lump on the bath mat. “It’s fine. I’m leaving. I’m sure I can find another place to waste away. Maybe a park bench. Or a gutter.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Fleetfoot murmured.

I scoffed. “Why shouldn’t I? It’s my destiny, after all,” I said, lifting my wing to give her another look at my new cutie mark. “There’s no doubt about it: nothing useful there. Now you all can leave me here to die guilt-free.”

I made to leave, but Fleetfoot leapt out of her chair and beat me to the door. She silently placed her hoof over it.

“Fleets. C’mon.” I sighed. “It’s over.”

“You're going back to counseling,” she said.

I grit my teeth. “I’m not staying here anymore,” I reminded her sternly. “That means you can’t make me do stupid stuff like—”

“Your destiny changed!” Fleetfoot interjected. “That’s what counseling is for!”

“Pass,” I spat back at her. “I told you: I know who I am. I was born to be Captain of the Wonderbolts. That’s over now, and so am I. The flank agrees.”

“But—”

“Just leave me alone!” I turned to face rest of the squad, still sitting at their round table. “That’s all I wanted. I wanted to be left alone. I’m a lost cause, okay? Like the whole stupid planet.”

Soarin opened his mouth, but no words came.

“You’re not a lost cause,” Blaze muttered, but her tone told me she’d already given up.

I didn’t bother responding. I just turned back to Fleetfoot and said, “Move.”

She did. So I left.

I walked straight out the door of the dormitory and through the campus without looking back. I didn’t know which way I was going, but it didn’t matter—I just needed to get as far away as possible.

At the edge of campus, the shadow of the ship fell away. I paused there, right at its edge, and stared down at the grass between my hooves. The sunlight crept slowly towards me across each blade, even as they bowed and swayed gently in the breeze. I shuffled backward a half step and kept watching. It kept inching towards me.

The campus was positioned at the foot of Canterlot itself, which allowed it to overlook almost its entire domain—miles and miles of Equestria went sprawling into the distance, dotted with roofs and trees and unplanned clouds. It didn’t look poisoned, but it also didn’t look the same. For one, everything was taller; ponies were starting to build up instead of just out, since many of our larger settlements were reaching the fringes of habitable space. For another, I could see two other ships from here, rising from the ground like pimples pushing their way through skin.

Cloudsdale was gone. There was no air traffic—not of individual pegasi, not of magic-powered airships. That part of the world was gone for good. That made me want to get out there and fly, but the new part of me did not. The new part wanted me to give up.

The sun slid over the tips of my hooves. It was warm.

“I see you’ve had an eventful hour.”

I jumped and whirled to look behind me.

Apple Bloom smiled thinly back. She was holding a cup of coffee in one hoof and raised it towards me, as if toasting me. “Those ships sure are popping up fast, aren’t they?”

I groaned. “Ugly pieces of—”

“Hey now,” Apple Bloom said gently as she came to stand beside me. “How about a little appreciation for the ponies doing somethin’ about all this?”

I just growled in response.

“That’s what I thought you’d say.”

I watched the sunlight bloom onto the young mare’s face. It made her already-yellow fur glow a brilliant gold. I realized that I must be glowing, too—we were practically the same exact shade.

“A few years from now, we’ll be on the Middle-Equestrian observation deck, feeling the light of a different star,” Apple Bloom said. She took a sip of her coffee. “Ain’t that amazing? Standing on the edge of a new era like this?”

I scoffed. “Maybe you are,” I said. “I’ll be staying right here.”

Apple Bloom gave me a look. “You’re that stubborn?”

“I am.”

“Hoo-wee.” Apple Bloom chuckled. “You’ve even got my sister beat—and I thought for sure she was the most stubborn mare in the world.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You know, it’s ‘cause of her that we’re gonna be able to eat up there,” she said. “She’s leading the on-board agricultural development.”

“Hm.”

“And Rainbow Dash—her wife, I think you may know her—she’s working on a fitness plan to combat wing atrophy in space,” she went on. “You don’t think you could help out with something like that?”

“Nope,” I replied.

“Hm. Too bad,” Apple Bloom said. “Why?”

“Not my problem.”

“That’s not a reason.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it ain’t.”

“It is.”

“It ain’t.” Apple Bloom winked at me. “I’m pretty stubborn, too. We can do this all day if you like.”

“Ugh.”

Apple Bloom giggled to herself and took another sip of her coffee. “Y’know, somethin’s been bugging me.”

I rolled my eyes. “What?”

“When Fleetfoot told me about you, she made sure to tell me you’d hurt your wing before the Wonderbolts were grounded,” she said. “Now, I s’pose I can see how that would make it hard for you to properly grieve that part of your life, but Fleetfoot didn’t strike me as the… overly perceptive type. So why did she think that was so important for me to know?”

I looked down at the ground. “I dunno.”

“You’re a terrible liar, ma’am,” Apple Bloom said. “I think Fleetfoot told me that because your problems didn’t start with the shift—they started when your Wonderbolts career ended. Which means this—” she gestured to Equestria, spread out before us “—has been a real good excuse for you to avoid your issues. Everyone’s getting kooky, anyway. It’s the apocalypse. Am I right?”

Was she? “No.”

That time, she actually laughed. “I just said you’re a terrible liar,” she snickered. “But I admire the effort, I guess. C’mon.”

I scowled as she turned and walked the other way. “Excuse me?”

“We’re gonna fix your cutie mark,” Apple Bloom said. “I know you’d like to, so let’s just cut the yammering and get to it. Right?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. She just kept on walking.

And… well, it was something to do. So I did it.

Before I knew what was happening, Dr. Bloom was brushing mane away from my temples and pressing little sticky pads into my fur—one on each side of my head, two on my right cutie mark, one on my heart. All the while, she hummed a little tune and explained nothing. There wasn’t much to look at in her office beyond farm kitsch and the diagram of the branching river on the wall. I wondered how far I’d traveled. I wondered if this had been a motion across tributaries, or merely the end of a journey down a single one. I still wasn’t completely certain what either option meant.

“Alrighty!” Dr. Bloom announced as she snapped one more wire into place. “That’s that. Let me just…” She trailed off, then spun around and arranged a chair in front of the examination table, wheeled the console to face me, and brought over a little notebook, all while muttering under her breath. When she was happy with that, she dimmed the lights and turned the console on.

The console didn’t have a name—it was just a big, tan box with a domed screen. Dr. Bloom yanked a control panel unlike any I had ever seen out of its side. As the machine slowly warmed up, a hum spun up under the screen and, with it, a green cast. Dr. Bloom twisted a couple of knobs on the control panel and the green cast crystallized into a brightly-glowing green dot dead in the center of the screen.

Dr. Bloom looked up at me expectantly. “Y’ready?”

“Just get started before I change my mind.”

Dr. Bloom sighed, almost wistfully, and pressed a button on the console. The dot held steady in the center of the screen, but a lighter-green tendril sprung from its side and reached for the left edge of the screen.

“And we’re off to the races!” Dr. Bloom announced. She reached over to tap the tendril. “This is the tributary you’re on now—we’re sailing it in real time!”

It was, quite literally, a perfectly straight green line. “If you say so.”

“Gotta start somewhere,” Dr. Bloom said.

“How is this even legal?” I demanded. “This is magic, isn’t it? It feels like magic.”

Dr. Bloom chuckled tensely. “You can’t feel magic,” she said firmly. “And… yes. There’s a bit of magical waste involved. But it’s an approved part of Last Gasp efforts. We need ponies to prepare us for the next step, and this is the best way to find ‘em.”

I growled softly as a manner of response.

“Anyway…” Dr. Bloom mumbled. She returned her attention to the screen. “Now we’ll need to build a definition of this tributary. It’s just like orienteering: we observe where we are so we can figure out where to go next. How would you describe your current cutie mark?”

“I wouldn’t.”

Dr. Bloom gave me a sympathetic look. “I understand you’re in a weird position, here, but please trust the process.”

I glared at her. She only smiled softly back at me. “Fine. I got this cutie mark about two hours ago when I realized I should give up on life and slowly waste away until I die. Does that help?”

“It’s fine,” Dr. Bloom muttered. She messed around with the control panel, which caused the line to jump and flicker before ultimately settling back into its original, perfectly-straight form. “And how would you say you picture your future with this cutie mark?”

“I picture watching every living creature blasting off into space and then moving into Canterlot palace. Until I die.”

Dr. Bloom grumbled something under her breath and punched a few more buttons. I couldn’t even begin to guess how she entered that into the console, but she seemed to do it without much difficulty. I guess that’s what made her the expert. The line jittered a bit more before again coming to rest.

“Great. Can we talk about my old cutie mark now?”

“Yes, for goodness’s sake,” Dr. Bloom exclaimed. “Start by describing how it looked for me.”

“Fire,” I said. “In the shape of a bird.”

“Bird… on… fire…” Dr. Bloom repeated under her breath as she tapped away at the controls.

I nearly corrected her, but decided it probably didn’t make much of a difference. “I got it when I was seven,” I continued. “I was practicing a little aerial trick with Fleetfoot and she fell and hurt herself. She wanted to quit and go home, but I made her try again and she landed the trick.”

A little shadow of a smile passed over Dr. Bloom’s face. “You were friends with Fleetfoot way back then?”

“Yeah,” I said softly. Even talking about that day, I swear I could smell the sun on the fresh-cut grass. It had been summer. “Long as I can remember, really.”

“Interesting…” Dr. Bloom murmured. She twisted a dial. “And how would you say you used that talent?”

“You’re really asking me this?” I chuckled.

Dr. Bloom offered me that same gentle smile. “Trust the process, ma’am.”

I sighed. “As Captain of the Wonderbolts, obviously.” I shuffled my wings against my sides. “Mostly as a performer. But I did some coaching, too.”

Dr. Bloom nodded. “And your future?”

My future. “Uh… I dunno. I guess I pictured coaching until I dropped dead at the side of the track,” I joked.

Dr. Bloom shot me an uncomfortable look and flicked a rather large switch.

“That was a joke,” I clarified.

“Y’know, my big sis said there’s truth in every joke,” Dr. Bloom said. “I happen to think she’s right.”

She pressed a few other buttons on the panel and another line shot off the bottom of the first. The screen had to zoom out to contain it. It didn’t look like much—just another flickering green hair behind thick glass—but it still gave me a bit of a stomach ache looking at it.

“There we go!” Dr. Bloom scooched her seat forward and pointed to the new line. “This here’s your previous destiny. And this junction point was earlier today, when your destiny changed.”

“Great.”

“It is great! Now we’ve got two points—we’re oriented!” Dr. Bloom exclaimed. “That means we can start planning out routes. Where would you like to go?”

I stared at the screen. It looked like a tuning fork. It was already starting to give me a headache. I just made a long, low sound of confusion and blinked repeatedly, hoping to clear away the strain from the flickering screen. No such luck. “Back to the Wonderbolts branch,” I said.

Dr. Bloom’s eyebrows jumped up onto her forehead. “Y’sure? There’s lots of wide, empty space to explore…” She swiped at something on the control panel, and the image zoomed out even more. The lines were so thin that the computer struggled to even render them—they blinked in and out of existence like twinkling stars. “Could be something else good out there. Something… space-y, perhaps?”

I clenched my jaw. “You can’t trick me into picking something else, y’know.”

Dr. Bloom shrugged. “Okay.”

“I’m serious.”

“I heard ya.”

I scowled at her, waiting for her to say more. She just gave me that same soft, easy smile, as if there was nothing at all happening in the cavern behind her eyes.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I ordered.

“Like what?” she asked sweetly.

“Like I’m a foal and you’re lying to me,” I snapped. “Take me back to the Wonderbolts branch.”

“Whoa, there.” Dr. Bloom held up her hooves, as if to ease me. It had the opposite effect. “Remember what I told you about navigating? We gotta find out what’s between point A and point B so we can map a route. You’ll have to ford the rivers in-between.”

“Yeah. Fine. Whatever. Let’s just get to it, okay?”

“Alright, alright…” Dr. Bloom shook her head and chuckled softly to herself. “Let’s find out what we’re missing in the middle, then.”

She looked down at the control panel and started hammering away once again. I have absolutely no idea how she knew what to press and when—everything was unlabeled and there was no readout for her to know what she’d already entered. After a minute or so, the screen dimmed, then leapt back to life with three more new branches: all of them between me and normalcy.

“Not too many,” Dr. Bloom said as she peered at the screen. “It looks like you’ve got three tributaries to cross.”

I squinted at the screen. “That’s all?”

Dr. Bloom shrugged. “That’s all.”

“You made it sound like this was going to be… hellish.”

“It’s different for everyone,” she replied. “Crossing three tributaries could very well be hellish for you, y’know.”

That was difficult to imagine. I stared at the domed screen and watched the little lines tremble like reeds in the wind. Sure, there had been a bit of a to-do when I’d gotten my new mark earlier, but not more than was to be expected. Especially back here, in a secluded doctor’s office, it amounted to little more than a cosmetic change. Nothing worth getting excited over.

“I guess we’d better get started, then,” I grumbled.

Dr. Bloom held up a hoof. “Are you sure you want to do this now?”

I furrowed my brow. “Why would I want to wait?”

“I swear, no one ever listens to me on the first go…” she muttered as she jammed the control panel back into the console and rolled up to me. “For each tributary you ford, you’ll experience a different version of yourself. That can be incredibly taxing, especially for someone of your age after a day like—”

“Someone of my age?” I repeated.

Dr. Bloom tried to form another word, but instead released a sigh with a growl-like undertone. “Yes, actually,” she said. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but by medical standards you’re middle-aged. That means your neural plasticity is lower, which means hopping tributaries will be more challenging for you than young ponies.”

“I’m an ex-Wonderbolt. My neurons are super plastic,” I hissed.

“That’s not—” She shook her head and sighed again. “It’s nothing to do with you, your health, or your relative ability. It’s just a fact of life. The longer you have your cutie mark, the harder it is for you to change it.”

“Well, I’ve only had this cutie mark for a couple of hours,” I said. “And I’m not leaving this office until I’ve hopped a stream.”

Dr. Bloom looked up at me wearily. I have to admit: in that moment, she looked like she could have been about my age. That sort of tired can only be baked in over decades.

“You know I’m serious,” I threatened.

“I do,” Dr. Bloom agreed. She looked up at the clock, then groaned softly to herself. “Fine. We can do one—but that’s all I have time for today. I’m supposed to be visiting my family in Ponyville tonight for dinner, so I need to leave early.”

“Yeah, yeah—fine. Let’s just get it done.”

She made a face which implied that the typical patient is not able to simply ‘get it done’. But she hadn’t tried it with me yet.

“Alright. Let’s try to pin down this first tributary,” Dr. Bloom said as she zoomed in. “Mm… judgin’ by the position of the confluence point, I’d guess this one is coming from childhood. Early days. Do you remember what sorts of things you wanted to be before you got your cutie mark?”

I reached up to scratch my temple with one hoof, but instead found one of the tentacles stuck there and had to give up. “That’s going back a while,” I said.

“That’s the idea.”

“Well… my dad was a wildfire fighter,” I said. “I remember watching him put out a fire in the Everfree when I was really young. Is that the sort of thing you mean?”

Dr. Bloom entered a few commands, and the line on the screen sharpened. “I think that’s it exactly!” she said. Then she looked up at me. “Ready?”

I blinked. “Ready for what?”

“To ford the tributary,” she replied. “Just hang onto your hat for me.”

“What do you—”

She pressed the button.

And there was fire.

It was all-encompassing. All I could feel was oppressive heat from all directions, sweat trickling down my neck, my eyes frying in their sockets. All I could hear was the roar of flame and distant, coordinated shouting. All I could smell was ash. All I could taste was ash.

Then I opened my eyes: worse. A wall of flame towering over me, bare trees tilting at harsh angles as they came crashing down, pegasi and griffons and dragons streaking over my head in heavy yellow gear and hauling hoses. Buckets. Anything.

“Spitfire! Look alive!” A dragon bellowed at me. She swung an ax at a clump of brush with her rear claws as she hovered just off the ground.

“Wind shift! Wind shift!” another voice shouted, with a musicality that was almost military. So practiced and precise and loud. “Back up!”

For a moment, the roar of the fire was interrupted by the howling wind. The fire was whipped away and replaced by billowing smoke. I screwed my eyes closed again, but it hardly helped. The sting of the smoke was deep and complete—I couldn’t have escaped it if I tried. I gasped lightly at the sensation and the smoke darted into my lungs. I let loose a hacking cough that I thought might turn me inside out.

“Hose!” Someone screamed. “Spits! Hose!”

“Hose?” I whispered to myself.

I looked down. There, in my hooves: the end of the hose.

“U-uh—hose!” I cried in response.

Then something clicked. I remembered this: in training, this is what we did. We lined up along the hose and we shouted orders up and down, never breaking the chain. We did this because the hose had a kick stronger than a donkey, and it took all of us to rein it in. The whole squad.

“Water!” I shouted. “Water! We need water now!”

I dug my hooves into the soft earth beneath me, taking a wide stance as I prepared for the kickback of the hose. My wings beat slowly at my sides and held me upright. Behind me, Fleetfoot steadied herself—I remembered a time when she snatched me out of the path of a fire whirl when I had singed my primaries. Ahead of me, Gertrude furiously cleared away brush to stop the wildfire’s progression. That was her specialty. I remembered when she joined the team—a scrawny little griffon, no bigger than a dog, but fast.

“Water!” Fleetfoot echoed.

“Water!” Came another, further back.

“Water!” This one swallowed by the sound of roaring flame.

I held firm, waiting for the rush. It was felt more than heard, though the sound was deafening when it wasn’t competing with a wildfire. The hose twisted and flexed in my hooves. Then the water came.

And then—

I rocketed upright and smacked my back against the wall behind me. My sudden flailing in amongst the wires caused the console to jolt forward, and Dr. Bloom only barely managed to catch it before it tumbled over.

“Whoa, there!” she said, but I was a bit beyond that.

My eyes were still stinging. I blinked hard, trying to clear them, and even waved a hoof in front of my face. I swore I could still see the smoke.

“Settle down, now. You’re okay,” Dr. Bloom cooed.

“There was—I was—” I stuttered. “The fire!”

“Yeah, I figured as much,” Dr. Bloom replied. “Let me get you some water.”

She retreated back to her desk. I tried to steady myself—my wing pressed against the wall, my hooves gripping the edge of the examination table—but every time I blinked I was back in the forest fire. The heat was still on me. In me. I could still taste the ash, as if it had landed on my tongue like a fat, gray snowflake.

I rubbed my eyes. “Fleetfoot…”

Dr. Bloom was back at my side. She held out a bottle of water. “Fleetfoot?”

I could still hear his voice in my ear. “She was a wildfire fighter,” I said. “On my squad.”

“She... she was?”

“She was—yeah. It was my squad. I was captain, and she was my number two,” I said. “And she—she and I used to go to Wonderbolts shows together.”

I couldn’t tell what came first: the memory or the words. It felt like the opposite of recalling a dream—as I spoke, the memories wove themselves into my own past. Fleets and I had been friends since we were tiny. Our parents were on a squad together. We’d gone to basic training together. We were deployed to Neighagra Falls together. She was an avid birdwatcher. She liked mango ice cream. She was my first kiss.

I moaned softly and pressed a hoof to my forehead. “What was—was that real?” I stammered. “What was that? Where did I go?”

“Another reality,” Dr. Bloom said. “Just for a second. One where you were a wildfire fighter, just like your dad. And it looks like it was enough.”

She gestured to my flank.

I looked down. It was hard to tell under the little sticky pads, but something had changed. It was no longer a pile of ash, but an ax crossed in front of a diagonal slash of flame. A cutie mark for a wildfire fighter.

Up on the screen, my little dot had moved. I was now sitting pretty one tributary closer to the old me.

The question popped into my mind: did they need wildfire fighters in space?

I didn’t ask it.

“Take your time,” Dr. Bloom said. “We don’t have to do any more today at all if you don’t want to. I know it’s—”

“This works?”

Dr. Bloom’s mouth hung open as she processed the question. “Uh.. ‘scuse me?”

“Counseling,” I spat. “This actually works? This is… this is insane.”

Dr. Bloom chuckled lightly. “I know it can feel that way at first, but give it some time and—”

“That was horrible! I-I'm so confused, and I...” I wiped a bead of sweat off my brow. “Why didn't I remember any of that stuff with Fleetfoot before?”

"Because it didn't happen here, it happened there," Dr. Bloom said.

"But now it's like..." I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to sort through the overlapping memories, but everything blurred together more quickly than I anticipated. "It's like there's two of her..."

“I told you: hopping has consequences,” Dr. Bloom said.

“You didn’t tell me what kind,” I replied.

"You didn't let me!"

I stuttered, but no words came.

“Would you have decided differently if I had told you?” Dr. Bloom asked. Then, before I had a chance to answer, “Are you going to stop now?”

I bit the inside of my cheek. “No.”

“Then have your little philosophical debate with someone else,” Dr. Bloom said. “We’ve reached the end of our session. Let me get these things off’a you, and then we can—”

“W-wait.” I held out a hoof to block Dr. Bloom. “What am I supposed to do until then?”

Dr. Bloom arched a brow. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“They kicked me out,” I said. “The squad. I-I can’t go back until…”

The condition escaped me. Until when? Maybe never.

Dr. Bloom gently pushed aside my hoof and popped the first wire tentacle off me. “Have you ever thought of apologizing for your behavior?” she suggested. “Or maybe finding your own place?”

“That’s not exactly an option right now,” I grumbled.

“I doubt that,” she replied in the same disgruntled tone. “But… fine. Why don’t you come with me to Sweet Apple Acres tonight?”

I pictured the happy family breaking bread together. Then I pictured the happy family taking breaks from the bread to scold me. Together.

“Pass.”

“Do you have another option?” Dr. Bloom asked sweetly.

“I could sleep in the waiting room,” I suggested.

“If there’s one thing my family taught me it’s hospitality,” Dr. Bloom admitted. “Even though I’m pretty darn sure your old friends would be willing to take you in given your, um… apparent progress, I can see you won’t be budging. And there ain't no way I’m leavin’ you to sleep in one of those uncomfortable chairs in the waiting room.”

I watched as she leaned over and quickly zipped up a saddlebag she’d left sitting on the floor. She slung it over her back, then turned to face me.

“Come on, now. You’re coming with.”

3. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

The train line from Canterlot to Ponyville had long since been replaced by a high-speed maglev train, which was certainly faster than it had been—though not instantaneous. Dr. Bloom and I sat together in a small compartment and watched the landscape rush past us.

“Can I ask you something?”

I glanced at her. “Sure.”

“What did you think of the other world?” Dr. Bloom asked.

What did I think?

I missed it. I missed the heat and the smoke and my squad. I missed having that kind of purpose, but that wasn’t exactly exclusive to being a wildfire fighter. I could still feel it now, albeit dimly—an ache to storm out into the woods and tangle with flame. If I was anything like Blaze (and I was), it probably wouldn’t ever go away. There would always be a part of me there.

“Didja hear what I said?” Dr. Bloom nudged me gently.

“Mm-hm.”

“Do you have an answer?”

“Yep.”

Dr. Bloom waited a moment. “Could I hear it?”

“No.” I folded my forelegs across my chest. “Why do you care, anyway?”

She shrugged. “You could say it’s my job,” she replied. “Since… it is.”

I rolled my eyes.

“But, um…” Dr. Bloom rolled her shoulders and cleared her throat. “I haven’t done it myself. So… I guess I’m mostly curious what it’s like.”

I shot her a sideways glance. “You haven’t done it?”

She shook her head. “No. What I’m doing’s important, y’know? I can’t mess around with other things right now. Equestria needs this,” she said softly. “Or we’re not gonna make it.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. But I said something anyway: “Oh. Right.”

Dr. Bloom nodded and returned to staring out the window. The train was flying across a river, now—the one that spilled from the top of Mt. Canterlot and wound its way to the South Luna Ocean.

“I have a question for you, actually,” I said.

Dr. Bloom gave me an expectant look. “Shoot.”

“I didn’t learn about tributaries in school. But the other me did,” I told her. “The wildfire one. In training. And I thought they were called that because they fed into a bigger river. Y’know. Tribute. Tributary.”

“Mm-hm. What’s your question?”

“My question is why are they called that?” I asked. “Because if destiny does what you say and it all branches off from this one big river, then ‘tributary’ isn’t the right word. Dis-tributary is.”

Dr. Bloom nodded. “Most ponies don’t catch that,” she said. “I call them that because I think that’s what they are. When you think of time linearly, the way we all do, it makes sense that destiny starts as one thing and turns into more. But I don’t think that’s right—I think they all converge somewhere down the line.”

“Converge… how?”

“We all have to change,” she said. Then she looked at me. “Even you, ma’am. And I think we have to spend our lives changing. Learning about all the things we could be.”

“Hm.”

The train passed over the river. In two minutes, we would be in Ponyville.

One little detail that had slipped my mind when I agreed to dinner was Applejack’s wife. Dr. Bloom had dropped her name as an aside, and a distant part of me had processed it, but that distant part had not managed to communicate it to the front part that did the actual thinking.

Lucky for me, Applejack was the one to answer the door. Her eyes lit up at the sight of her younger sister before turning stone cold at the sight of me.

“Well, well, well,” she drawled as she looked me up and down. “Rainbow will have a field day with you.”

“She ain’t here to cause trouble,” Apple Bloom defended, physically pushing her way between myself and her sister. “She’s in a tough spot right now and so I invited her to dinner. She’s just gonna be quiet and polite and sleep in the guest room. Ain’t that right, Spitfire?”

I swallowed my pride. “Yes, ma’am.”

Applejack arched a brow in my direction. “Tough spot, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Your fault, or someone else’s?”

Good question. Dr. Bloom shot me a look that told me the right answer. “Mine,” I admitted.

She looked at her sister, who offered a sheepish grin, then turned back to me. “Well. Points for honesty, I guess,” she grumbled. “You can come in. But I don't want to hear any nonsense about Last Gasp. You get me?”

“I get you,” I snapped back.

“No nonsense?”

“No nonsense.”

Applejack glared at me for another few uncomfortably long moments, then pulled away and waved us inside. I let Dr. Bloom lead the way and slunk in close behind. Applejack very nearly clipped my tail in the door as she closed it, which was absolutely on purpose.

The inside of the house was heavy with the scent of butter and cornmeal. I could already hear the sizzling from something frying on the stovetop, a pleasant hum underneath the sound of friendly chatter and laughter. There was a young voice in the mix—a little kid, maybe?—as well as the familiar rasp of my old teammate.

But it was more than just her that was familiar. It was all of it—the clatter of dishes. The little orders called over each other in the kitchen rush. The murmur of customers.

Customers.

Customers?

“Customers waiting, Chef!”

I looked to my left. It should have been Dr. Bloom there, but it wasn’t—it was some unicorn, short and dressed up in a tux. A member of the waitstaff. What was her name?

“Chef?” she repeated. She was waiting expectantly, on the tips of her hooves, ready to dart away should I give the order.

“U-uh…” I stammered, staring down at her. “Velvet?”

“Who’s Velvet?” she asked—but it wasn’t Velvet anymore. It was Dr. Bloom.

I blinked hard. “I, uh…” The smells were changing, interweaving in my mind: some of it here, down home and southern, but some of it there, sharp and clean and sophisticated. “Sorry. Just a little… that destiny-hopping stuff doesn’t have any side effects, does it?”

Dr. Bloom furrowed her brow. “What’s going on?” she hissed back.

“Oh, horseapples…” My successor was sitting forward in an armchair playing with a collie when I stepped into the room. For a minute, I thought she was wearing a chef’s jacket—but it turned out to merely be an overwrought aviator’s jacket. Upon seeing me, she put her face in her hooves.

“Rainbow.”

“Spitfire,” she replied. “Been a while.”

I grunted.

Rainbow chuckled. “Real nice,” she spat. “How’s the hermit life treating you?”

“Great,” I lied. “I didn’t have to see any of you.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair. I noticed that, underneath that jacket, she was wearing a wing-belting vest. “The board managed to evict you, I guess?”

I remembered Applejack’s threats. “Uh-huh,” I said. “Your sister-in-law very generously invited me here for the night.”

Dr. Bloom offered a thin smile and a weak chuckle.

“How nice of her,” she said, refusing to look either of us in the eye. “Just try not to set off any magic bombs while you’re here. And it’s six falafel all day, chef.”

“Uh-huh,” I grunted. “Wait—what did you say?”

“I said, ‘six falafel all day,’ chef!” Griddle shouted, his focus from his task unbroken. “Two minutes!”

Two minutes wasn’t fast enough. Stir fry would be up in less than one.

“You feelin’ okay, ma’am?” Dr. Bloom asked. “You look a little… well, I dunno, exactly.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to chase away the visions. “I-I’m fine. I think I maybe just need to sit down.”

Dr. Bloom nodded and started to pull me towards a table.

“What’s with her?” Rainbow asked, just slightly too loud to go unnoticed.

“I’ve got no got-dang idea,” Applejack grumbled.

Dr. Bloom plopped me down into a chair at the dining table. While it was closer to the kitchen, there was a door between the dining room and the family room where everyone was chatting—the much-needed space was already helping me ground myself a bit more firmly in the here and now.

“What’s goin’ on?” Dr. Bloom asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

I shook my head, searching for the words. “I-I feel like I’m not all the way here,” I said. “It’s the kitchen. It’s making me… do you think there’s another world out there where I was a chef?”

Dr. Bloom cocked her head. “I guess it’s possible,” she said. “But you shouldn’t be going anywhere without the console prompting you. It’s a magical process—you need magic to move.”

I rubbed my temple. “Yeah, but isn’t there, like, excess magic everywhere?” I grunted. “Isn’t that sort of the whole deal?”

Dr. Bloom rolled her eyes. “Well, yeah, but no one else has ever—” She paused. “Oh, horseapples.”

“What?” I leaned forward to try to look into her eyes, but she was hiding behind her mane. “What?”

“Ah…” Dr. Bloom put a hoof on her forehead. “I’ve only ever done this sorta thing on campus.”

“So?”

“So the campus has almost no magical background radiation!” Dr. Bloom told me urgently. “I-I’ve never let a patient leave in the middle of the procedure—your current cutie mark isn’t stabilized yet! Shoot!” She pounded her hoof on the table and made the centerpiece rattle.

“What do you mean it isn’t stabilized?” I asked. “Why do you keep skipping parts of the explanation?!”

“Because you keep telling me you don’t care!” Dr. Bloom snapped back. “Plus, you were supposed to actually read the paperwork you signed at the front desk!”

“I-I did!” I lied.

“How many times do I gotta tell you: you suck at lying!” Dr. Bloom scolded. She paused a moment and drew in a deep breath, held it for a moment, then released it. “Okay. It’s fine. It’s no big deal. I’ll just skip dinner and we’ll head back to campus. Trains are still running, so it shouldn’t be—”

“Chef?”

“—more than ten minutes. Can you—”

“Chef!”

“—hang on for that long?”

“Chef!”

All the warm, home-y air was sucked out of the room in an instant, replaced by stark white walls and cold brushed steel. The entire room was hissing, sizzling, vibrating—something was beeping and grinding. A cash register printing receipts? No. No way. It wasn’t that kind of restaurant.

I looked down. In front of me, on a pedestal, was a mess of papers. Orders, guest list, and a million other notes scratched in margins. Notes in my hoofwriting. My notes.

I looked up. There, beside me, was Fleetfoot—my host, my front-of-house—looking at me with equal parts expectance, reverence, and unbridled anger.

I clicked my tongue. “Run that by me one more time?”

She growled in frustration. “Table two ordered stir fry but didn’t specify celery allergy.”

“We use celery in our stir-fry?”

“Chef, please!”

“Right!” I looked back down at the pedestal, bewildered by the absolutely alien language laid out before me. “Uh… table two, table two…”

“Oh, for goodness’s sake!” Fleetfoot leapt in front of me and reshuffled the papers. Her eyes darted across them for half a second before she shouted into the kitchen with total confidence: “Re-fire! Two stir fry, eighty-six celery! Reheat two focaccia! What’s the ETA on falafel?”

Griddle lifted the edge of a patty with his spatula. “Two minutes, chef.”

“It was two minutes three minutes ago!” Fleetfoot cried, stamping her hooves on the linoleum.

“I-I dunno, something’s wrong with the flat-top!”

“Then switch flat-tops!”

“I can’t! Falafel’s quarantined to this one—we’ve got a chickpea allergy dining tonight!”

Fleetfoot let loose what could only be described as a wordless war cry. “Oh, for goodness’s sake!”

“Get some drinks out,” I said sternly.

Fleetfoot looked up at me. “Drinks?!”

“Keep them distracted. Host, Fleets,” I reminded her, gripping her shoulder firmly. “That’s what you’re best at, right? That’s your thing?”

She stared at me with wide, vacant eyes. “I-I—”

“Say ‘that’s what I’m best at, chef,’” I ordered.

She bit her lip. “That’s what I’m best at, chef,” she murmured.

“Say ‘that’s my thing, chef.’”

“That’s my thing, chef,” she said, stronger.

I clapped her on the shoulder. “Good kid. Buy us some time. I’m gonna get this flat-top fixed.”

“But—”

“I know what I’m doing.”

I did. I knew exactly what I was doing. That was where I’d started, after all—selling restaurant supplies. Then repairing restaurant supplies. I was only in the business through a friend of a friend, otherwise I never would have made it. It took years, but now I was here: head chef. At my restaurant. Mine. But I still knew my way around a flat-top.

“Behind,” I muttered as I squeezed through the throng of chefs to get to Griddle. “We’re gonna pull this thing out from the wall. Then you’re gonna go find me the toolbox in the pantry. You got that?”

“Yes, chef.”

“Good. On three.”

Griddle grabbed the side of the flat-top and anchored himself on the floor, then nodded to me.

“One. Two. Three!”

The dining room table howled as I yanked it across the wood floor.

“Whoa!” Dr. Bloom shouted as she leapt away from it.

Everything hit me at once. The smell, mostly, but the sudden absence of noise almost made my ears pop. I stumbled one step, then fell back into the chair, missed, and fell all the way to the floor in a heap. I groaned softly and tried to push myself upwards, only to find that I’d fallen right at the hooves of my old friend.

“Spitfire?” Rainbow Dash murmured. Then she gasped. “Whoa! Your cutie mark!”

“Not again…” I lifted one wing and looked down the length of my barrel to find my new destiny: a frying pan with a curl of flame leaping out of it. I growled in annoyance. “Please tell me this one’s at least a little closer than the last one.”

Dr. Bloom stammered something nonsensical. “Without my equipment I’d have no way of—well, there’s really no way it could be anything but—er, then again—”

“Your old junk’s in the barn. Go on and get it,” Applejack said with the presence of an EMT. “Now!”

“Right!” Dr. Bloom’s eyes lit up. “Okay, yeah! I’ll be right back!”

She leapt up from the table and scampered out of the room. It was all too clear she was still the baby of the family, now that I was seeing her in context. I guess that’s something you just don’t grow out of.

Applejack turned to the doorway. I hadn’t noticed until then that the rest of the Apple clan had gathered there, apparently waiting to see what had happened.

“Nothin’ to see here,” Applejack said. “She’ll be fine, Mac. Y’all just head back to the other room, now.”

The ponies exchanged looks, but didn’t move. They sure were a quiet bunch.

Applejack sighed. “C’mon. Out,” she ordered, rising to shoo the rest of them away.

That left me and Rainbow. She hesitated for a moment before settling into a chair beside me.

“So,” she said, “you are changing over.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. “Guess I am.”

“I’m glad someone talked some sense into you,” she said. “You could really do some good. You’d be a great pilot for sure, or an engineer like the rest of the squad. And you were always a good leader.”

I looked at her. She offered me a genuine smile, and the kindness of it turned my stomach.

“Yeah, not that kind of change,” I grumbled. “I’m changing back.”

Rainbow’s brow furrowed. “Huh?”

“It’s really nice that you think I can ‘make a difference’ or whatever, but everyone seems to have already decided there’s no difference to be made,” I said. “So I’m changing back. To the old me. At least that way I can spend the rest of my days here, being myself, instead of some… some space nomad.”

Rainbow looked at me. Looked into me, more like. Her expression softened from the hard and discerning grimace into something almost sympathetic. “You’re upset.”

“Wow. How’d you guess?”

“Spitfire, having your destiny changed isn’t abandonment,” Rainbow said.

I flinched. “I never said it was.”

“Your friends feel like they’re losing you,” Rainbow pressed, “and they’re trying to save you.”

“No, they’re not!” I insisted. “They’re trying to handle me, because I’m a nuisance. Just like this planet.”

“You’re not a frickin’ planet, you’re a pony!” Rainbow pounded her hoof on the table. “Take a little responsibility! If you wanted to change, you could—Equus can’t. You’re telling me you really don’t see the difference?”

Before I could summon an answer, Dr. Bloom came back. She threw herself into the front door and stumbled over the threshold, then came running into the dining room.

“I’ve got ‘em!” she said. “My old stuff. I just knew it’d come in handy someday. Let’s getcha hooked up and stabilized.”

Dr. Bloom dumped a collection of clunky machinery on the dining room table. I wouldn’t exactly call it dirty, but I guess I was surprised that wasn’t the case—old crap in a barn is usually at least sort of musty. Dr. Bloom wiped a thin coating of dust from the top of something that looked like the console from her office, then clicked open a first aid kit and pulled out a hoofful of those little sticky pads.

“Can we do this someplace beside the dining room?” I muttered.

Dr. Bloom paused to scratch her head. “Uh…”

“No,” Rainbow answered for her. “Let’s just get this done. The others can eat at the kitchen table if they can’t wait.”

“Whew.” Dr. Bloom chuckled. “That’s good to hear. I was gonna ask Spitfire to climb up on the table.”

Rainbow winced. “Well, AJ won’t love that, but uh…” she trailed off, then shrugged and grabbed the centerpiece.

Dr. Bloom made a low sound of discomfort. “Are y’sure? What if somethin’ gets scratched?”

Rainbow Dash scoffed. “Oh, she’ll live.”

Dr. Bloom hesitated for another long moment, then gingerly removed the runner. I was starting to realize just how young the pony treating me was—still visiting the family homestead for dinner, still nervous about catching flak from her big sister. She was going to spend more of her life in space than here on Equus. And here I was trying to eke out a few more miserable years doing… what, exactly?

If you wanted to change, you could.

“Hop up!” Dr. Bloom directed.

I didn’t hop—I climbed. Once I was settled on the pilly fitted sheet, Dr. Bloom set about re-applying the sticky pads to my head and cutie mark. Part of me wanted to ask her to cover the frying pan, even though I knew it would be gone soon. I just didn’t want to look at it any longer.

If I thought the old console was hard to understand, this one was impenetrable. It featured a large keyboard where a majority of the old letters and numbers had been painted over with symbols I half-recognized from the squad’s late-night physics study jam. It had a readout, but it was far less visual—just rows of code that Dr. Bloom evidently found meaning in. She carefully punched in a line of commands and watched as the screen spat out a jumble of meaningless gibberish.

“Okay. You did manage to move one tributary closer, but—” She paused and smacked the side of the machine. When this didn’t give her what she wanted, she reached over and tore one of the sticky pads off my cutie mark, only to move it half an inch over. “Huh.”

“What? What is it?” I asked.

“It’s… something changed,” she said. “Between the campus and—how can that be?” She ran her hoof under a row of text, squinting hard.

“Share, AB!” Rainbow Dash ordered.

Dr. Bloom looked up at me. “Your old tributary,” she said.

I didn’t want to ask. I already knew. “Wh-what about it?”

“It’s gone.”

I closed my eyes.

There isn’t really a word for a river disappearing. Rivers dry up sometimes. Rivers change course. But they don’t vanish. This was, in my opinion, yet another oversight of the river analogy of destiny. I prefer the tree. Trees have trunks. The trunk feeds branches and is fed by roots. And most importantly, trees can be pruned.

“What happens now?” Rainbow asked softly.

Dr. Bloom stared at the readout. “I-I don’t know,” she stammered. “I… this has never happened before!”

“It can’t be.”

“Well. That’s politics, Madame Mayor.”

Something flashed. Light and sound. Sharp, but muffled. Distant. Then again. I flinched. Someone put a reassuring hoof on my shoulder.

“Madame Mayor?”

I opened my eyes.

I was in an office—impressively decorated, stately carpet, filled with well-dressed creatures in a semi-circle around a heavy, dark desk. A desk covered in an array of papers, ornate paperweights, and a single lamp spindly gold lamp. A desk I was seated behind.

“Mayor…?” I whispered to myself. This drew a few odd looks, but did not break the tension. If anything, it only seemed to make it worse.

The flash came again: cameras just outside the door.

“Y-you can’t leave her out there to fend for herself forever,” a young stallion murmured.

I squinted at him. “Who’s out there?”

He looked taken aback. “Councilmare Ivory.”

I closed my eyes again and gently shook my head to clear it. “Right. Right.”

“You need to be honest,” a tall dragon advised. “This was a mistake, and there’s no amount of clever lying that can get you out of it.”

An older stallion to my right scoffed. “Give her speech-writers twenty minutes, why don’t you?”

“You can-not be serious!” A unicorn mare behind him flicked her tail. “Honest or not, admitting to this completely undermines your authority! Think about the consequences!”

“The consequences are already here,” a changeling muttered darkly. “It doesn’t matter what she does—the election is less than a month away. It’s over.”

The hoof on my shoulder patted me gently. I already knew who it was before I looked: Fleetfoot. She offered me a thin smile.

In an instant, I remembered her with near-perfect clarity. She was my deputy now, but we had worked together for long before that. All the way back to our very first internships at the public works department. Even further than that—back to debate clubs in our youth. She could never beat me at the podium, but she had something I didn’t. She was… grounded.

“Fleetfoot?”

She seemed stunned. “Yes, ma’am?”

“What do you think I should do?” I asked.

That shut everyone up.

Fleetfoot blinked. “All due respect?” She withdrew her claw from my shoulder. “I think you underestimate the citizens of Manehattan.”

I arched my brows. “Do I?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said firmly. “I know it feels like it in here sometimes, but it’s not you against them. Everyone’s just trying to make this city a better place. If we disagree on how—well, then that’s the time to have a conversation, isn’t it? Not to lie.”

I chuckled. “That’s not how politicians do things.”

She shrugged. “Maybe not. But it’s how they should do things,” he said. “You could be the first.”

I looked into his eyes for a long moment. Then, without thinking about it, I stood.

The crowd at my desk all lunged for me at once, half-formed thoughts spilling out of their mouths as they tried to block my path.

“That’s a very nice sentiment, but you can’t actually do that,” one of them managed to say. “J-just give us a few more minutes and—”

“She’s right,” I said flatly. “I’m not going to go out pretending to be someone I’m not. And I’m certainly not going to lay down and accept things the way they are. I’m going to try to fix this the way I believe it should be fixed. If I don’t do it, who will?”

No one knew what to say to that. I slipped through the crowd and up to the double doors leading out of my office. I could hear my deputy trying to speak over the sound of the cameras. She sounded… scared.

I opened the doors. And there she was: Fleetfoot.

But I wasn’t in the office anymore. I was back at Sweet Apple Acres, kitsch and all. And she was here.

I blinked.

“What did you say?” she whispered.

I blinked again. “Fleetfoot?”

“What did you say?” she repeated. “About… fixing things?”

“I-I didn’t,” I lied.

Fleetfoot shook her head. “You’re a terrible liar, Spits. Always have been.”

My legs gave way beneath me, and Dr. Bloom was there to catch me before I hit the floor. Somehow, I realized, the console was still attached to me and dragging behind me like a metal parasite. Fleetfoot sat down beside me and peered into my face with pure concern.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

She sighed. “I realized it was… irresponsible at best to let you go storming off after what happened,” she said. “The receptionist at the health center told me where you’d gone.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just stayed quiet.

“So!” Fleetfoot tried to paint on a happy face. “Good for you on going to counseling.”

“It wasn’t for the reasons you wanted me to go,” I said.

“I know,” Fleetfoot replied. “I know you.”`

“That sucks,” I muttered.

Fleetfoot only chuckled.

My next question sat on the tip of my tongue for a long moment before I let it go. “What was I like?” I asked. “In your tributaries?”

“What makes you think you were in my tributaries?” she asked coyly.

“Because you were in all of mine,” I groaned. “Because we were friends before all the destiny stuff. Right, Dr. Bloom?”

Dr. Bloom clicked her tongue. “Aw! You were listening!”

Fleetfoot smirked. “Stubborn. Angry,” she said. “But generally for the right reasons. Unlike how you’ve been in the here and now.”

I rolled my eyes.

“What about me?”

“Annoying. Hovering,” I said. “But… mostly because you wanted to help.”

Fleetfoot’s smirk turned to a genuine smile. I couldn’t help but return it, even if I quickly hid it away.

Applejack cleared her throat. “I hate to break up the happy reunion, girls, but could we do this someplace other than my dining room?” she asked, drippingly sweet. “I’ve got hungry kids to feed, and they ain’t waitin’ any longer.”

“Oh, shoot. You’re right.” Dr. Bloom got to her hooves. “Rainbow? Fleetfoot? Let’s take her to the porch.”

Working together, the mares managed to clumsily guide me out of the house and sit me down in a rocking chair on the covered porch. The sun had long since gone down, and I felt a small pang of guilt for disrupting the evening so completely. Then again, if you really thought about it, this was mostly Dr. Bloom’s fault.

“So…” Dr. Bloom said carefully. “We still have the small issue of your, uh… your tributary vanishing.”

I sighed.

“We can definitely find you something stable with a little more mapping. Unfortunately, your current position is pretty shaky,” she explained. “But a bigger mapping job will also require newer equipment. Feel up for the train ride back?”

“H-hang on,” I said. “I… I don’t even know what I want anymore.”

Dr. Bloom blinked. “Uh. As much as I admire your progress on that front, ma’am, stopping now ain’t really an option.”

Rainbow chuckled. “What exactly did you want before?”

“I've told you all a million times: I wanted to stay here.”

“But not anymore?”

“No, I—well, yes, but—” I paused. “I don't know!”

Fleetfoot, Rainbow, and Dr. Bloom exchanged looks.

“Try to think about the tributaries you did visit,” Fleetfoot suggested. “Just… what felt right, I guess?”

Dr. Bloom gasped. “Right! The convergence!” She smacked her forehead with one hoof. “This is what I was telling you about: the point where all of your potential destinies tie back together again.”

“Okay…” I murmured. “Okay. I'll try.”

I thought about the fire—the heat. The sweat. The thudding of my heart in my chest. The terror of licking flames and smothering smoke. And the thing that felt right: planting myself on my hooves. Holding the end of the hose. Being the last member of the chain.

I thought about the kitchen—heat again, but different. The panic. The noise. The speed. The stress of communication. And the thing that felt right: owning it. Taking charge. Solving the crisis, but not through directives—through action.

I thought about the mayor's office. There was always heat. The flash of cameras. Sweat under a collar. The council surrounding me, advising and arguing and waiting. The knowledge that one word could make or break it all. And the thing that felt right: facing it.

“I…” I swallowed. “I need to stay.”

Dr. Bloom hung her head.

Fleetfoot kicked at the porch. “Oh, for the love of—”

“I need to stay and I need to fix it,” I said quickly. “It's not right to just… leave our used-up things behind. Destinies or planets. I want to stay. I want to face this problem head-on. I want to fix this planet.”

It hadn't been long since I last felt this particular change. It started as acceleration, then weightlessness… I was warm.

And then it was over.

I looked back at my flank. It was familiar, but also new: flame in the shape of a bird.

In other words? A phoenix.

4. The application of external forces changes the energy type of an object.

“I’m scared, Spits.”

“Aw, don’t be a baby,” I said, laughing. “C’mon. Let’s go again.”

“I-I don’t want to get hurt again,” Fleetfoot stammered. “Why don’t we just leave?”

“No, I wanna stay here ‘til we get this trick right!” I flared my tiny wings as wide as they could go, feathers trembling. I had oozed magic at that age—seven years old, absolutely nothing about me was efficient. “At least one more try!”

Fleetfoot shook her head. “I don’t think I can do it.”

“Yes you can!”

“I can’t!”

“You can!” I insisted. “You wanna be a Wonderbolt, doncha?”

Fleetfoot whimpered softly and peered over the edge of the cloud. She was always fast, but at that age she hadn’t yet mastered her trademark grace; she was clumsy, wading through the cloud rather than walking atop it, nearly tripping over the edge into the open air below. The wind rushed beneath us. The world awaited.

“Hey,” I said, wrapping my little wing around her barrel and squeezing. “This is what being a Wonderbolt is all about, right? Being brave?”

Fleetfoot sniffed. “I don’t feel very brave.”

I just hugged her tighter. “That’s okay. I’ll be brave enough for both of us.”

We looked together over the edge of the cloud. She wrapped her hoof around mine and slowly, carefully, spread her own little wings.

“On three?” I suggested.

She sucked in a deep breath. “One.”

“Two.”

“Three!”

And, together, we jumped.

We rushed towards the ground, tears leaking from the corners of our eyes as we squinted into the wind. We didn’t have goggles. We didn’t have uniforms. We only had each other. I don’t know how we communicated—maybe it was unspoken. Maybe I pulled her upward, yanked her into the loop by force. Maybe I shouted at her over the howling of the wind in our ears. All I know is that the ground fell away from us, and up we went.

My stomach dropped as we soared upwards. The acceleration ebbed away, and then we were weightless. The world was overhead, space beneath us. Everything stopped. I was warm.

That was the moment. And, in that moment, I felt every other moment—every future loop and dive, but also every fire I wouldn’t put out, every service I wouldn’t complete, every speech I wouldn’t give. All of my futures collapsed together into this one.

Then we fell again, speeding towards the ground with purpose. I remember feeling like there was a streaking flame in my wake—pure magic, I’m sure. We hit the ground, tumbled and rolled across the grass, and finally came to a stop in a tangled heap. We giggled in the way that little fillies do—unbridled, that is—and pulled ourselves apart. We were covered in grass stains and dirt and scrapes, but it didn’t matter.

Fleetfoot gasped and pointed at me. “Oh, my gosh—Spitfire!”

“Fleetfoot!” I gasped, too, and rushed towards her, pulling her wing up to reveal her flank.

Then, together: “Your cutie mark!”

“Now. Destiny entanglement is still a relatively new discovery,” Dr. Bloom said as she turned back to her white board. “So our discussion today is going to be highly theoretical. Just… hang in there, okay?”

Dr. Bloom began by sketching out a tree—at least, a tree as we tended to shorthoof them. It shared very few similarities with the foal’s broccoli-esque tree, and was instead a structure loosely composed of a bundle of lines fraying at both ends. Dr. Bloom noted the center as the trunk, the topmost lines as the branches, and the bottommost lines as the roots.

I looked over at Fleetfoot and mimed tying a noose around my neck. She rolled her eyes and suppressed a snicker.

“We’re all familiar with this by now, ain’t we?” Dr. Bloom asked. She glanced over her shoulder to see if the class was paying attention—she received a few nods and grunts in return. “Great! Now let’s imagine a second tree of destiny nearby. A parent, maybe, or a close friend.”

She scribbled another tree onto the board, this one even looser than the one before. Fleetfoot diligently copied down the drawing. I leaned back and watched Dr. Bloom work.

“As you can see, the roots and branches can sometimes tangle together,” Dr. Bloom explained, extending lines from both trees as little squiggles that reached out to latch onto each other. “The closer the trunks, the higher the likelihood that they’ll tangle together.”

Moondancer raised her hoof, but didn’t wait for the professor to call on her. “When you say ‘close’, do you mean, erm… physical closeness?”

Dr. Bloom whipped around and pointed to her student. “Ah-ha!” she shouted. She turned to jot down the word next to the trees: ‘physical’. “Now there’s a good question! What could we mean by ‘close’? Anypony?”

Fleetfoot tapped her pen on her lips, then raised her own hoof.

“Fleets?” Dr. Bloom called.

“Well, if the trunks represent core proficiencies, maybe there’s also a metaphorical component?” she suggested. “So… say one pony’s core proficiency is teaching, and another’s is learning. Maybe their trunks would be close?”

“Interesting!” Dr. Bloom added the phrase ‘core proficiency’ to her list. “Good!”

“Maybe it’s a little of both?” I suggested.

“Maybe!” Dr. Bloom wrote this, too—with an exclamation mark. “Likely, even! This is one of the big challenges we’re facing right now: how do we define this closeness? More importantly, how do we measure it? Can we predict it? Can we map out the whole, uh… the whole orchard, so to speak?”

She kept drawing trees as she spoke, little more than bundles of loose scribbles now—but they all touched. On and on. I pictured them linking together, running off the board and across the wall, down the hall, and all over the outside of the building. A tree for every pony here. A tree for every pony everywhere. A vast, interconnected web of could-bes and might-have-beens.

“We do, however, have an even bigger question:” Dr. Bloom capped her marker and set it down in the tray. “How far can we go?”

She locked eyes with me for a moment. I arched my brows. She arched hers back.

“We’ve already seen that especially tight-knit groups of ponies tended to shift all together—the Elements of Harmony are a particularly famous example, though our very own Wonderbolts did the same,” Dr. Bloom explained. “And, if this is true for small groups, it could also be true for much larger groups. Entire towns and cities. Countries. The whole world.”

Fleetfoot paused her note-taking to look up at the professor.

“If we could do that—if we could map the tree of destiny for our entire planet—then we stand a very strong chance of being able to change its course,” Dr. Bloom said. I could hear in her voice how hard she was trying to restrain her excitement. It was hard not to get emotional at the possibility, after all. She let it out in a breathy chuckle. “Of course, there are many, many scientific advancements between where we are today and being able to nudge the whole planet into a different timeline. But, theoretically, this is a strong possibility.”

I cleared my throat and pointed to the clock.

Dr. Bloom glanced at the time. “Oh, shoot. I’ve gone over again,” she muttered. “Let’s pick this up next time, alright? Oh! And Dr. Streak wanted me to remind you all about tomorrow’s quiz on magical entropy. Study up!”

A chorus of hushed voices and saddlebag zippers filled the room as Dr. Bloom’s students slipped their notebooks away and hurried to their next class. Dr. Bloom watched her students depart, waving to those who glanced her way.

I stood and stretched. “I’m headed to the lab,” I said. “They want another round of data in the wind tunnel. Apparently they’ve got some, uh… energy pack or something that’s supposed to eat up some of the radiation?”

Fleetfoot nodded. “Moony told me about that! She said she’s been working with your cousin on it.”

I clicked my tongue. “Y’know, I think he might actually be scared of me.”

“That’s not surprising,” Fleetfoot muttered playfully.

I punched her on the shoulder. “Shut up.”

Fleetfoot only snickered in response as she jammed her notebook back into her bag. Then she stood and turned, brandishing her newer-than-new cutie mark: a butterfly, its wings a dazzling collage of blue and white. I’m not sure what about it, exactly, made it look like it had only just emerged from its chrysalis, but it seemed fresh. New. Only just born again.

“You’ll want to belay that order, ma’am,” Dr. Bloom said.

I looked up. “Oh?” I asked. “Why’s that, Captain Bloom?”

“I, uh…” Her eyes flicked downwards, and a little bloom of embarrassment came over her face. “I’m going to counseling today. And I could really use your support.”

I did a double-take. “What?”

“Really?” Fleetfoot asked. “But I thought—really?”

“When you get down to it, I’ve been just as stubborn as Spitfire,” Dr. Bloom grumbled. “Just… in the opposite direction, I guess. I’ve kept my old mark because I thought it was useful. But… I dunno. I think it’s time to be a little selfish.”

I smirked. “I like that attitude, private.”

Dr. Bloom snorted. “I figured you would.”

“Good for you, Dr. Bloom,” Fleetfoot said. “I hope you find something you like. I gotta swing by the engine lab and help a few of the newbies get caught up on their physics—see you soon!”

Dr. Bloom tried to say something, but her voice came out strangled and wordless, so she merely waved to Fleetfoot as she left.

“You’re that nervous?” I observed.

“I-I’m a little nervous,” she lied.

I chuckled. “Anyone ever told you that you suck at lying?” I asked.

She blushed even harder. “Let’s just get moving, alright?”

Dr. Bloom was, apparently, performing destiny counseling on herself. She had neglected to tell me this—when she said ‘support’, she meant it in a very literal manner. She needed me to help her get suited up in the tentacle wires as well as interpret the read-out on the console. I was proficient in neither of these activities.

“No, no. To the right,” she instructed as I hovered a sticky pad over the shield emblazoned on her flank. “Your other right. More. More. Up a little. Too much! Back down.”

My hooves shook as I tried to follow her instructions. “Does it really matter?” I asked.

“Ugh, yes!”

“Then why didn’t you get one of the other counselors to do it?” I demanded.

Dr. Bloom was taken aback. “I don’t want them poking around in there!” she exclaimed. “There! Stop!”

I froze, then pressed the sticky pad down into Dr. Bloom’s fur with as much conviction as I could muster, which wasn’t very much.

“Eh…” Dr. Bloom peered back at her leg. “Well… I guess it’ll have to do.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Let’s boot ‘er up.” Dr. Bloom yanked the control panel out of the side of the console. “Just sit down in front, there, and tell me what you see.”

I watched as the console hummed to life, then produced that familiar little green dot at the center of the screen.

“We have liftoff,” I said.

“Good, good. Alright—we’ll start with this cutie mark,” she said. She tapped the tips of her hooves together, then began typing on the control panel, as she did, she narrated: “I got this mark when I was twelve and I helped a friend of mine understand her destiny. I got it at the same time as my two best friends, Sweetie—”

“Wait, wait. You’re entangled, too?” I scratched my head. “What are they doing?”

Dr. Bloom waved the question off. “I gotta focus!” She smacked a few more buttons on the control panel, and the first branch appeared on the screen. “Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo were both working as destiny counselors, too.”

“Were?”

Dr. Bloom rolled her eyes. “Well… after Operation Phoenix went live, they both went to counseling. They’re both still counselors, I guess, but less to do with finding, uh… space-oriented talents,” she said carefully. “Scootaloo helps disabled ponies transition to new talents, and Sweetie Belle helps artists get over blocks without changing talents.”

I actually remembered Scootaloo, not that Dr. Bloom mentioned it. That seemed like a nice change of pace for her.

“So… I’m guessing that’s why you suddenly wanted to go to counseling?” I pressed.

“Oh, yes, if you must know.” Dr. Bloom stuck her tongue out at me.

I stuck my tongue out at her. “You’ve got your first line up, by the way,” I told her.

“Right!” Dr. Bloom pulled back up to the control panel. “Okay. This might be a little tricky. I did lots of things back before I got my cutie mark. I guess there’s got to be a branch out there where I’m a farmer…”

She started tapping on the control panel again, this time only barely whispering direction to herself. As I watched, the screen slowly zoomed out and populated itself with new lines one by one. Each was a tiny flickering thread in the void.

“Potion-making, too…” Dr. Bloom murmured. “Plus construction… the election…”

More futures spring up and peeled away from the trunk. She built her tree out wider than I’d ever managed, and in a fraction of the time. I wondered what it must be like to be so aware of all your possibilities—I had been singularly-minded since I was a foal. How had she ever managed to settle on just one thing?

“Okay… okay…” Dr. Bloom was slowing down now. “I think we’ve almost got it!”

I squinted at the screen. “Almost? You’ve got about four dozen destinies on here! I can barely see them!”

Dr. Bloom chuckled and shook her head. “Just hold onto your hat, there.”

She pressed one final button. The console’s fans spun up. After a moment, the screen blinked away, then sprang back to life with easily twice as many branches on it. Possibly more. I think my jaw dropped—I wouldn’t have even known where to start. Dr. Bloom’s current position had all but vanished into the sea of intersecting green lines. There were some places where they were so tightly bundled that there didn’t appear to be a way to separate them.

“Whoa…” I murmured.

Dr. Bloom smiled proudly. “I told ya: I basically pioneered this field,” she said.

“So… now what?” I asked. “I mean, how do you choose?”

Dr. Bloom sighed. “Well, we’ve got to narrow the playing field a bit,” she said. “I know I want to keep helping ponies, but I think that might be my core proficiency. I guess I should specify that I’d like to focus on destiny science.”

She punched this into her control panel. Many of the branches dimmed—an effect that was nearly inscrutable—leaving only a hoofful highlighted in that ultra-bright green.

“You’re down to, uh…” I carefully counted the remaining branches. “Six, I think? It’s hard to tell.”

Dr. Bloom tapped her chin with one hoof.

I scooted my chair to the side, away from the console. “Look. I know you like all the tech and stuff, but why don’t we do this the old fashioned way?”

“What’s the old fashioned way?”

“Talking,” I said. “Ugh. You really are from a different generation.”

Dr. Bloom shot me a look, but I decided to ignore it.

“What is it that you want?” I asked.

She looked down at her hooves.

“You’re not just changing for the sake of it, are you?”

“Of course not!” Dr. Bloom raised a hoof to her face. “Well… I mean, I don’t think I am.”

“What made you want to change?” I asked. “There must have been something.”

She looked down at her hooves again, this time for far longer. I waited patiently. I didn’t try to fill the silence. Eventually, she spoke: “I’ve helped so many ponies find happiness when they were feeling stuck,” she said softly. “And, when all this happened, I think I felt… guilty for wanting to change. I had one of the most useful talents out there. But now… well, everyone’s leaving soon. And it’s not like I won’t still be able to do this!”

I chuckled. “I know.”

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I just—I feel like I gotta defend myself or somethin’.”

I sighed. “Listen. I happen to know a bit about your family,” I said. “They’re a bit, uh… duty-bound?”

Dr. Bloom scoffed. “That’s putting it mild.”

“I know you’re a doctor and everything, but you’re still just a kid,” I told her. “Thirty-two? I had barely even started my life when I was thirty-two. I wasn’t coaching until I was thirty, and I didn’t like it for a few years after that.”

Dr. Bloom gave me a sheepish look. “Really?”

I nodded. “You should want a change,” I said. “I think it’s healthy. Especially given the… well, the everything.”

“Hm.” Dr. Bloom chuckled. “You sure have changed a lot these last few years.”

I smiled. “I think I’ve matured quite well, now that you mention it,” I agreed. “And I’m sixty. You shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting something new, Dr. Bloom.”

“You really gotta stop calling me that,” she said.

“No way. You earned that,” I said. “Now, what in the wide, wide world of Equestria do you want?”

Dr. Bloom looked back down at the floor. “Um…”

I furrowed my brows. “You know what you want. I know you do,” I said. “Say it! What do you want?”

“I, uh…”

“Bloom…” I threatened.

“Well, I just think that—”

“Bloom!”

Dr. Bloom sucked in a deep breath. “I want to work with you!” she blurted out.

I was struck silent for a moment. Of all the things in the world she could do, all the frontiers she could be exploring out there… She could live to see another habitable planet. She could be one of the first to set hoof on a new homeworld. And she would choose this?

I blinked. “You… do?”

She nodded silently, biting down hard on her lower lip. “Is that weird?”

I scoffed. “A little!” I exclaimed. “You’ve been all… all starry-eyed about the space stuff since I met you!”

“I know, I know, I just… the way you talk about it—it’s so…” She trailed off, and paused to take another steadying breath. “I’ve dedicated so much of my life to helping ponies, but so much of that has been uncertain. I don’t always know what’s best for ponies. I don’t always know if I’m doing the right thing. Honestly, I feel like I almost never know!”

I didn’t say anything. I just watched as Dr. Bloom pulled on one of her long braids.

“I’ve helped so many ponies through this destiny counseling thing, and I pushed so many towards doing the ‘right’ thing: helping get those spaceships off the ground. And don’t get me wrong—I think I did some good! But…” She trailed off again and yanked on her braid. “I just think I need to do something that I’m sure is right. And this? Staying behind to fix things? I’m sure that’s right. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

I hadn’t even opened my mouth before it started. The console’s screen blinked—all of the branches popped out of existence, leaving Dr. Bloom’s little green dot floating in that endless void once again. The green light seemed to leap out of the console and travel down the wire tentacles to Dr. Bloom, where it quickly surrounded her in a halo. I leapt backwards out of the chair and backed up against the opposite wall.

The light intensified until it was pure white, bright enough that I had to shield my eyes. Even with them closed, I could feel the light pulsing and hear it shimmering. After a long moment, the light began to fade, and I peeked out from behind my hooves.

Dr. Bloom was standing, now—just in front of the examination table. She spun in a quick circle and looked back at her uncovered cutie mark: a seed, with a tiny seedling push out of the top and two healthy green leaves spread across her flank like wings.

Like so many others’ new marks, it felt almost obvious now. Apple Bloom had been born to help ponies blossom—now she would help the world itself do the same.

It was a beautiful day when the ships left.

We had to wait for it. That was still new to us—waiting around for the conditions to be just right, rather than molding them to our liking. I think the Princess would have approved a little weather manipulation, to be honest, but I also think that a lot of creatures were looking for reasons not to leave. I couldn’t fault them for that.

That morning, with clear skies and the orange flare of the sun on the horizon, they made the call: it was time to go.

The campus was a mess. Last-minute items were packed haphazardly into boxes: plates and cups wrapped in newspaper, clothes were half-heartedly half-folded, remaining nibbles and sips of things in fridges were consumed or washed down the sink. Everyone in the dorms had loaded their stuff into carts, and there were traffic jams in and out of every building. Groups of friends were taking tearful final pictures together. Sun streamed through windows and into empty rooms.

Fleetfoot and I helped as much as we could. In a lot of ways, more hooves just made the situation worse—but at least the rest of the squad could leave some things to us.

“Don’t forget to feed my fish,” Soarin reminded me sternly. “I want a photo every day. Every. Day.”

“Why did you even get a fish, Soarin?” I asked. “You knew you couldn’t take him with you. That was the one rule: no aquatic pets.”

Soarin peered into his little friend’s tank, a hoof resting on the glass. “He just looked so lonely at the store…”

I sighed. “Yes. Fine. I’ll feed the fish,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Come on, dude, you still need to get all the crap off your walls.”

I shooed him away from the tank with some difficulty.

“The pothos needs water once every week or so,” High Winds instructed a distracted Fleetfoot. “And the cactus needs water once a week in the summer, but absolutely nothing in the winter. Don’t touch it. At all.”

“Uh-huh…” Fleetfoot muttered. Her gaze was focused out the window.

“Are you even listening to me?” High Winds scolded. “These are gifts, Fleets. Say ‘thank you’, at least!”

“Yeah, yeah—thanks. Is that Hayseed Turnip Truck tinkering with the tertiary thruster out there?” Fleetfoot asked, scowling.

High Winds was at her side in an instant. “Oh, for the love of—what is he doing?!”

And she was off like a shot.

I arched a brow. “Should we be worried about that?”

Fleetfoot shrugged. “For all I know, he’s got an aerospace degree now,” she said. “I mostly just wanted Winds to stop talking to me about the plants.”

I chuckled.

Something hit a hot pan in the kitchen, and the sudden hiss of sizzling food filled the apartment. The sound and the smell lit up a disparate corner of my mind—fried green tomatoes over risotto. I felt the brief need to rush into the kitchen and supervise, but managed to restrain myself and merely poked my head around the corner.

Blaze flipped one of the tomato slices over. The sizzling was renewed as a yet-untouched surface hit the hot oil.

“Looking good, Blaze,” I said.

“You sound surprised.”

I shook my head. “Nope. Not a bit. Just wondering if you’ve made enough to share.”

Blaze smiled. “Yes, chef.”

“Hm. Even better, then.”

“Thank you, chef,” Blaze replied, mostly teasing.

“Last meal?” I asked.

“Ugh. Don’t say it like that,” Blaze commented, sticking out her tongue. “I just… well, I don’t exactly know what grocery shopping looks like in space. I might have to go back to MREs for a bit while the agricultural team gets the gardens up and running.”

“You really think you can do that?” I asked.

Blaze sighed. “No. I need fresh ingredients, Spits!”

I clapped her on the shoulder. “Ah, you’ll have ‘em before you know it.”

“I sure hope so…” Blaze muttered. Then she flicked off the stovetop and deposited the last few tomato slices onto a platter. “Soup’s on, everyone!”

The last meal was filled with reminders. What to do, what not to do. What to babysit. What to share. Who was staying, who was leaving—somehow, even that still wasn’t entirely clear. There was gossip. Old stories were retold. A ceremonial group chat was formed: The Wonderbolts’ Sixteenth Squadron, separated one last time. At least once a week, we promised. And for anything big, of course. And pictures. And video calls. We could play trivia together, like we used to after a big show. We could watch movies some nights. It wouldn’t be that bad at all.

And then, before we knew it, the last calls to board were ringing out across campus. Across the entire globe.

It’s a strange feeling: crying when you know everyone else alive is crying, too. It doesn’t make it any easier. It also doesn’t make it less embarrassing. We hugged each other. We hugged each other’s families. I hugged complete strangers, just because they were there and looked like they needed it. I think everyone did.

Fleetfoot and I watched as the ship’s doors closed. It was going to be an hour or more before takeoff—everything and everyone had to be strapped down. We both knew that wasn’t possible, really, and we had a tearful laugh when we realized everyone’s first day in space would just be cleaning up the jumbled mess left behind from the turbulence.

“Where should we go to watch it?” Fleetfoot asked.

I thought for a moment. “I know just the place. But… you’ll need your wings to get there.”

Fleetfoot furrowed her brows.

“C’mon, Fleets,” I teased. “How many creatures did they think were staying behind? Less than one percent? We’re in the clear.”

Fleetfoot chewed the inside of her cheek.

“Just say yes,” I said.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine. Yes.”

I helped her take off her wing-belting vest. It wasn’t as if it never came off, but Fleetfoot still needed to stretch her wings and give them a small experimental flap. They seemed stiff, but not altogether unusable.

“Ready?” I asked.

Fleetfoot nickered. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

I took hold of her hoof and we were off. She was shaky, yes, but got the hang of it again quickly. We flew up above the campus and circled the area until we found the perfect viewing platform: a fluffy, white cloud. It had been years since either of us set hoof on a cloud, and we both sunk a half-step upon our first landing. We laughed together and, with some difficulty, managed to get seated.

It was beautiful, in a word. The air was different up here. The world was tiny. Problems felt easier to solve: like you could just reach down and shuffle things around until everything worked right again. And, for the first time, it felt like that might actually be possible.

“I missed this,” Fleetfoot said.

“Me too,” I agreed.

Fleetfoot let out a satisfied sigh. “Did you hear they added a new law of motion?”

I growled. “Not this again.”

“Ah, c’mon, Captain. I promise you’ll like this one!” Fleetfoot said, giving me a gentle nudge. “It goes like this: the application of force changes the energy of an object.”

“Uh-huh," I grumbled. "And what’s the metaphor?”

“The metaphor is… I’m proud of you,” Fleetfoot said. “You’ve been through a lot. I think I probably could have been more, uh… supportive than I was. But your energy has changed. I can see it. I just wanted you to know.”

“Ugh.” I turned my face away from hers to hide my grin. “What are you gonna do next? Tell me my horoscope?”

Fleetfoot didn’t say anything—she only gave me an affectionate pat on my shoulder.

We waited quite a while, but it felt like no time at all. Then came the roar of the engines. The heat. The light. And, just like that, the entire world was soaring past us. Fleetfoot and I exchanged a look. Then, without a word, we linked hooves and took off after it.

We followed as closely as we could bear. We followed it to the very edge of the atmosphere, where the chill of space froze the tips of our feathers and burned the insides of our lungs. Then, when we could follow no longer, the acceleration ebbed away, and we were weightless. The world overhead, and space below.

Then, together, we fell back towards the ground.

Apple Bloom was waiting. She’d picked a bench near the edge of campus, and was shielding her gaze with one hoof to watch the skies. When she spotted us, she waved. She wiped her eyes free of tears. We landed in front of her, and she hugged us, too. It was probably more hugs than I’d had in years, packed into one afternoon.

“I guess that’s that,” Apple Bloom said, her voice still a little weak from the crying. “What now?”

I sniffed. “Well. The countdown’s started,” I replied. “Time to get to work on bringing them back.”