The Anatomy of Aesthetics

by AltruistArtist

Chapters

CONTENTS — Dramatis Equidae (Equines of the Drama)
GLOSSARY
Fig. 1. — The Heart (of a Nation)
Fig. 2. — The Skin (of an Accident)
Fig. 3. — The Nervous System (of a Nervous Mind)
Fig. 4. — The Joints (of a Flock)
Fig. 5 — The Eyes (of a Crowd)
Fig. 6. — The Bones (of an Untold Story)
Fig. 7. — The Wings (of a Future)

CONTENTS — Dramatis Equidae (Equines of the Drama)

Flaire d’Mare — Canterlot boutique owner and independent couturier.

Fairy Flight — Wonderbolts aviator in her first year of service.

General Flash — The tenth leader of the Wonderbolts.

GLOSSARY

Canonical details sourced from:

The Wonderbolts Academy Handbook
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Season 4, Episode 21: “Testing, Testing 1,2,3.”
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Season 6, Episode 7: "Newbie Dash."

Flaire d’Mare

Flaire d’Mare’s design: Adapted from her appearance in The Wonderbolts Academy Handbook (where she is depicted through Fleur de Lis' character model).
Beware the FLAIR: Canonical name of Flaire’s boutique, as seen in The Wonderbolts Academy Handbook.

General Flash

Characterization inspired by his profile in The Wonderbolts Academy Handbook.
Originator of Wonderbolts motto: Altius Volantis — "Soaring Higher." As seen in "Newbie Dash."

Fairy Flight

Characterization inspired by her profile in The Wonderbolts Academy Handbook.

Wonderbolts Uniforms

Uniforms featured in Chapter 1: General Flash’s original uniform modeled by Pinkie Pie in “Testing, Testing 1,2,3.”
Uniforms featured in Chapter 5: Modeled by General Flash in The Wonderbolts Academy Handbook.
Fairy Flight’s Admiralty Uniform: Modeled by Fluttershy in “Testing, Testing 1,2,3.”

Author's Note

Thank you for reading ✧

Fig. 1. — The Heart (of a Nation)

A vein of lightning lit the gray overcast horizon. Flaire d’Mare clenched her teeth on her cigarette, awaiting the thunderclap.

“Count to thirty!” Clarity always chirped, reciting the trick Mom taught her. If the seconds passed, and those three rounds of ten were accounted for before the thunder struck, it was time to seek shelter and cover your ears. Tragedy was on its way.

One… Two… Three…

Flaire reached a count of fifteen when the heavy boom rolled overhead. She levitated her cigarette from her lips and sighed deep, exhaling smoke into the wet air.

A pair of elderly mares passed by on rickety gaits, hooves knocking the cobblestones of Canterlot Main Street. They were in urgent discussion, as though speaking could change the outcome.

“Curse this dreary weather. It’s nagging at my hip something terrible.”

“No good ever comes from a summer storm. What was the weather team thinking? Surely the Wonderbolts won’t be performing under these conditions.”

The backward tilt of Flaire’s ears was obscured by the wide brim of her derby hat. A froth of feathers and lace hung in her vision, a veil to conceal the narrowing of her eyes. While her ostentatious attire often drew attention, she styled herself in the interest of her own private judgments. A draping ruffle here, a trail of taffeta there, and nopony was wise to the secret gestures of her anxieties.

Today, she wore the gliding dark silks of a socialite in exile. She cut a smooth path down Main Street, aloof and separate, her bejeweled saddlebags stuffed with new reels of fabric. The giggling of fillies caught the air as they raced by in pairs, headed toward the city square. Sparklers were held aloft in their magical auras, spraying blooms of gold light that extinguished on the slick brickwork of the road. Balconies were hung with ruffled banners in shades of blue and gold. Flags tossed in the wind, bearing the insignias of a winged lightning bolt and the Celestial sun.

Tomorrow, Princess Celestia would ferry the sun into the heavens, ushering in the five-hundred-and-thirtieth Summer Sun Celebration. Another brilliant morning of the Fifth Celestial Era, signifying more than half a millennium of peace.

Before dawn, while the sky was still dark, the Wonderbolts would perform the five-hundred-and-thirtieth rendition of their inaugural aerial display. The event would be so full of energy, so highly charged, that magical lightning would strike down to shower the crowd, flashing brighter than the authentic electric arcs streaking through the distant thunderheads.

Flaire counted… Sixteen… Seventeen… Eighteen… Thunder crashed. Longer this time. The storm was moving in.

The city was aflush with hustle and chatter. By noon, carriages had begun to arrive from Manehattan and Whinnyapolis, hauling in visitors with flashbulb cameras wound around their necks, ready to be dazzled. Flaire had burned through half a pack of Marelboros by the time she’d reached the textile shop, her final errand of the beleaguering day. Even there, the sweet cashier who knew her as a regular couldn’t refrain from remarking on the night's event.

“Did you know this is General Flash’s thirty-fifth anniversary as the Wonderbolts’ leader? Oh, I hope that doesn’t mean he’ll be retiring soon.” She counted Flaire’s bits and cranked the register. It chimed, unspooling a receipt. “I don’t know how I could get through a performance without seeing his face. With that gray in his mane, he looks so rugged in uniform.”

Flaire busied herself, tucking her new silks and buttons into her saddlebag. “My dear,” she said around her cigarette, “rugged is a term reserved for denim and workstallion boots. Not ‘Bolts uniforms.”

But the cashier had giggled without comment, already lost to her fantasy.

The murky wash of evening colored the stark surrounding spires in shades of gray. Flaire turned over the ‘Closed’ sign in her window, retiring to her bedroom on the second floor. Her boutique was centered along the rotunda of Canterlot city square. It was within viewing distance of the broad stage upon which the Wonderbolts were arriving for rehearsal. Pegasi shapes milled about, wings extending in routine stretches. The pep band drumline absently beat their snares, random and arrhythmic. Before dawn, the streets would crowd, a throng of gasping voices and popping flashbulbs, attention fixed on nothing but the stage. Flaire drew the velveteen curtains across her windows.

The evening should have been rote. Flaire settled onto her chaise lounge. She doffed her decorative hat, ashed her cigarette, and was stirring honey into a steaming porcelain cup of citric Earl Neigh tea — when she heard the laughter.

It was a high girlish giggle, full of wonder.

Flaire's ears pinned. She sipped from her floral cup, washing the burn of tobacco from her throat, but the hot drink sunk heavy into her gut. Levitating a record from her shelf, she set it upon the turntable of her glittering brass gramophone. The speakers crackled and a Manehattan jazz arrangement filled the room.

It did not drown out the laughter.

Flaire pulled back the window curtain. She expected to see a filly, perhaps a group of them, a herd of rowdy children who broke past the security perimeter so they could huddle at the base of the stage and gawk at the practicing Wonderbolts. Flaire did not expect to see the laughter coming from a Wonderbolt herself.

A pegasus mare with a dusty rose face pranced on the stage as guileless as a foal. Illuminated under the hot floodlight lanterns, she moved with the same boisterous indiscretion that filled her laughter. Her limbs leapt and bucked through her warmup routine, accentuating the flapping fabric of her uniform's trousers, the wide cuffs around her hind fetlocks—

Celestia help her. The mare was wearing bell bottoms.

A flash of lightning lit the window edge. Flaire panted, puffs of smoke wafting over the glass. Twenty… Twenty-one… Twenty-two…

Thunder crashed. Flaire cantered out into the street, silk skirt billowing about her hocks, her cigarette falling to land on the damp cobblestones.

She barreled past the sole drowsy security guard before he could come to and halt her. The rosy pegasus was skipping in place at the edge of the stage. Flaire craned her neck upward to the sight of her mirthful hooves wrapped in the gold-trimmed cuffs of her navy ‘Bolts jacket.

“What in Celestia’s name are you wearing?”

Eyes wide, the pegasus sprang into the air. She completed a quick turn and alighted back upon the stage. Lankier than most of her tribe, she couldn’t have been older than twenty. Fresh out of cadet status, surely too green to have appeared on any of the recruitment posters showcasing the troop's star flyers. When she turned to Flaire, her face was a flashbang of youth. There was a coltish charm to her angular muzzle, a sparkle in her amber eyes.

She crouched, her snout questing to meet Flaire’s stricken face. “Whoa,” she said, “your mane is really pretty.”

Flaire’s heart pounded. Clarity used to say her mane looked like the inside of a petit four, striped in shades of pink vanilla cake and strawberry compote. She first bit into that sweet confection on her fifth birthday, knowing then she had a taste for fine things.

“Your flattery is appreciated, though you failed to answer my question.” Flaire gestured to the mare’s hindquarters. “What are those dreadful trousers you’re wearing?”

The mare peered over her shoulder, lifting a hoof. “A Wonderbolts uniform, ma’am. Standard issue, as of last year.”

“‘Standard issue,’” Flaire echoed. “I take that to mean all of you are sporting these perilous sacks around your legs. Are you stupid?”

The mare pinned her with a funny grin, blinking. “No? Last I checked, at least.”

Flaire was left open mouthed. Before she could retort, somepony else asked, “Who’s this mare giving you trouble, Fairy Flight?”

The voice was winsome, faintly stressed by age. It called across the stage, followed by the steady march of hooves. Flaire lifted her eyes to the hero of Equestria’s future, the luminary of a nation, the professedly rugged tenth leader of the Wonderbolts,General Flash.

He was flanked by a pair of young stallions, each of them darting glances at Flaire as they approached. But Flash’s face was civil, diplomatic. He made for a handsome picture, if not for the unflattering clash of his navy jacket against his monochrome turquoise coat and mane, the slicked hairs tinged with frost beneath his cap. And Celestia forbid — he too was clothed in those slate gray bell bottoms.

Otherwise, he appeared upon this stage just as Flaire remembered. A foregone time when both of them were much younger.

“How may we help you, miss?” General Flash asked from above. His thick brows lifted over his genteel blue eyes.

Flaire raised her chin. She regretted the absence of her hat, aware of the starkness of her white face, skimmed by the wind. A churn of thunder sounded overhead, a count she had missed.

“You may help by giving me the name of the dimwitted mare or stallion who designed your uniforms. Following that, their home address, so I may track them down and wring their neck with a pair of those wretched trousers.”

General Flash blinked, but possessed either the decorum or years of training not to flinch. One of the young Wonderbolts at his side scowled, his coat as sour orange as his face.

“You’re a designer yourself, I take it,” Flash remarked.

Her eyes narrowed. “My name is Flaire d’Mare, owner of Beware the FLAIR: Canterlor’s premiere boutique.” She extended a hoof behind her, gesturing to the gilded edifice of her storefront bordering the far rim of the rotunda. “And personal tailor to nobility.”

Flash chuckled. “Beware the Flaire indeed.” He crossed his hooves, leaning his compact weight to one side. “Well Miss d’Mare, given your profession, I can see how our uniforms must surely be an eyesore compared to the gowns and suits you design.”

“Them being an eyesore is the least of your concerns.” Flaire’s lip quivered. “What material was used for the trousers?”

“What makes you believe you can demand that information from us?” the orange Wonderbolt snapped.

“Easy, Swift Kick.” General Flash raised a hoof before the stallion’s chest. He frowned. “To answer your question, Miss d'Mare, these trousers are one-hundred-percent authentic Manehattan polyester. Sturdy and reliable.”

If not for her unconcealed face, Flaire might have gagged. She turned from them, her stare landing on Fairy Flight, who had been watching the altercation with amused interest. With little regard, Flaire’s horn lit pale pink. Her magical aura gripped the broad hem of Fairy’s pant leg and yanked her close.

“Whoa! Hey, lady!”

Fairy Flight’s wings spread wide, flapping to hold herself aloft as her hind hoof was jerked beneath Flaire’s scrutinous eyes.

A raspy voice exclaimed, “She’s assaulting an aviator!”

“Swift Kick, stand down for Celestia’s sake.”

With a gentle hooftouch, General Flash supported Fairy Flight’s back. “Miss d’Mare, I’ll kindly ask you to release your grasp on my aviator. She doesn’t take well to marehandling.”

“I don’t!”

Snorting, Flaire let go. Fairy Flight’s wings fluttered, righting herself.

“Indeed, polyester! Of course it’s polyester.” Flaire whinnied a shrill laugh.

“So?” Fairy Flight asked, shuffling her hooves. “What's the matter with polyester? They’re calling it ‘The Miracle Fabric’ over in Manehattan. It’s supposed to be downright indestructible.”

“It also generates a fraught amount of static electricity.”

Flaire suffered no interjection, and continued, “Fly up into that storm, and you’ll see yourselves zapped faster than a filly can scarf down a snow-cone in the hot summer sun. Yes, polyester may be grand for wicking moisture and is practically immune to wear and tear, but it churns up static like you wouldn’t believe. Perhaps a sleeker silhouette may have spared you from the buildup of electrostatic charge, but those horrid bell bottom cuffs flapping about…” She curled her hoof beneath her chin, breathing deep. “With the friction you’ll generate from the kicking of your hooves as you take off, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were shooting lightning from your fetlocks by the time you reached the cloud layer.”

Her neck jerked, sweeping them with her stare. “If any of you value your safety, and the safety of the crowd, you’ll remove them before the performance.”

A quiet shock overtook the assembled Wonderbolts. Slow and tentative, Fairy Flight ran her hind hoof along the inseam of her trousers, as though searching for evidence of their treachery.

Looking to General Flash, she said, lamely, “We were told the new silhouette of the trousers would improve the visibility of our choreography.”

Flash’s brows were upturned under the brim of his cap, a sort of pity Flaire was not unused to. “Miss d’Mare, I would not accept uniforms that endangered the wellbeing of my troop. Polyester has been reliably worn by earth pony track runners for the last two years, and now it’s come to us. It’s a fine fiber, the fiber of the future. And as the Wonderbolts, we have a responsibility to represent Equestria’s progress as a nation. It lives at the very core of what we inspire.” He pressed a hoof to his chest. “‘Altius Volantis — Soa–’”

“‘Soaring Higher.’ I know.” The cold caress of Flaire’s silk dress made her shiver. Her pearl choker constricted her throat when she swallowed. “And for what it’s worth, earth pony track runners aren’t entering the atmosphere during a storm.”

“A storm that will be kicked away as the first act of our performance. A subversion of expectations, you could call it, deliberately crafted by the city weather team. Canterlot spends the day under a dreary sky, only for it to be lifted away before the start of the Summer Sun Celebration.” Flash smiled. “You seem a good mare, aspiring to look out for us. I admire that in you, Miss d’Mare. It’s a virtue I, too, strive to maintain.”

A droplet hit Flaire’s cheek, sinking between her coat hairs, chilly on her skin. There was a scream in her somewhere, lodged deep in the recesses of her ribcage where it was no longer accessible. Pattering dark circles appeared on the stage as a cloud drifted overhead, bringing in a light shower.

“What about the magical lightning that concludes the performance?” Flaire asked. She stared at Flash, searching for a twitch of recognition in any degree of his face. His eyes weren't on her.

Swift Kick, squinting and shielding his head with a wing, said, “It’s magical. It can’t hurt us.”

Fairy Flight grinned. “It kinda feels like laughter.”

Flaire gazed at her, a pleading stare into those youthful amber eyes. Perhaps, moments before the performance, she might be overcome with a sudden jolt of presentiment. She might feel the crackle of static in the air rising with the hairs on her neck like an omen and shed those dreadful trousers. Sparing herself before the rapid flashes of lightning came to send her spiraling to the ground, seizing and coughing tracks of spittle into her pretty rose coat.

“Will we be seeing you before dawn at the show, Miss d’Mare?”

As he spoke, Flash glanced upward and beckoned with a primary feather flicked twice. The sleepy security guard approached, a signal that the conversation was over.

Flaire lifted her eyes to General Flash, a rain-damp string of mane falling over the bridge of her snout. “No. You won’t.”

Flash nodded. “Well, that’s a shame. Nevertheless, I’m pleased to have made your acquaintance.”

Flaire’s heart was burning. “We’ve met before.”

Flash did nothing to feign recognition where it was absent. “Well, pardon my forgetfulness.” He dipped his chin. “Pleased to make your acquaintance again, Miss d’Mare.”

Of course, he wouldn’t have remembered her face from five years ago, or thirty. One pair of eyes in a line, a single voice in a crowd. But Flaire would remember General Flash as a pony who didn’t ask questions.

Fig. 2. — The Skin (of an Accident)

Flaire almost didn’t hear the pounding at her door.

Tucked into sheets misted with lavender, ears hugged by snug silk earmuffs to deafen the festivities outside, she had curled into a restless slumber. The sharp banging could have been anything. More thunder, the stomping of the crowd — the repeated blasts of the Wonderbolts’ climatic lightning.

But the noise was too close, too modulated. It slithered past the muffs, into her brain, and alerted some intrinsic sense of familiarity. She woke with a start, heard the knocking proper, and hurried to canter down the stairs. Her mane was twisted up in curlers and she tossed on a floaty faux fur-trimmed robe, knotting the waistband with her magic as she went.

A pony’s shape was visible behind the glass of her boutique door, a shadow of twitching ears and bobbing mane. Hauling it open brought in a gust of the night air, the smell of ozone and burnt hair.

Flaire met the wild amber eyes of Fairy Flight.

“You knew something bad was going to happen,” she said.

A mirthful firework exploded above. “Ohhh,” the distant crowd exclaimed in unison. Fairy Flight’s silhouette was illuminated in blue and gold by the crackling sparks, her barrel rising and falling with rapid pants. She was naked.

Flaire stumbled forward, buckled by relief to see this mare alert and breathing. She reached out to touch her chest with a quivery hoof, catching a whisper of her heartbeat. “Are you all right?”

A shocked smile jerked Fairy’s lips upward. “Me? I’m fine.” She gulped, stepping backward. “It’s Swift Kick. There was an accident. But, Flash caught him.”

Another firework whistled skyward; the crowd let out a collective exhale. The bright snap of it against the dark sky made Flaire start counting. One… Two… Three—

She blinked, licking her lips. “Why is the show still going?”

Fairy’s teeth were bared, gray in the low light. “We finished the performance. Didn’t want to cause alarm, you know? We hold formation no matter… Look, it happened fast. I don’t think anypony saw.”

A rolling of the snare drums started up. The trumpets followed, their lovely brass voices pouring out the national anthem of Equestria. And as the last firework fell, the distant shape of Princess Celestia ascended the stage.

Flaire squinted into the rising sun, moisture catching on her lashes. Fairy Flight’s face was darkened by the searing rush of morning that lit her from behind and bathed Equus in its five-hundred-and-thirtieth year of Celestial Peace.

Once more, Fairy said, “You knew something bad was going to happen.”

—

General Flash was in her living room. And Flaire was down to her last cigarette.

“It happened the moment the show started, while we cleared the storm clouds.” Flash was holding his cap to his chest beneath the somber lowering of his chin. He had the awareness to remove his awful bell bottom trousers before arriving and sitting on her couch. Its green velvet upholstery was a shade too close to his half-bare coat.

Fairy Flight was beside him, sipping tea Flaire offered, a tassel-edged throw blanket around her shoulders. Her face jerked with discreet little frowns behind the rim of her cup, eyes darting side to side, an ill-placed interloper in this gilded room.

“Swift’s position was at the farthest end of our formation,” Flash continued. He was staring at the low coffee table, stacked with fashion magazines and a bowl of cinnamon and orange rind potpourri. “I never saw the lightning strike that got him, but I heard him scream. My instincts kicked in – thank Celestia I always think on the tips of my feathers – and I swooped to catch him. He was unconscious and the hems of his trousers were singed. He’s at a private Canterlot hospital now, where the press can't get to him.”

Flaire was still in her chiffon robe, her posture stilted and unrelaxed on her chaise. She had tugged the curlers from her mane, her loose tresses falling about her throat as a meager bulwark against her incoming guests. Taking a long drag from her cigarette, she released the smoke from her lungs before speaking. “Why are you telling me all this?”

For the first time since he arrived, General Flash met her eyes. He chuckled from deep in his chest, a single embittered huff. “Because you were right.”

Something twisted in her, hearing those words from his lips. Like the shifting of an old broken bone that healed wrong. Flaire ran her tongue over her teeth, and said, “I know. I just wish I hadn’t been.”

Flash’s eyes fell. He set his cap upon his bent haunches and folded his forehooves. “The manufacturer will want your statement for the incident report. You tried to warn us, and we — I was callous to that.”

Flaire’s ears were low, pressed tight to her temples. Incident report was a platitudinous title. It paled to the reality of the young stallion now laying in a hospital bed, ointment smeared on his burns and light shined in his held-open eyes to assess whether his pupils still contracted.

Flaire asked, “Has something like this happened before?”

“Not this way, no,” Flash replied. “But, accidents come with the territory of our work, Miss d’Mare. We all accept that reality. We all have contingencies in place to respond to them when they occur.”

Fairy Flight gave a frank nod, then sipped her tea.

“Contingencies,” Flaire breathed. “Yet, not preventative measures?”

“In this case, that was meant to be the responsibility of the manufacturer. Who will also be giving a statement.” Flash set his jaw. “Tested for flammability and performance in the air, we were promised. None of that mattered.”

“And not conductivity?” Smoke rose from Flaire’s nostrils. “They knew who these uniforms were for, yes?”

The tenth leader of the Wonderbolts nodded. If his pallor wasn’t already green he would have been virescent. “We’ve worn them for a full year without issue. But before now, we hadn’t performed during an active storm.”

Flaire swallowed hard. “Well, as you observed last night, polyester has since been exclusive to earth pony track runner attire. Ponies who would never come in direct contact with lightning.” She turned her cigarette, its burning trails mingling with the pink field of her magic. Her speech became pressured. “Though from the manufacturer’s perspective, I can see why it was appealing for pegasi. It offers superb durability while being lightweight enough to prevent wind resistance. The non-restriction accommodates your lung and air sac capacity. It’s also remarkably smooth and wouldn’t irritate the barbs of your primaries when your wings are at rest.”

Fairy Flight piped up, “You sure seem to know a lot about pegasus anatomy, lady.” From the lift of her eyes, Flaire knew she was glancing at her horn.

Flaire’s gaze softened on her. “I’ve fitted more pegasi than I can count,” she said. “And, my mother was a pegasus. As was my sister.”

“What I believe Fairy Flight intended to say,” General Flash glanced at his aviator sidelong, “for a pony whose career is based in aesthetic design, you seem to be very knowledgeable about matters of science and anatomy.”

“That’s because aesthetics are anatomy.” The cigarette bent in her magic grip. Flaire’s eyes jerked to him. “We see something as beautiful because of how it evokes and compliments the equine forms we’re familiar with. But aesthetics aren’t merely pleasing to look at. They can have a profound effect on us, mind and body alike.”

She ashed her battered cigarette. The flakes glittered under the light of her Tiffaneigh lamp, stars unto dust. “We’re wise to respect their power over us.”

That was all she could express in words. Flaire could never hope to weave seams of description around knowledge so innate it may as well have been the pattern of her own breaths.

For Flaire d’Mare knew the rib cage. Flaire d’Mare knew the withers, the scapulae beneath, the pockets under limbs where fabric bunched and creased. She knew the sternomandibular muscle and the height of a collar complementary to its elegant protrusion when a pony turned their neck, the looseness of a cravat that would prevent constriction of the windpipe. She dressed nobles and fitted courtiers across the three tribes, her hoof and fabric tape measure understanding the contours of their bodies with the precision of a dissector. She knew the croup, the dock, the haunches. There were bodily secrets she couldn’t afford not to know.

The Wonderbolts in Flaire’s sitting room were exchanging knowing glances. A susurration rose from under Fairy Flight’s borrowed blanket, the twitching of her feathers. “You’ve got a real clever brain when it comes to this fabric stuff,” she said. “And, you cared. You were worried about us. That meant a lot.”

Fairy set down her teacup on the coffee table, her hoof jerking above it when it wobbled. “Gah — I’m still out of sorts.” Hooves free, she gesticulated broadly. “What I’m trying to say here is: we need new uniforms. None of us are gonna feel safe in the ones we have and General Flash doesn’t exactly trust our old manufacturer to give it another go. I was talking with him before we came here, and I guess what we’re wondering is…”

Flaire anticipated the concluding question before it rolled into the room, heavy and churning.

“Would you be willing to design some new uniforms for us?” Fairy Flight asked.

A phantom breeze kissed at Flaire’s exposed throat like the rush of a cold front. Ideas charged through her mind. She pictured, superimposed over Fairy’s rangy figure, visions of attire that might wrap and conceal her from any danger, holding her like the blanket drooping down her shoulders.

All that Flaire could change with this one, impossible chance.

“We request it humbly, Miss d’Mare.” General Flash was speaking into her abrupt silence. “If, that is, you’re willing to take on a project as large as this—”

“Are you asking me or commissioning me?” Flaire crossed her hind fetlocks, leaning into the arm of her chaise. “I design by commission, not by request.”

“Of course. You’ll be compensated handsomely by the Wonderbolts’ own fund.” Flash sat upright, embodying his role as General in every extent of his posture and tone. “We’ll have the regulations sent by our previous manufacturer, the crash test requirements — conductivity included. Following last night’s annual Summer Sun Celebration performance, we have another show in two months, in Whinnyapolis. It’s a tight deadline, I know, but—”

“It’s nothing I can’t manage.” Flaire sucked on the end of her cigarette, drawing back the smoldering cherry. “Whether my deadline is in two months or two years, I can't abide you continuing to wear uniforms that put your safety at risk. I won’t.”

Flash gave a curt nod. “Just as I suspected, you are a good mare.”

He returned his cap to its place atop his slicked mane. “We accept standard sizing for our aviators and will need a range from small to large. However, Fairy here will have to stop by for custom measurements when you’re available. She’s long-boned.”

“Not to mention, I’ve got some pretty stellar design ideas you’ll want to hear.” She dismounted the couch and pressed a wink in Flaire’s direction. But her knees were knocking as she trotted toward the staircase.

Flash followed behind her, then paused mid-stride in the doorframe. “Oh, and one last thing, Miss d’Mare.” He turned, wearing a deferential smile. “I dared not ask it earlier, entering your home as a guest. But I would appreciate it if you didn’t smoke in the presence of my aviators and I. We have more reason than most to take good care of our lungs.”

“Oh,” Flaire breathed. She lifted a forehoof to conceal her mouth. “Yes. Of course.” She pressed the end of her cigarette into the ashtray, extinguishing it with a hiss.

General Flash bid her goodnight. The shop bell jingled. And once more, she was alone.

The shadows thrown by her glittering lamps cut hard lines across the floor. Flaire exited the living room, dragging the effete weight of her robe. She passed into her bedroom, drawn to her closet as though by the tug of a fine filament directing her path.

Above her immaculate wardrobe of silks and cashmere, a humble wooden chest sat atop a high wall-mounted shelf. Flaire brought it down with a tender grasp of her magic. Opening it brought the sweet, musky scent of mahogany, wax and paper, and old pigment oils.

Time slid by as she looked at each of the drawings inside. Azure colored pencil that didn’t fill the gaps of the textured linen paper. Golden jags scribbled back and forth with abrupt hoofstrokes. Stars and sparks and honest, imaginative shapes. The sky. Blue and open and free. A place that should never be able to hurt you.

A sob punched Flaire in the gut. She closed the lid and clutched the box to her chest. She bowed her head and wept.

Fig. 3. — The Nervous System (of a Nervous Mind)

“You’re designing new uniforms for the Wonderbolts? Oh, how exciting!”

As ever, the textile shop cashier was effervescent. She squealed as she hoofed Flaire’s total into the register, ringing up several reels of cotton and elastane.

“That’s right,” Flaire said through a tight smile. “They’re seeking, ah, a new vision for their look.”

“Does that mean… have you met General Flash?” The cashier’s hoof fumbled for the register crank. She began to giggle as the receipt rolled out to pool across the counter. “Oh stars… if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could you mention my name to him? I did sell you the fabrics you’ll be turning into their amazing new uniforms after all!”

Flaire glanced at her nametag, which read: Paisley Pincushion. “Certainly… Paisley. Though, I do believe General Flash is married.”

Paisley scoffed in mock affront. “Do you think I'm some kind of homewrecker?” She giggled. “A mare can dream. Anyway, I'm just trying to stay in the picture. This is newsworthy! An independent couturier designing uniforms for our nation's heroes? That's a story for the era!”

Paisley clutched her chest in a semi-swoon as she slid the receipt across the counter. Flaire stuffed it into her saddlebag between her freshly bought fabrics.

“A lovely thought, dear,” she said. “But a doubtful one. Designers aren't remembered alongside heroes.”

The past days, Flaire had pored over her history books, tracing the lineage of the Wonderbolts’ uniforms back to the days of the E.U.P. She absorbed the sartorial canon of styles and recurring silhouettes, attempting to secure mental borders of inspiration around the requirements Flash sent her. Glossy portraits of eminent Wonderbolts from days gone by filled the pages. If the designers of their sleek caps and jackets were mentioned at all, their names were relegated to the margins.

Paisley's perennial laughter followed Flaire out through the door. “Trust me, Flaire d'Mare. You're going to make history!”

—

Fairy Flight came knocking at half-past-noon. Flaire’s neck prickled at the sound of her quick rapping, the same tempo against her door as the night of the Summer Sun Celebration. Languid trails of smoke were rising around her and Flaire banished them with quick snaps at the air from a stray scrap of fabric. She crushed her cigarette into the ashtray, tossing her tape measure over her withers.

“I’m here for my fitting, lady!” Fairy Flight announced as the door opened. She was in the nude, her dusky rose coat illuminated by the crisp afternoon light. Without her cap, her cropped auburn mane was permitted to sweep upward, as though blown by an errant wind. If Flaire wasn’t mistaken, it shone with a faint slick of gel.

Fairy carried her rakish air into Flaire’s boutique. She trotted alongside a row of ponnequins dressed in glittering ball gowns. “Do these things ever freak you out?” she asked, prodding one’s featureless snout. “I know I’d feel a lot better after drawing some funny faces on them or something.”

“That would defeat their purpose.” Flaire extended a graceful foreleg across Fairy’s path, encouraging her toward the center of the room. “They’re meant to be blank, a generic body, so you may imagine yourself in the garments they’re displaying.”

Fairy laughed. “I don't think I would for any of these. Not my style. But, show me one dressed in polka dots and that'd be a whole different story.”

Flaire arched a manicured eyebrow. “Pardon?”

“Polka dots! Hooves down, the best pattern for clothes if you ask me.” She squinted, surveying the surrounding racks. “Yeah, like this!”

Fairy pulled out the flat skirt of an a-line dress. It was decorated with broad gold circles, an offering from Flaire’s summer collection that was on the more pedestrian side.

“Now we’re talking. Have you got any more of this fabric lying around? I think it’d look really nice for our new uniforms.”

Flaire’s tape measure nearly slid from her shoulders. “You’re joking.”

“Pretty often, but in this case, I’m dead serious, lady.”

Once more, Flaire was directing Fairy Flight away from the displayed dresses. Licking her lips, wrestling back a craving for a cigarette, she said, “I doubt General Flash would appreciate something so far out of line from the Wonderbolts’ aesthetic tradition. Now please, step up here.”

Fairy rose onto the fitting platform with the spindly grace of her namesake. Her chin bobbed to a rhythm in her head as Flaire approached, tape measure held aloft in her pink aura. Circling the stand, her lithe white figure appeared in triplicate in the tri-fold mirror behind her, an audience of specters.

“If I showed up snout to tail in polka dots, I bet I could talk Flash into it,” Fairy Flight went on absently as Flaire bent to measure her inseams, fore and hind. “I mean, I’m only in my first year in the ‘Bolts and I already got him to approve a whole new flight formation. I’m gonna call it the ‘Ringlet.’ Think it’ll stick?”

Flaire jotted down the measurements in her notepad. Without looking up, she muttered, “It’s rather basic. And what is it with you and your fascination with circles?”

Fairy stuck out her tongue. “Come on, lady. Just the other night, you were the one going on about how important designs are. It’s a good shape. Makes me think of my favorite myth, the one about how if a ring of mushrooms appears in the ground, it’s actually a secret portal to another realm. They’re called fairy rings, if you didn’t know.”

Passing beside Fairy's haunch, Flaire glanced at her cutie mark, unsurprised to find a circle there — a ring of gold, encircling a pair of gossamer insect wings. It was the most whimsical mark Flaire had seen on a Wonderbolt, so many of them bearing blunt symbols representing speed and ferocity in the air.

Stretching her measure across the width of Fairy’s chest, Flaire looked up and asked, “Isn’t that an earth pony legend?”

“Told to me by my mom. Who was an earth pony.” Fairy grinned, her eyes half-lidded. “You’re not the only one with an inter-tribal family, lady.”

Overcome with mild chagrin, Flaire ducked to wind her measure around the circumference of Fairy Flight’s pastern. From above, Fairy’s buoyant voice asked, “Anyway, what’s your favorite shape?”

Rising, Flaire let out an indelicate huff from her nostrils. “I don’t think anypony’s asked me that since I was a schoolfilly.” She wrote down her next line of numbers. Her quill feather brushed against her lips, pensive. Deep in her chest, an old wound ached. “Back then, I probably would have said ‘lightning bolt.’”

There was a balmy gold halo around the memory, drawn in the light from the kitchen window of her childhood home in San Palomino. Clarity is scribbling at the table, filling a page with her vivid crabbed strokes of crayon. A glass of orange juice, wobbling from the motions. The smell of toast, singed two minutes ago. Clarity beckons her over with a curl of her feathers. A sleepy smile on her face, she overturns her page to reveal the flash of a jagged yellow shape — and her head drops. Hits the table. Mom canters in, murmuring assurances, and Flaire is staring at the drawing: a lightning bolt against a wax-azure sky.

“Like the Wonderbolts’ insignia? I’ll be darned, lady.” Fairy laughed. “There must be some flock in you after all. Maybe even a little ‘Bolt. Altius Volantis!” She brought her wing to her forehead in a brisk salute.

And there was something unique to the gesture. An ever so slight slope to the curve of her feathers, a tilt beyond the flexibility of most pegasi.

Flaire’s brows furrowed. “Your wings are different,” she said.

Fairy blinked. She extended both wings, raising and lowering them in a gentle flap. “Huh. You could tell from just that?”

Flaire approached, her hoof reaching to skim along Fairy’s feathers, coming to rest at the joint beneath her coverts. “I’ve seen hundreds of pegasus salutes before. They’re usually stiff, but your radiale hyperextended, just slightly.” Her eyes flicked upward. “Have you had a previous injury?”

Fairy nickered. Her wing fell slack from Flaire’s retreating grasp. “Lady, I’m not even sure what bone you just referred to, and it’s my wing.” She shook her head, the stiff sweep of her mane going undisturbed. “But, nope, never been hurt there before. What you’re seeing is actually way more interesting than that. Check this out.”

With absolute nonchalance, Fairy Flight extended a foreleg, pressed her hoof firm on the platform — and bent her knee backward. The joint jutted in the wrong direction.

A startled spark leapt from Flaire’s horn. “You—!”

Fairy was laughing, straightening into a relaxed posture. “It’s a rare genetic thing. Apparently something that can happen when you’ve got an earth pony and a pegasus for a mom and dad. I’ve got the hollow pegasus bones, but not the rigid joints. The doctors call it hypermobility. I just like to say I’m kinda stretchy. Here, check this out!”

Securing a grip on the hide at the base of her neck, she tugged with both hooves. The skin stretched like latex. Fairy’s teeth grit into a conspicuous grin.

When she let go with a snap, and returned to standing on four hooves, Flaire once more swept up beside her. Her careful touch hovered over Fairy’s shoulder. “It seems to affect all of your connective tissue. Are you able to fly safely?”

Fairy nodded. “Oh yeah. Flash would’ve never elevated me from cadet status if I didn’t show some serious skills. With my extra bendy wings, I had to learn pretty quick how to accommodate for strong updrafts that try to push me around. And by ‘accommodate,’ I mean ‘get used to doing hundreds of daily wing-ups to firm up my muscles.’”

Fairy flexed her wing, a tight, toned bicep raising under her feathers. She stuck out her lips, making a show of kissing at the rounded jut of muscle, then let out a bark of laughter at her own aggrandizing.

“Anyway, this is the only thing that gives me trouble sometimes.” Again, she extended her foreleg. Her fetlock bent backward when she put weight on it, rocking the joint. “It can mess with my landings. I'm still working it out.”

Flaire’s ears drooped and she cast her eyes down. “I apologize for my behavior the other day. I shouldn’t have been so rough with you like that on the stage.”

Fairy blinked. “Hey, you didn’t know. Besides, General Flash had my back. Literally.”

Flaire pursed her lips. “Does he… always look out for you?”

“Always. And I’m ridiculously grateful. Stars, he was my personal hero for forever. I went to all of his shows as a filly, and watching him fly up there made me want to do the same.” Fairy Flight sighed and crooked her wings akimbo on her hips. “Flight school was brutal though. They tried to deny me cadet status more times than I can count. Until, that is, I got a chance to show off in front of Flash. And you know what he said? ‘We need ponies like you in the Wonderbolts. Will you fly with us?’”

Droopy-eyed, she flashed a grin worthy of a poster; Flaire envisioned a four-pointed sparkle glinting from her teeth. Fairy swept her wing in a broad coaxing gesture, a perfect mimicry of the same enthusiastic show of welcome General Flash performed to pegasus foals who came to his speaking events in Canterlot city square, asking his signature line, “Will you fly with us?”

Flaire gazed at the floor, reeling up her tape measure into a tight roll. “You’re very fortunate to have been given that opportunity.”

Fairy’s jaunty air faded. She smiled, pushing up a dimple in her cheek. “It’s not just me who’s fortunate, but everypony who’s… you know — like me.” A new sincerity entered her voice. “Do you know how many pegasi have been admitted into the Wonderbolts who weren’t totally able-bodied?”

Flaire shook her head.

Fairy held up a single primary feather. “One,” she said. “Me.”

“Oh,” Flaire said, because that’s all she could say to such a statement.

Fairy nodded. “You know, they actually published a news story about me a while back. ‘Wonderbolts Soar Higher — Promising Young Aviator Fairy Flight Becomes First Disabled Recruit.’ The headline was something corny like that.” She scratched behind her ear. “Made me feel kinda weird at the time. Like, it was the Wonderbolts’ thing instead of mine. The only thing that ever kept me from my dreams was them, and the only one who made them happen was them. Where’d I fit in, you know?” She laughed. “But, no matter the cause, I’m here. And I gave up on cause a long time ago; I want change!”

Splaying her long legs, she puffed out her chest. “See lady, the Wonderbolts have a whole history of these legendary squadrons, each contributing something special to the ‘Bolts. Admiral Fairweather, he led the first. His squadron was recognized for establishing and building the Wonderbolts barracks!”

As she spoke, Fairy’s wings swept in broad, grandiose gestures. A lightness began to creep into Flaire’s chest, an unburdening she hadn’t felt in a long time.

“Anyway, there’ve been six notable squadrons so far. And I’m going to lead the seventh.” Fairy winked. “I’m gonna be so good at what I do, they’ll promote me up through the ranks! Mark my words, lady: you’re looking at Future-Admiral Fairy Flight. And I’m gonna make sure my squadron is made up of ponies like me. Pegasi who had to work a little bit harder than most to earn their place as a ‘Bolt.”

Spotlighted under the warm boutique lights, posed on the fitting platform, Fairy embodied a heroic Wonderbolt paragon in every degree of her manner. No poster artist could have drawn that out of her.

—

Long past collecting measurements, Flaire offered Fairy tea and entertained her in her living room. Fairy held her cup with a new air of belonging, kicking her hooves up on the arm of Flaire's couch.

“So, lady, how’d you come to know so much about bones and connective tissue?” She took a swig with an audible swallow. “Somepony as fancy as you, I figured body parts would gross you out.”

Flaire’s ears twitched backward with each of her indiscreet gulps. “Not nearly as much as ponies who pair socks with sandals. Or slurp their tea.” She coyly glanced above her raised cup, taking a delicate sip. Lowering her tea, her eyes centered on the ripple rings bobbing back from the rim. “I was a student at the Canterlot Institute of Medicine for several years.”

A captivated glaze was over Fairy Flight’s eyes, her pupils wide. “Whoa, that’s an impressive school. Color me surprised. Thought you’d be the type to have always wanted to go into fashion.”

She set her teacup on her belly, gaze drifting toward Flaire’s unconcealed flank. Her cutie mark was conspicuous, suggestive of a seamstress rather than a surgeon: a pink spool and raised needle, haloed by a golden flare.

Catching the path of her gaze, Flaire said, “Oh, don’t get me started on the subject of my marks. My peers were relentless.” She tsk’ed, flicking her tail. “They’d ask, ‘After a surgery, are you going to stitch up your patients with a needle and thread?’ And I’d say, ‘No, I’d use a suture and silk, just like the rest of you.’”

“Yeesh. What a bunch of featherbrains.” Fairy downed the remainder of her cup, clinking it onto the coffee table. She stretched her wings behind her head. “Why’d you quit instead of sticking around to show them up? I mean, I’m assuming you quit since nowadays you're stitching up clothes rather than ponies.”

Flaire’s eyes dropped to her cup. The memory was watery, below the surface of her tea, the same color as the oil-lamplight cast over the wood-paneled walls of the operating theater. There is a body on the dissection table. A pallid modesty sheet conceals its face, protruded by the breathless snout. Its coat is pale primrose — motionless pink hooves. And a flash had gone off in Flaire’s brain. Counting… One… Two… Three… Her professor dragging her out from under the table. Her weeping eyes covered by her hooves, mane soddened by spilled formaldehyde.

“I couldn’t stand to operate on the cadavers,” Flaire said.

She rifled in her table drawer and withdrew a pack of Marelboros. Slid the filter between her lips, lit it with a magic spark. Blew out, flinched, and crushed it in the ashtray. Muttered, “Sorry.”

Fairy’s brows were upturned. “Hey, I know I was just getting on your case about body parts, but I seriously can't imagine it would be easy to mess around inside a dead pony.”

“It should have been, though.” Flaire massaged her temple. “It was my dream for so long to be a doctor. I just… I wanted to help ponies.”

“I’m sure you help a ton of ponies now.” Fairy sat up, hooking her pasterns over the arm of the couch. “You make them feel good with pretty dresses and stuff.”

Flaire thought of her customers, a hundred smiling faces that had passed through her boutique. Elation, pride, and admiration always shone bright in them as they stepped before the mirror in their new attire, twirling their skirts and envisioning themselves at their upcoming soiree. It should have been fulfilling to see them so pleased. It should have been her one and only purpose. But dressing a pony in something beautiful was like applying a bandage to a gaping wound — a temporary relief from the fraught condition of living, the knowledge you could die at any moment.

“I do make them feel good. But, good doesn't always feel like enough.”

Flaire finished the last of her tea, setting it beside the ashtray. “When I was younger, I imagined myself as somepony who could make a difference. Who could help ponies in a real way. Solve medical anomalies, prevent tragedies…”

“I’m gonna be a hero one day. Like in the legends, like Flash Magnus.” Clarity would say this with her drowsy head tipped back over the edge of her bed. Icy teal-blue mane spilling down the cover, wings spread victory-wide. “Then I'll be like Mistmane!” Flaire exclaims. “And I'll make you your uniform. Something beautiful that can protect you from any danger!” So many whispers shared in the private corner of that bedroom, where everything was big and real.

Flaire let out a sniveling chuckle. “Such idealism I had. Such idealism from a mare who couldn’t even make sense of her maladjustments.”

With her magic, Flaire reached out to her shelf. She pulled down a hefty textbook, her copy of Neigh's Anatomy. It was a weight that had strained her spine for four years in her student saddlebag, her back aching through the long nights at her desk, alternating between studying and sewing dresses by independent commission to make ends meet.

“Ohh. That’s the book with all those freaky anatomical models in it, right?” Fairy fluttered to sit beside Flaire on her chaise, bouncing onto its plush cushion.

“Useful anatomical models,” Flaire insisted, flicking through the pages. Fairy peered over her shoulder. “I’ve read it cover to cover time and again. And yet, there’s still so much missing from it, information we don’t know about our own bodies, despite living in them every day.”

“And that’s not freaky?” Fairy laughed.

“That gap in knowledge certainly is. But not the images. The images are… comforting. And that’s because of the information they hold.”

She landed on a clean rendering of the skeletomuscular system. It was an elegant illustration, a cross-section of the equine body, degloved of its hide to reveal the striated intricacies of flesh beneath.

Fairy piped up, “Anything in there about my stretchiness?”

Flaire shook her head. “I don’t believe so, no. The original text was written over a hundred years ago. The intent was to depict the… the norm of equine physiology. As such, much is still missing. That includes rare disorders.”

“Bummer,” Fairy murmured. Absently, she extended a wing to flap through several more pages.

Flaire halted her when she landed on a broad, maze-like drawing of the brain. Fairy “hmm-ed” and cocked her head.

Pulse thrumming in her neck, Flaire stared at the diagram of the nervous system. The logic-driving cerebrum, so easily overrun by ancient, prey-animal terror. The lightning-strike paths branching from the vagus nerve, electrifying the body with anxious energy.

“Something of mine is missing from this book, too. You see, there's a fear in me that's chronic.” Flaire’s eyes traced the inked lines of gray matter. “An anger. An unpleasantness. I… worry. I am never not worried.” She ran her hoof along the page. “I don't think we have the words yet to describe it. It's a disorder of the brain, of the nervous system, I'm sure of it. The brain is comprehensible, drawn out like this. But the mind is still a mystery to us. Such a complex locus of magical energy, it would take the work of both wizards and physicians to know it fully.”

Flaire pressed the hard covers together, raising her chin. “One day, when a new edition of this book is written, I'm certain the thing that's wrong with me will have a name next to it. But for now, I do what I can without knowing. For that is all I can do.”

There was a soft rustle. A sudden touch alighted on Flaire's shoulder, and she gasped. Fairy was draping a wing around her.

It had been so long since she felt a pegasus embrace, the cool filaments of feathers catching on her coat. Such a temporary yet deep relief of ancestral contact that unicorns of purer stock could never understand.

Clarity would sit behind her on the bed during a thunderstorm, running gentle brushes of her feathers down Flaire’s cheeks and neck. “Count to thirty,” she whispers in her little voice. Little sister, always brave and dreaming, her head too full of imagination to be scared of anything.

Beside Flaire’s ear, Fairy softened her voice and said, “Well, lady. If you’d been born with wings instead of a horn, you’d be more than welcome in my squadron.”

A breathless giggle lifted from Flaire's chest. The tickle of Fairy’s wing across her withers eased her submission to the fantasy. She thought of phantom feathers reaching out from her shoulders, an embrace unable to be returned.

“Thank you,” Flaire whispered.

Fig. 4. — The Joints (of a Flock)

For the past five years as a couturier, Flaire tended to the periphery of other ponies’ existences. She had cultivated a beautiful absence of presence, a polite, white-faced observer who hovered past customers on her fitting pedestal as they adorned themselves with silks and sequins, transforming into the center of attention.

Now, Flaire was getting approached on the street.

“Excuse me, are you Flaire d’Mare?”

“Flaire d’Mare! I saw a Wonderbolt go into your boutique the other day!”

“You’re the owner of Beware the FLAIR, right? Are you designing something for General Flash?”

She was never stopped this way for questions about her noble patronage. It was gauche to hail one's tailor on the street, and amongst Canterlot, nobles made up more than half the populace. For them to visit an independent couturier was unremarkable. For the Wonderbolts, however…

In the city, Flaire began to wear her veiling derby hat with prim regularity, lest she be prompted for a surprise interview at the grocer's fruit stand.

As a filly, the streets of San Palomino were once her personal runway. Clarity would cheer as Flaire trotted down the sidewalk in ostentatious frills only a child could adore. Color once draped her like a second skin. And her neighbors never ran out of remarks for the foal who trailed taffeta behind her as though she bore a pair of gossamer wings.

Flaire’s cutie mark appeared when she was a mere eight years old. The memory was sharp and clean like the needle she lifted in her magic that day. Tongue poking out from the corner of her lip. Knotting the cobalt-colored thread. She completes the final stitch on the sleek blue and gold flight suit Clarity inspired through her drawing — and her flank begins to shine. A flashing bright light.

Mom’s hoof comes down over Clarity’s eyes.

“Oh my, so early to have gotten your mark, dear,” Mom frets. Clarity squirms in her grasp, hooves scudding on the carpet. She pulls free, and Flaire thinks she’s reaching to try on her new outfit. But her pale pink wings wrap Flaire in a hug.

“Of course she got it early,” Clarity says in that adoring, sleepy way of hers.

“Flaire is good at everything.”

—

We don’t want to deviate too far from tradition. Ponies want to see something familiar!

So read the note General Flash sent in response to Flaire’s first round of design concepts. At her desk, hoof to her temple, she had lost track of how deep into her pack of Marelbroros she was. It was dark outside, the Mare in the Moon peering in through her ajar window.

Eyes watering from the smoke and the hot exhaustion of her candle, Flaire’s magic rustled through her sketches. Rendered with the sharpness of anatomical models, outlines of mare and stallion silhouettes flicked by under her vision, each clad in a variation of the same base design. Aerodynamic full body flight suits to insulate against the drop in temperature in the stratosphere. Goggles to shield the eyes from wind debris. They were sleeker, more streamlined — protective. They met the regulations sent by the previous manufacturer without fault.

“I don't understand.”

Flaire laid out her sketches on her coffee table the next afternoon, General Flash sitting opposite her, studying her work with furrowed brows. This was the second time the tenth leader of the Wonderbolts had opened her boutique doors, crossed her white tile floor, and ascended the stairs to her living room. Flaire put out her cigarette and opened the windows before he arrived. She even misted the throw pillows with lavender.

General Flash was staid in his manner as he lifted his head, upright on her couch with hind hooves on the floor, forehooves neatly placed on his haunches. He was dressed in his outmoded jacket and cap, still bereft of the trousers. Flaire realized she had never seen him naked.

“They’re very different,” Flash said. He cleared his throat. “I mean no offense, Miss d’Mare. But, in truth, I was expecting minor changes. New materials and the like. Not…” He lifted a sketch, eyes narrowing. “Are these meant to conceal our faces?”

His broad hoof touched the edge of the pencil-lined stallion’s jaw. The head was filled in with a fine scrape of blue colored pencil, capturing the idea of a hood and goggles to conceal the face of the aviator who wore it.

Flaire nodded, heart hammering a beat too fast. “For maximum protection of your eyes, your face — all your vital sensory organs.” She gestured to another image of the same design, this one fitted for a mare. “The mask also suggests anonymity. It asks you to envision yourself in this suit. That you, too, could be a Wonderbolt. As you say—” Flaire forced a smile and pantomimed a welcoming gesture, performed with a hoof rather than a wing— “Will you fly with us?”

Flash chuckled. “I see the intent. It’s an inspiring gesture, but, ah…” His eyes swivled upward, outward, searching between her Tiffaneigh lamp and her floral wallpaper for his next words. “How might I put this? We have a certain legacy to uphold, Miss d’Mare. One representing generations of pegasi who’ve worn the Wonderbolts’ dress uniforms for our aerial work.”

Flaire’s lips ghosted with a smile, yet her withers twitched. She cleared her throat. “And in my professional opinion, I believe it would be best to separate those dress uniforms from your performance wear. Save the former for ceremonial appearances, certainly. But in the long term, you all really do need something more sustainable, more safe, for your work in the air.”

“‘A pegasus in the air is never safe, but a pegasus on the ground is never alive,’” General Flash recited. He chuckled. “Sorry, that's an old flock saying. You understand the meaning though, yes?”

Flaire’s ears jerked back. “I do.”

“Then you understand the essential nature of our role.” There was a tight smile on his face — a face that had once beamed with open joy at the wonder he brought. A face Flaire now struggled to look at. “Our caps and jackets have been a tradition of the Wonderbolts’ performances since the time of General Firefly. This is how we honor our history.”

“If history demands that much honor, then the Wonderbolts should all be dressed in Pegasopolian armor.” Flaire's tail tossed against the edge of her chaise, and she asked, “What happened to representing our nation’s progress?”

“It’s a thing best done subtly, Miss d’Mare.”

And though they were the only two in the room, Flash got close to her. He stood, crossed the floor, and his muzzle came down beside her ear. “If I may be frank: abrupt change always signifies that there’s been a problem. We’ve been fortunate that Swift Kick made a full recovery and is enjoying his early retirement. But if we stepped out on the stage with an entirely new appearance to our uniforms, ponies would start asking questions and making assumptions.”

Flaire’s neck stiffened away from him. Her nostrils twitched, her tongue running behind her teeth. Lacking a cigarette, she caught the crisp scent of ozone and bergamot wreathing Flash, a splash of cologne on his clean collar. A stallion who spent so much time miles in the sky still affected himself with fragrance.

“Swift Kick retired?” Flaire asked. “He couldn’t have been older than twenty.”

Flash nodded solemnly. He stepped back, removed his cap and held it to his chest. “It was the best decision. His body healed, but… Well, us pegasi, we can get spooked when something causes us to drop from the sky, spooked in a way that’s near permanent. Many refer to it as fall-shock, and, well, Swift seems to have caught it.”

“Fall-shock…” Flaire breathed, trying on the shape of the term like couture in her size custom-designed for somepony else. She swallowed. “I hope that doesn’t mean he’s doomed to be terrified of flying from here on out. ‘A pegasus on the ground,’ and all.”

Flash’s chin jerked. “A keen observation, Miss d’Mare. Only time can tell us that. But to force him back into service would doom him far more severely than time spent Equus-bound.”

Once again on the subject of Swift’s accident, Flaire prompted, “You’re talking like this is all familiar to you.”

“It is, Miss d’Mare. It simply is.” Flash said this with a plain humility that made Flaire’s gut twist. “And if it seems unfamiliar to you, that’s because we do all we can to keep these things from reaching the press. Imagine, if you will, you were an aviator who suffered a terrible accident. You wouldn’t want your story paraded through the city in front of uncompassionate eyes.”

“No,” Flaire said, not having to imagine much at all, “I wouldn’t.”

Flash nodded. “Then you understand the worth of keeping this story between us.”

Flaire’s lips tugged upward in a congenial smile. Her nerves were buzzing and embrittled. “Of course.”

Flash tapped a hoof to one of the robust gold buttons down the front of his jacket. “I’d like to see something closer to this. Remember: crash tests, regulations, tradition. I know you won’t disappoint.” He smiled, the corners of his eyes creasing.

"I... I won't. I'll do everything within my power and capability to ensure your uniforms are safe and within your vision." Flaire swallowed, a bitter aftertaste of tobacco tinging her throat. "In fact, in the interest of that... I was wondering if I might make a request from you, when the work is done. A favor."

Flash nodded. “For all your efforts, Miss d'Mare, you'll be handsomely rewarded in return. You have my word on that.”

Flaire swallowed that promise like a spoonful of analgesic syrup.

—

“He seriously didn’t like these? Lady, they’re so cool.”

Fairy Flight was rifling through Flaire’s sketches while her sewing machine purred along under the bidding of her magic.

“It’s all right.” Flaire’s hooves kneaded the material under the stomping presser foot, intent in her focus. “I got carried away by sentiment. The design matters less than the fidelity of its fabric.”

Fairy clicked her tongue and whistled. “But, these lightning bolt patterns on the sides, around the legs…” There was the watery turn of a page. Fairy laughed. “You’ve sure got me sold on lightning bolts beating out polka dots for the title of ‘Best Shape for Clothes.’”

Across the past weeks, Fairy Flight had been spending lackadaisical stretches of time at Beware the FLAIR. She appeared without letter or preamble at Flaire’s door, sometimes holding a pair of dripping snow-cones between her feathers, one of them meant as a sticky offering to Flaire herself.

Flaire never closed the door to her, even during business hours. Fairy was energetic and distractible, but under her rascally manner, she had a delicacy about her. She entertained fillies who entered the boutique with their mothers, telling them stories about her work in the Wonderbolts, a conspiratorial wing held to her snout like they were the lucky recipient of some wonderful secret. If Flaire needed something, Fairy helped to fetch it. She moved about the room like a dusky pink cloud, stirring up a sugar-scented wind from the downdraft of her wings, an air that caressed Flaire’s face and soothed her nerves.

“Pegasi aren’t meant to be alone,” Mom would say. “Because, we’re a flock. We look out for one another.” She wraps Clarity and Flaire in her wings, even though her white-furred, unicorn daughter looks so much like the stallion who packed his suitcase, donned his trilby, and started walking away from their home so long ago.

Mom hadn’t hugged her like that since she was nine years old.

The sewing machine snapped off. Flaire levitated the basic mockup of a sharp ‘Bolts dress jacket. Her magic yanked the sleeves, assessing their tensile strength.

“Ready to test it?” Flaire asked.

Fairy replied with a vigorous nod, her gelled mane wobbling. “Future-Admiral Fairy Flight, at your service.” She saluted, her wing bending into a charming curve.

—

They met out on the rolling Canterlot hills beyond the city square stage. The fuzzy green slopes slicked with golden light each morning with the rising dawn. Every Summer Sun Celebration, they became incandescent. It was difficult to believe the sky had been dreary and overcast not a month ago. No matter how many storms Equestria weathered, the sun rose anyway.

Fairy glided above, cobbling together the sparse clouds into a single cumulonimbus, dense and gray. Below, Flaire set down a ponnequin held in her magic, the featureless white equine dressed in her mockup jacket. She scrubbed it down with a fiber cloth, shoring up a static charge. Then, she ran, her bare coat prickling as though she had been the one scoured with friction.

From a safe distance behind a line of shrubs, Flaire grit her teeth and yelled, “Now!”

Fairy’s hind hooves came down hard on the cloud. It expelled the quick snap of a bolt. An ugly rattling crack.

One… Two… Three…

Flaire’s heart was pounding, her hooves shielding her eyes.

“Woohoo! Look at that!” Fairy’s whooping voice carried across the field. “Not a mark on it!”

A cold gust of wind swept Flaire’s mane as Fairy swooped overhead, bringing the scent of ozone. She alighted in front of her –“Oof!”– and came down hard, her fetlocks bending as they touched the grass. “Lady, it worked! Uh — you okay?”

Flaire’s chest was heaving, her legs clenched tight and trembling. Woefully unclothed, nothing obscured the pin of her ears or the tuck of her tail. “I’m fine!” she snapped, an unintended heat roughing her voice.

Fairy flinched, showing a rictus grin. “If you say so!” She gestured to the ponnequin, small in the distance. “Did you hear me? It worked! I don’t know what kind of magic you applied to that thing, but I’d sure say it’s shock resistant. Shock impossible.”

Flaire collected herself. She had been smoking less with Fairy around and a maddening, chronic jitter electrified her nerves. Coughing, she ran her hoof through the grass. “That's because it’s made from a blend of cotton and elastane, rendered with an anti-shock spell for good measure. Both fabrics are comfortable to wear, soft on the primaires, and averse to generating static buildup.”

She rocked back on her haunches, and indulged, briefly. “It's a blend I crafted myself through a bit of tedious textile spellwork of my own design. Something I adapted from my studies in medicinal magic. There are few unicorn doctors who have mastered the art of regrowing tissue at a cellular level. I certainly was never one of them, but I studied their theorems. As it seems, their work is transferable to the practice of knitting the cells of cotton fibers through synthetic weave.”

Flaire cleared her throat, her eyes dropping. “Fabric has its own anatomy, but many don’t recognize that. It recalls everything done to it; it’s not unlike flesh in that way. The cotton knew it belonged to something alive, once. And it longs to close, much like a wound wants to knit back together. When you add magic, you’re merely helping along a process that was already there. Completing a circle, half-drawn.” She snorted. "I've seen other tailors attempt to cast magical enhancements on already-complete garments. It doesn't take the same way. The magic must be incorporated thread by thread. It has to truly be a part of the clothing."

Fairy was awestruck, mouth agape, primaries quivering. “Sweet work, lady!” She bobbed in place, rocking her joints. “That’s a shame about never learning cell regrowth for ponies. Otherwise, I might have asked you to fix up my lousy fetlocks.”

Flaire frowned. She crouched low in the grass, examining Fairy’s foreleg. “When you landed, I saw that they hyperextended.”

Fairy grinned, dimple rising. “I told you my stretchiness messes with my landings sometimes. Just came down a little too fast ‘cause I was excited.”

Flaire squinted, attempting to parse through those dusty rose-colored hairs to the joint bundled beneath. “Even if the tissue itself isn’t something I can coax, I may be able to make something for you.” She nibbled her hoofnail in thought. “Perhaps… a splint of some sort.”

Fairy was giddy. “Lady, if you could do something like that, I’d be on cloud nine!”

Flaire sat up, blowing a lock of mane from her snout. “I’ll do what I can. Though, whatever I create will have to come once these uniforms are finished.” The ponnequin hovered on its stand in the distance, a white-faced observer in its unscorched jacket.

“Well, you’ve nailed the fabric! I feel safer already just having seen it in action.” The tips of Fairy’s wings were fluttering, a sheen of mischief in her eye. “This calls for congratulations, pegasus-style!”

And then she did something outrageous. Her wings spread wide, she scooped her hooves around Flaire’s barrel, and she jetted skyward. The white flail of Flaire’s hooves swept below her vision, the ground sucking away, the shrubs like pin pricks over the wide, wide expanse of green.

“You— You— You!” Each exclamation was whisked away on the rapid pulses of Flaire’s affrighted heart in her throat.

“You’ve earned a celebratory flight!” Fairy declared, her belly jerking against Flaire’s back with her laughter. “A well-deserved honor for my squadron-mate and her fancy magic and her clever mind!”

The rushing wind smeared moisture from Flaire’s eyes. She blinked, her hooves clutching up toward her body, stomach reeling, her frightened animal nerves propelling cortisol through her blood. But the fast jump of terror was soon to abate.

Canterlot dropped away. The field, the stage. All those worldly haunts made insignificant in the sky.

Flaire could see the horizon.

The memory was limitless, like the dark expanse of atmosphere over the edge of Equus. Clarity’s little forehooves hug under Flaire’s barrel, her wings fluttering, straining, grunting. Trying to lift her. Grass stains sweeping Flaire’s dragging belly. Both of them giggling.

“One day I’ll be big enough to carry you!” Clarity laughs.

—

The ground was no longer familiar. Laying on her back in the field, Flaire stared at the sky. Blithe and blue, a place that should never be able to hurt you.

Beside her, Fairy was weaving clover blossoms into a chain. Tugging the snapped-off stems into knots with the nimble work of her hooves and teeth, the air smelled verdant.

Flaire began to laugh, flush and restless. “Why do you keep hanging around with me?”

Fairy glanced over her shoulder. A broken grass blade was pressed to her cheek. “I dunno.” She gave an exaggerated shrug, flashing a comical frown. Turning away, she grinned, twisting another knot with her hooves. “Can’t be because you’re cool, or something. Or that I admire you.”

“Pfaugh!” Flaire spat. “Now you’re joking.”

“Pretty often,” Fairy recited, tying her final knot, “but, I’m dead serious, lady. Is it massively corny to say I’d want to be like you when I grow up? Even though I’m already grown up?”

Flaire scarcely imagined there was enough of her left to grow up into.

Fairy reached across the small gap between them and set her chain of clover blossoms over Flaire’s horn like a coronet. “A fairy crown for you, lady!” she announced.

The round edge of a buttery cloverleaf hung in Flaire’s vision as she stared at the mare opposite her.

“Why?”

“‘Cause they're fun to make! And you earned it.”

“No, I mean…” Flaire shook her head. “Why would you want to be like me?”

Fairy smiled. Her cheek was propped up by her hoof, effortless and casual beyond belief.

“‘Cause you help ponies,” she said, like it was the easiest thing in the world.

—

Those words were a distant haunt in Flaire's ears as she sat at her vanity mirror that evening, wiping greasy gray crescents of mascara from her lashes. She stared into the reflection of her stormy pink-gold hazel eyes, an intense shade that always made her appear fresh from weeping.

The small mahogany chest was open beside her, revealing its inner colors. The crown of clover blossoms sat atop the yellowed sheets of paper within.

“It’s to protect her, Mommy. If she falls,” Flaire would say to her mother’s protests. Mom is tugging the sleeve of Clarity’s flight suit, undressing her. Clarity is blinking rapidly, her blue eyes glossy. Mom’s hoof flies up. “Flaire. It’s a costume! It won’t do anything but encourage her to fly. Do you want to put your sister in danger?”

“She won’t be! Because I can put a magic spell on her flight suit. And that will protect her no matter what!”

Staring down at her hopeful, pleading, unicorn daughter, Mom almost cries. “This isn’t the sort of thing magic can help.”

Flaire reached to the lid with a shaky hoof and brought it closed. Sealing it off from the light.

She opened her history book to the image of General Firefly, set down a fresh sheet of paper, and brandished her pencil.

Flaire tried again. For that was all she could do.

Fig. 5 — The Eyes (of a Crowd)

The nightmares never got any easier. Just less frequent.

Flaire woke with a strangled gasp, her sweat-soaked sheets tangling around her hind hooves. Her heart pumped in time to the afterimage of departing flashes in her mind's eye. Her nerves were electrified.

One... Two... Three...

"It's all right. It's all right..." Flaire murmured, kneading her chest. Her heartbeat thundered under her hoof. Her own sleep-raspy voice was a comfort, a salve to the oppressive quiet of her bedroom.

"Listen for silence after a lightning strike," Mom would instruct to her and Clarity. "When you don't hear the thunder, that means the storm is far away — the lightning gone with it. You can look out the window again."

That was the tested method, the clever trick she had taught them. If thirty seconds passed, and those three rounds of ten were accounted for before the thunder struck, it was safe. The storm was moving away. The sky could no longer hurt you.

But Flaire knew it backwards. If a count of thirty was reached after an abrupt and blinding flash, and all one heard was an absence of sound, tragedy was on its way. In the nightmares, and in her memories, silence was to be dreaded. That's when the storm moved in.

She shook her head, her curlers yanking at her scalp. Levitating a cigarette from her bedside table, she lit up, drinking in the calming fog of nicotine. The sheets were cool on her damp coat as she rolled them back and slid from her bed, trotting to the window.

Outside, Canterlot was washed in a dim, chilly shade of gray. It was the eerie yet beautiful darkness just before dawn. Below, the broad stage was cold and empty, traceless of the festivities from two months ago. How quickly things moved; how quickly they disappeared.

There was a shiny blue and gold printed ticket on Flaire's vanity. It had been a surprise gift from General Flash, delivered without forewarning a day after the bits accounting for her commission payment had been dropped off. She'd been granted access to the V.I.P. box at their show in Whinnyapolis where she would be honored with the debut of the Wonderbolts' new uniforms.

"A V.I.P. ticket? Lady, you've got the best seat in the stadium!" Fairy had exclaimed in elation, having snatched up the envelope dropped through the boutique mail slot, tearing it open and waving the ticket high.

Flaire snorted. "Weren't you ever taught not to go through another pony's mail?" Yet she'd made no attempt to wrest the envelope from Fairy's overeager hooves, instead meeting her across the floor to look it over.

"Sorry! I saw it was from General Flash! I was hoping he'd set you up nice for our Whinnyapolis show." She laughed, holding the shiny ticket up to the light. "Looks like I was right!"

It had been more than twenty years since Flaire attended a Wonderbolts performance.

"Lady, you are not going to be disappointed." Fairy had flitted throughout the shop, chattering in the background as Flaire went about her work. "I can't wait for you to see me in action. We'll be performing the Ringlet, too! Flash's promise."

Flash's promise.

Flaire pinned the ticket under her polished hoof, her vanity creaking. She breathed hard, smoke wafting from her nostrils. If this was his idea of a handsome reward, he was sorely mistaken.

Flaire still had a favor to ask, thirty years overdue.

—

The pep band was warming up, their drums a tinny roll of thunder. Whinnyapolis was chilly in the early fall and Flaire was wrapped in a knit dress and woolen scarf that whisked in the light wind. Her gold earrings caught the midday light as she turned her eyes to the sky. A formation of Wonderbolts soared overhead, practicing their routine. Fuzzy contrails followed their path, lacing the blue-gray heavenly sphere above.

“You’ve done a bang-up job on these uniforms, Miss d’Mare.”

General Flash approached where she stood at the base of the stage. He was clad in a sharp teal-blue jacket, a design Flaire adapted from its predecessor. The base silhouette and all of its robust gold buttons had been retained, though she narrowed the epaulets, folded over the cuffs, and swapped the once bulky coattail for a neat back vent to aid in mobility.

Flaire tugged at her scarf and gave a stiff nod as Flash came up beside her. “Thank you. With all that went into crafting the fabric, I'm glad I was able to have them prepared by this performance.”

“As are we. You know, I can’t tell you how many compliments I’ve heard from each of my troop members on just how comfortable these are. I, myself, wholeheartedly agree.” He tipped his black-brimmed cap, the winged lightning bolt insignia flashing. Where it had once been embroidered, it was now a genuine piece of hardware, cast in gold. “You did excellent work preserving the lineage of our history while bringing us a step further into the future.”

The Wonderbolts’ photographer met them under the stage and held up her camera, the big silver eye of the flashbulb catching the light. Her hoof beckoned them closer to fit into the frame, the lightning bolt insignia fluttering on a wide banner behind them. Flash draped a broad wing across Flaire’s withers, pulling her near. She flinched and bared her teeth.

Pop — One… Two… Three…

Flaire hoped her eyes weren’t closed in the photo that was sure to appear in tomorrow’s Canterlot Chronicle, featuring double in both the Sports and Fashion columns.

“Miss d’Mare, I hope this isn’t the end of our business partnership.” Flash swept his wing in light obeisance. “I’m sure my wife would one day be delighted to have a d’Mare original in her wardrobe. Please, enjoy today’s performance from the grand view of the V.I.P. box. You've more than earned it!”

He was turning to leave. Grinding her teeth, Flaire crossed his path. “General Flash, before you go, a moment? There’s one last thing.”

Flash paused, angling his chin. Flaire met his eyes, blue and kind in their observation of a nation. Her knees bent, entreating their favor.

“I am deeply thankful for your business, your compensation — the ticket.” She swallowed, staring at the ground. “But I have another request that would mean so much more.”

Flash blinked. His heavy brows knitted at the sudden intensity of her voice. “Miss d’Mare?”

She grimaced, nauseous, her scarf hot and tight around her throat. She hadn’t slept well, the intermittent withdrawals making her jumpy. The rolling, thunderous warmup of the pep band was moving in. Her nerves were electrified.

And Flaire said, “Please stop performing the magical lightning that concludes your performance at the Summer Sun Celebration. It isn’t safe.”

Flash frowned. The first thing he did in response to those words was frown. Not in recognition, but confusion. He stepped back, caught in incredulity, processing.

“The magical lightning? It isn’t… it’s not real. It’s beauty; it’s wonder. It’s aesthetics, Miss d’Mare. A thing I thought you of all ponies would appreciate.”

Flaire’s knees buckled. Her haunches sunk to the cold concrete of the stadium. “Flash, please. I did everything you asked. I did everything. Please don’t make me ask this of you again.”

Flash jerked a step backward. Then, forward, extending a wing to the mare crouched before him. “Are you well, Miss d’Mare? Perhaps you ought to seek medical attention.”

“I’d know if I did! I would know better than anypony.” She swatted away his feathers. “Five years ago. You were speaking at Canterlot city square. I asked you then. I told you what happened and nothing changed. And now…” Her stormy eyes turned upward under her low brows. “We’d met before. Do you remember me?”

It was impossible to gauge his recognition — or absence thereof. There was a distance to Flash’s expression Flaire had yet to see, an aged weariness befitting the countenance of a stallion who had served in his position for over thirty-five years.

“Please enjoy the show, Miss d’Mare.”

He turned, unfurled his wings, and jetted skyward with a heavy downstroke. The snap of his departing wind blew back Flaire’s mane. She neatened it with a brusque brush of her magic, tracing Flash’s path through the sky as he came to hover beside a congregation of his troop.

Their coats were a lovely range of colors, shades of gold, fuschia, and maroon. By contrast, the deep teal of Flaire’s new jackets suited them. But from a distance, Flash looked as though he wasn’t wearing anything at all.

Pacing under that exposing sky, Flaire watched the early arrival of the V.I.P. crowd, the velvet ropes parted by the security stallion for their entrance. She recognized a pair of stark white unicorns, regular customers of her’s from a dynastic line of Canterlot nobles. A mint green pegasus passed by with a group of friends, laughing with the sweetness of a bell. This was General Flash’s wife, a gentle-mannered patissier who baked pies enjoyed with gusto by the Wonderbolts after a show.

Flaire’s ear caught the approaching tick of hooves.

“Miss d’Mare! A moment, Miss d’Mare?”

A young stallion wearing a press cap trotted toward her. He levitated a notepad and quill before his stubble-scudded chin. “I’m with the Canterlot Chronicle! Word is you’re the new designer for the Wonderbolts. A couturier of royalty designing for Equestria’s heroes — how did this momentous collaboration come about?”

Flaire teetered backward, forehoof raised to her chest. “Oh. I—”

Her equilibrium thrown, she caught the green-blue shape of General Flash arcing overhead, a trail of aviators following behind, weaving through an elaborate warmup routine. It was impossible to track the direction of his gaze from this distance, but her shaky nerves knew his eyes were on her.

“I was — I was recognized for my skills!” Flaire’s lips jerked upward. “It was so very gracious of them, of General Flash… I have no further statement at this time.”

Saying this, she turned on a sharp pivot, walking away with the discreet grace of a lady, rather than the defeat of a coward.

—

Flaire found Fairy Flight under the awning of the refreshments table. On the end of a wing, she balanced a paper plate threatening to spill over with buttered rolls and baked beans. With the other, she shoveled spoonful after spoonful into her mouth with the vigor of an excavator.

She caught Flaire’s eye between bites and lifted her head, cheeks stuffed behind her smile. Fairy waved with the wing pinching the end of her fork.

“Oh — careful not to slop any of that,” Flaire muttered through clenched teeth. With her magic, she jerked a napkin from the table, stuffing it down the front of Fairy’s jacket.

Fairy swallowed her mouthful. “Yeesh, lady! You don’t hafta fuss over me like that.”

“Sorry.” Flaire’s ears tipped back. Her lips quivered, trying to rise into a natural smile. “Getting your carbs and protein in before the show, I assume?”

“You know it!” Fairy tore a fluffy hunk out of her roll. “I always load up before a performance. Missus Flash made banana cream pie and pineapple upside down cake if you want any!”

Flaire shook her head and Fairy went on, jubilantly, “I swear I’m keeping my uniform spotless, and not just for the trouble I’d get in if I didn’t.” She extended a foreleg. “Lady, this fits like a dream! I can’t remember the last time I wore sleeves that weren’t riding up on me. You deserve a front row seat at every performance from here on out. 'Bolts' honor, I'll talk Flash into it!”

Flaire had been smiling along to her praise until Flash’s name was mentioned. Her gaze dropped, staring at the blue foil table skirt that flapped in the light wind, glinting in the sunlight.

“How do you make him listen to you?” she asked.

Fairy gulped down another bite. “Who, General Flash?”

“You said you’re good at convincing him. How?”

Fairy snorted. “In my experience? Convincing doesn’t usually enter the equation.” She lifted a conspiratorial wing to her snout, leaning in. “I don't ask for permission. I ask for forgiveness.”

Setting aside her plate, she elaborated. “The Ringlet didn't come into its glorious existence because I asked. I gathered up some of my wing-mates, we practiced together, and then we performed it unannounced during a show.” She let out an unruly laugh. “That sure got Flash's attention! But also his admiration when the crowd went wild.”

Flaire smiled, and said, “I’m sure it did.” But there was a quivering under her skin, her knit dress prickling her hide. “I wish I had that bravery. I wish I could do anything. But, I can’t. I can’t just act heedless of consequence.”

“Sure you can. I mean, you already did, the night of the Summer Sun Celebration.”

Flaire scoffed. “That’s because I was terrified.”

“Well…” Fairy tipped her head, a lock of auburn mane flicking out from under her cap. “Are you terrified now?”

“No,” Flaire said. “In fact, I’m quite angry.”

Fairy’s splayed wings rose above her head. “Not at me I hope!”

To which Flaire replied, “No. Never.”

“So you’re mad at Flash, then?” Fairy gave a funny grin, arching a brow. “I thought he loved the new uniforms. Don’t tell me he found some silly flaw after all your hard work on ‘em. Need me to go hoof-to-hoof with him to set things even?” She rocked back on her haunches with a squared jaw, swiveling her hooves with the intent to wind up and slug the unsuspecting General.

“He’s your hero. I wouldn’t ask you to do that.” Flaire’s ears sunk low. She chuckled. “The fact you can make those jokes… you don’t know how much power you have as a Wonderbolt.”

Fairy frowned. “I’ve got power? Lady, so do you.”

She reached a wing to Flaire’s shoulder, her dress preventing the fullness of her contact. “You run a boutique on Canterlot city square. You make dresses for nobles and fancy high class ponies. Stars, if you told me you made dresses for the Princess herself, I wouldn’t be surprised."

Flaire forced a smile. “Not yet. But, perhaps in the future.”

“That’s the attitude I like to hear.” Fairy’s embrace became a bracing whap on Flaire’s withers. She smiled, her dimple showing. “You’ve got reach, lady. If something is wrong, ponies will listen.”

As her wing slipped away, she sobered. “This is more than the uniforms, isn’t it?” Her eyes flicked, searching Flaire’s expression. “What are we talking about, really?”

Flaire licked her lips, aching for a warm breath of tobacco. Her thirty-nine years rested heavily on her eyes in front of such a young, hopeful face. “A problem that feels too old and too big for any one pony to fix.”

Fairy Flight’s brows furrowed, her expression dropping into one of bold determination. She rocked her fetlock, the joint bending in the opposite direction.

“Well, I’m just one pony, aren’t I? And despite everything, I’m a Wonderbolt.”

—

Fairy’s words rolled through Flaire’s thoughts like an unspooling skein as the velvet cord was unclipped for her at the V.I.P. box. She took her seat at the front of the stadium, trying to disentangle those mental threads. Missus Flash and her friends sat along the row beside her, the mint-faced mare offering a sweet grin. The pep band began their opening number, a drumroll crescendoing with the crowd’s cheering as General Flash made his grand entrance.

He strode out upon the stage, wings spread wide as four ‘Bolts swept into the air, trailing billowing clouds of smoke. “Altius Volantis!” Flash exclaimed. The cannons popped, raining confetti over raised, wheeling hooves.

Flaire’s eyes tipped upward, beseeching the sky for answers. The memory glided in on a sun flare through her slitted lashes. Clarity is flying in the backyard, the green spring air swept by her feathers. Looping over the grass. The smell of primrose clusters along the fence. She’s wrapped in the blue and gold flight suit Flaire designed and it holds her like an embrace. “One day, General Flash is going to see what I can do!”

Flaire cheers. "Yes! This year we have to go see the Wonderbolts perform at the Summer Sun Celebration in Canterlot. You can meet him there!"

Mom, shouting as she opens the door: “Clarity, get down! You’re going to fall!”

Clarity yelps and judders in the air. She goes limp. She tumbles into the soft, springy grass, her flight suit slicking with dew. Mom cries out, running to her. She turns Clarity onto her side as her hooves jerk.

"I'll try again!" Flaire protests. "I'll make something that will protect her!"

"No! You won't!" Mom's wings fly open, menacing like a bird of prey. "You need to stop this, Flaire. You won't be trying again and your sister will not be going to the Summer Sun Celebration."

"Why not?"

Mom blinks, tearful. "It isn't safe for her."

A rosy pink streak raced across the sky, leading a group of five pegasi. The crowd cheered as they looped with the seamlessness of a ribbon, spinning like a carriage wheel, nose to tail. This was the Ringlet, Fairy’s proudest accomplishment.

Flaire rested a hoof on her chest as the formation concluded like a firework, the five pegasi splitting off and sailing away like falling sparks. For a moment, Flaire believed in the earth pony legend of mystical portals. Fairy flew like she could open a doorway to another world.

When she came to land on the stage, Flaire caught her stumble, just slightly, her fetlocks folding backward under the drop of her lithe weight. Fairy winced, but never lost her winning smile.

—

With the conclusion of the show, the crowd bustled to reach their heroes, a thrash of bodies past the V.I.P. box. General Flash stood upon the stage with his troop fanned out behind him, posing for the flashbulb snapshots. White bursting lights in the crowd.

Flaire squeezed her eyes shut. One… Two… Three…

A filly was jumping up and down, wings fluttering to rise to the edge of the stage. She waggled a Wonderbolts poster toward Flash, shrieking when he knelt to lift it. Flash pinched a quill between his primaries, writing a swooping signature.

Fairy Flight was not among the stage-arranged ‘Bolts. It took a while for Flaire to locate her between the colorful drift of heads and hooves, until a flash of dusky pink emerged, a glimpse of gelled red mane. Fairy was below the stage, knelt on her haunches, cap held to her chest. Her mouth moved, gentle attention focused on somepony in front of her. The crowd parted, revealing a coral-coated filly, wings aflutter. Her hindquarters were supported by the shiny silver bars of a wheeled mobility aid.

“I hope you enjoyed the show, dearie.”

Flaire jumped as a hoof came down to pat her leg. She turned, and Missus Flash was smiling at her. “Your uniforms are spectacular,” she said. “You should feel very proud of the good work you did.”

Under her scarf, Flaire was burning. Her mouth felt stuffed with cotton. Behind Missus Flash’s gentle smile, she caught a glimpse of a pale tan coat in the crowd, a bobbing press cap headed toward the stadium exit.

Flaire vaulted from her chair without a reply to the kindly mare. Her hooves clicked across the stadium, following in brisk pursuit. Inhaling, she raised her voice to hail the reporter.

“You, from the Canterlot Chronicle! I have a statement.”

Fig. 6. — The Bones (of an Untold Story)

FLAIRE D’MARE TELLS IT LIKE IT IS

NEW WONDERBOLTS DESIGNER REVEALS TRAGIC ACCIDENT THAT LED TO HER EMPLOYMENT | PROMISING YOUNG AVIATOR SWIFT KICK IN EARLY RETIREMENT

The headline leered from newsstands and porches throughout Canterlot. Flaire’s name, written in ink, was the first thing anypony saw when they sat with their morning coffee, reaching for the paper.

“Flaire.” The textile shop cashier – Paisley Pincushion – waved at her from the door of the shop on her way home. She tilted her head. “Did you ever… end up mentioning my name to General Flash?”

Flaire tugged her hat over her eyes too late, already noticed. She lifted her cigarette from her lips. “No, Paisley. I didn’t.”

Paisley nodded. “That’s good. I’d actually rather he not know it. After today’s news and all.” She grimaced, shaking her head. “That poor stallion who fell… He must be just ruined now.”

Today’s news was just as platitudinous as its cousin, incident report. Today’s news was tomorrow’s gossip was yesterday’s tragedy. It paled to the reality of the stallion now trembling in bed at his parents’ home, staring out at the sky through his window, blue and open and free. A place that never should have been able to hurt him.

Flaire turned over the ‘Closed’ sign on her boutique door. She did what she always did. She doffed her hat and put a crackling record on. She nursed the inner wound with tea and cigarettes.

And she sat, waiting, with the expectation of General Flash to arrive.

The sun was setting when – “Oof!”– somepony grunted, just outside. Hooves clattered on the cobblestones.

Flaire pulled back her velveteen curtains. A dusky rose mare shook out her short shock of red mane. She lifted her head, meeting Flaire’s eyes through the glass.

“Lady,” Fairy Flight mouthed. “We gotta talk.”

—

“It was the only thing I could do,” Flaire said.

Fairy was pacing in her living room, the tip of a primary feather between her clenched teeth. “So, when you were talking about getting General Flash’s attention…?”

“Yes. And, I’m sorry Swift’s name was caught in the middle of it.” Flaire lifted her head. “Do you know him well? Is he all right?”

Fairy came to stop by the window, the view of the stage out beyond the glass. Her wing dropped. “Yeah. I visited him this morning, after the news broke. I don’t think he knows what to make of it being public. He’s just trying to… feel better, you know? Quietly, at home.”

“I want that for him,” Flaire insisted. “That’s part of why I did this. It shouldn’t be a secret, what happened to him. I think it should be talked about.”

“Yeah, but… through the Canterlot Chronicle? To be read by a bunch of snooty unicorns? Lady, non-pegasi just don’t get this sort of thing.” Her eyes were darting, jerking upward. Flaire knew she was fighting to not let her gaze land on her horn.

Flaire stressed, “I want things to change, Fairy. Same as you. I didn’t even know about fall-shock until Flash described it to me. And nopony knew about the accident. Nopony has ever known. I can’t recall a single story detailing the — the tradition of accidents the Wonderbolts have been built on.”

She rose to sit at the edge of her chaise, mane falling about her face, beseeching those youthful amber eyes above her. There was always something relaxed about Fairy’s attention, something about the soft droop of her eyelids, like life was this easy, unhurried thing that could be floated through — rather than endured with bared teeth.

“General Flash talks as though suffering accident and injury is normal,” Flaire said. “But it shouldn’t be. It isn’t normal at all to be hurt.”

“To get hurt,” Fairy corrected.

Flaire blinked. “Sorry — what?”

“You said to be hurt. You know, like it’s something you are. Hurt is something that can happen to you, sure, but it’s not you.”

Fairy took a seat on the green couch opposite Flaire. She rocked back on her haunches, fiddling with her forehooves. Her eyes fell askance. “You get where I’m coming from, right? I’m sure you do, lady; you put so much attention into how things look. Sometimes, when it comes to how things get spun in the paper about ponies who’ve been hurt, it can look, well, not great. Like the hurt ones are abnormal, rather than the ones allowing the hurt to happen. That’s what I worried about for Swift.”

Flaire’s ears drooped and a deft squeezing sensation grasped her heart. “You’re right. And, I’m sorry. It’s a miserable thing that he’s enduring. But… it isn’t him. He’s not lesser for it.” Her hooves threaded up through her mane, her chin tipping back with a wretched sigh. “I think I wanted ponies to see that, too. Even though I have gone about it with such an utter lack of grace.”

The backward tilt of her head completed its arc and she reclined on her chaise, hooves curling over her chest. And at the risk of sounding dreadfully appropriative, Flaire asked, “Do you think… anypony can get fall-shock? Even if they haven’t fallen? Maybe they’ve… seen somepony else fall. And they haven’t been well for a long time. And they know what being well should look like, because they know the name and shape of every part of the equine body. Just not the name for their own unwellness.”

Fairy’s brows knitted, processing. She crossed the floor, hopping up to sit beside Flaire. Fairy extended a wing, feathers running down Flaire’s shoulder, and it surprised her, even though this wasn’t the first time. It surprised her that another pony could just reach out and touch her. She was the one who did the touching, examining and adjusting bodies on her fitting platform, assessing. These moments of quiet, attentive intimacy just did not happen to her.

“There’s a lot you’re not telling me, lady.” A quick, sad grin pressed up Fairy’s dimple. “Something I bet that’s been going on in that clever mind of yours, all this time.”

Flaire swallowed, and said, breathlessly, “I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about it. But, at the same time, I think it should be talked about.”

“Is it something you need to say to General Flash?”

“Yes.” Flaire’s ears pinned. “Never once have I been able to get him to listen to me in a way that matters. I did everything right, everything he asked, and still…” She snorted, weakly. “I expected it to be him who showed up at my door, after this morning’s news.” Her eyes lifted to Fairy’s face. “But — I’m glad it was you.”

Fairy’s brows furrowed. “Flash isn’t really the type to confront things like that. You know, the night after the Summer Sun Celebration, I was the one who convinced him to talk to you. So, I guess on more than one occasion, I’m glad it was me, too.”

The following silence was gentle, silken as a pegasus feather. It was imperfect, disturbed by the faint rush of Fairy’s breath, the rustle of Flaire’s coat as it was stroked by her wing. But that’s what made it soothing, the lack of absence.

“I need to talk to him,” Flaire said, still deliberating her choice even as she gave the statement life with her smoke-crackled voice. “Could you help me arrange a meeting with him? At the Wonderbolts barracks, or wherever I’d find him at this time?”

Fairy’s wing withdrew. She nodded, forced a smile, and said, “Future-Admiral Fairy Flight at your service,” performing a weak salute. “Given the time, and the circumstances, I doubt he’s at the barracks. I’m willing to bet he’s at a bar right now.”

Flaire blinked. “He drinks?”

“Yeah, pretty often I’d say.” Fairy tipped her head. “You seem surprised about that.”

Behind the soft, rosy edge of Fairy’s shoulder, a cigarette was crushed in Flaire’s ashtray, a meek smoke wisp still rising from the ash pile. She snuffed it out the moment Fairy arrived, maintaining Flash’s one request for the wellbeing of his troop. Staring at it now, Flaire realized she wasn’t surprised at all.

—

Canterlot bars catered to one type of drinker. They were upscale, dark oak gentlestallion clubs, walls hung with gilded portraits of long-deceased nobility. Flaire once haunted the various locales after long nights of coursework at the Canterlot Institute of Medicine, a white-faced ghost in a dim corner booth nursing her wounds. There was an art to sipping overpriced bourbon under the stodgy air of ennui that mired over the occupants like a cloud of smoke. An art that Flaire became very good at.

The Cloudsdale bar Fairy flew her up to was not designed for this art. Laughter and the click of billiards filled the space; a jaunty jazz arrangement turned under a phonograph needle. There was a brightness here, light as air, a place unsuited to Flaire’s grim face and determined stride. She had never been to Cloudsdale and expected the upper atmosphere of the floating city to have whisked away all her Equus-bound anxieties, same as rushing through the sky under Fairy’s wings. But her cloudwalking spell made the cloudfloor firm beneath her hooves, and with it, a bearing for the great weight of her disquietude.

Heads turned over shoulders as she passed, darting upward glances at her horn. Fairy Flight was beside her, a wing hovering over Flaire’s back.

General Flash had found the sole murky corner of the venue. He was seated at the bar counter, his deep teal cap spotlit under the amber lamp overhead, the silver in his mane aglow. A lowball glass of something dark rattled under his hoof.

All of Flaire’s anger came back in one hot rush. Her hooves clicked across the wood-paneled floor. She took a seat beside him, and Fairy murmured behind her. Flash did not look up.

A languid pegasus bartender drifted over. “What can I get you?”

Flaire glanced at the syrupy amber in Flash’s robust glass. “Whatever he’s having.”

The bartender nodded, turning to uncork a bottle. Flaire pulled a cigarette from her dress pocket, the tip of her horn clicking with a spark, and inhaled a long drag. Blowing out a thin cloud, she turned to Flash and asked, “Do I have your attention now?”

Flash’s ear flicked. He lifted his glass to his lips, his throat bobbing, the ball of ice rolling. Setting it back upon the bar counter, he glanced out of the corner of his eye. “Flaire. Why did you do this?”

She nickered. “I believe I asked you first.”

Flash sighed. “Then, yes. You have my attention.”

The bartender set a glass down in front of her. Flaire pulled her cigarette from between her teeth and downed her whiskey in a single belt. Her voice was rough. “Five years ago, I bought the property for my boutique on Canterlot city square. It was a premiere location, and dear Celestia was it expensive. But I was assured it would drive business traffic. Even if, from my living room window, was the view of a stage I still see in my nightmares.”

Fairy Flight’s hooves rocked on the creaky wooden floor. Flaire felt her questing presence over her shoulder.

“That first year at my boutique, I witnessed the Wonderbolts perform at the Summer Sun Celebration through that window. It ended, as it always did, with its traditional final act: a flashing explosion of magical lightning. I didn’t sleep that night. I cried like I did the day it happened.”

Flash’s eyes were sealed shut, his jaw tense. His ears were tipped backward.

“You were speaking in the square the next day. There was a line of foals there to meet you and I waited behind them. And when it was my turn, I petitioned you with a simple request. To stop performing the lightning act at the annual show. Because it can hurt ponies. Because it did.”

She inhaled fiercely on her cigarette, ash crumbling on the counter. Exhaling a long smoke stream, she said, “So tell me, why did I see that lightning through my window the following year?”

Flash winced. His stiff posture rocked into the table, swaying and sodden. “I remember you.”

“Oh, now?” The slow, incantatory heat of inebriation crept in. “How about at the start of this partnership? Is that why you commissioned me?”

The muscles in his throat contracted. “I commissioned you because you were skilled. Observant and intelligent. And you were…" he sighed, "close to the incident with Swift. I feared a third party would bring it to the paper.”

“How lovely! You dragged me in as a part of your damage control, then?” Flaire waved her hoof, beckoning the bartender for another drink.

“It seems we both had our motives.” Flash downed the remainder of his glass. “So what was your cause for getting close to us? Revenge? I’d understand that, if you hated us.”

Flaire’s hoof struck the bar counter. “I love the Wonderbolts! I loved you — she loved you. There is so much wonder and goodness you bring to Equestria but it cannot come at the endangerment of ponies' lives. All I wanted was to convince you that it does not have to be this way.” She bared her teeth. “But when I asked for change, what did you say?”

There was a sharp intake of breath from Flash, a guttural gasp.

“I’m asking you, Flash.”

“‘If it wasn't safe for her… your sister shouldn’t have come to the show.’”

The cigarette filter crunched under Flaire’s teeth, the paper damp and bitter. “And how was she meant to know? How was I? When there was no warning?”

"We've added them since. Because of her. Because of..." Flash was kneading between his brows. “When you spoke to me five years ago… why didn’t you tell me sooner?” He turned to her. The shadows under his eyes were pronounced. “Why not come to me after it happened?”

“Because I was nine years old.”

The bartender delivered her second drink. She drained it.

Flash was chuckling in drunk despair. “Do you know how much you horrified me? For over twenty years… I had been performing at the Summer Sun Celebration, never knowing the pain I caused. For over twenty years, our show concluded with the magical lightning. When you came to me that day and told me your story, all I could think was: how many others? How many others in that time might have…”

Flaire was breathing hard. “You added warnings. But you didn’t stop?”

“I don’t know how.”

The wet amber light of the bar throbbed in time to Flaire’s pulse. “You don’t know — what?” Her hoof fluttered at her temple. “What do you mean you don’t—?”

“It’s magical. It’s not something we can control. The energy of the crowd makes it appear. It’s their wonder that gives it life.” Flash rolled his empty glass underhoof. “There is nothing I can do.”

“Sir? What’s going on?”

Fairy Flight teetered behind them on her long legs. Her eyes were round and wide, golden-hot and insistent as freshly brewed tea.

Flash turned to Flaire. “But, I tried. I really did try.” His brows were upturned, his voice muted. “I tried to find ways to prevent it. I altered our routines, changed the performance. And it still appeared, every year. So, I tried something else.”

He glanced behind him. “Rather than fail to control the thing that had done the harm, I simply tried to do something good. I created opportunities for ponies who had gone overlooked, who hadn't been recognized, merely for having been born different. Like your sister.”

“Hey. General Flash. What’s this about?”

Flaire’s head wheeled over her shoulder. She met Fairy’s eyes, realizing it before she did.

Flaire’s necked tipped back. Her spine loosened, the pink waves of her mane spilling across her withers. She keened a shrill whinny. “Wow! So that’s how you played it, then? Just press a bandage to a gaping wound!” Her voice hitched with frantic laughter, the heel of her hoof pounding the bar counter. “Kill one disabled filly, promote another?”

“Easy.” Flash’s posture rose. His brows were low. “I didn’t kill your sister.”

Flaire hurt him.

She abandoned her ladylike grace, her erudite wits, and succumbed to the violence of prey-animal terror. The barstool scudded as she leapt at him with teeth bared. Flash’s head knocked the floor, his cap rolling. Flaire’s polished white hooves came down upon his throat, fitting under his hyoid bone like a fetching cravat, and pressed. Choking, his hooves pummeled her chest. Her mane lashed his face. His wing clocked her nose — a bright burst of pain. Cigarette flying from her teeth.

One… Two… Three…

“Stop it! Get offa him!”

Hooves clasped under Flaire’s forelegs, dragging her backward. Her chin struck her chest and she jerked her neck upward, mane tossing from her eyes. Blood was in her mouth, red runnels under her nostrils.

General Flash gasped, a track of spit below his chin. He supported his battered weight with a foreleg. A primary feather hung crooked from his wingtip. Voices rose around them, gasps and murmurs.

Flaire was hustled out through the door, draped over Fairy Flight’s lean withers. A slap of cold upper-atmosphere air rattled her like the abrupt strike from Flash. Her back met the white plaster of a Cloudsdale alleyway; the stink of rotting garbage raked the metallic sting in her nostrils. Blood pumped through her miserable, feeble heart.

“Lady.” Fairy’s voice beat down with anxious insistence. Her hoof was braced aside Flaire’s head, her face gray in the nighttime light. “You need to start talking. What is going on?”

Flaire gasped, a sound near to a laugh or a sob. Her ribs heaved under her silken dress and her magic slid into the pocket, withdrawing her lacy hoofkerchief and a fresh cigarette. She blotted the crust of blood under her nose and lit up, gulping smoke.

Fairy listed backward, dropping to her haunches on the downy cloudfloor. “This is so bad,” she said, lamely. “So I’m a Wonderbolt because of… All because something bad happened?”

“It’s aesthetics, Fairy. It makes him look good to have you in the Wonderbolts. It eases his guilt.” The tobacco was a bitter fug in the back of Flaire’s throat. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve this.”

“Stars — I really didn’t!” She was laughing now, clutching her temples. Her hooves pulled down her face, raking her snout with a brisk sniff. Eyes sealed shut, she asked. “What was her name?”

Flaire’s head lolled. “What…?”

“Your sister.” Fairy gazed up at her. “You were talking about a sister. I’m sorry. I’m really…”

“Clarity.” Flaire’s chest hitched. “Clarity. That was her name.”

“All right. Clarity.” Fairy blinked. “Was she… Would she have been welcome in our squadron?”

Flaire’s jaw quivered. “More than welcome. She would have led it.”

“Hey, no fair.” Fairy cracked a sad smile. “Thought I was our Admiral.”

Flaire closed her eyes. She lost herself to that momentary unreality, a world where Fairy Flight led Flaire and her sister through the skies. Wingtips brushing, a flock in motion. No thunder, no lightning. Just blue and open and free.

Clarity was a filly in her mind, always. Even ideated. Even though she and Fairy were never alive at the same time.

"She wanted to be an athlete but she was also an artist. I based the first designs for your uniforms on something I made for her, a long time ago. Blue and gold flight suits, decorated with lightning bolts. They were her design, really." Flaire saw, in her mind's eye, the little chest filled with Clarity's drawings, all the vivid colors and imaginative shapes. "She made things; she inspired me. She probably would have gotten her cutie mark for that. And she was so good. She was brave and smart and stubborn and she... She was my best friend."

It was quiet. Empty, absent. The high winds of Cloudsdale swept through the buildings like moaning ghosts.

"I used to think I could protect her." Flaire sniffed. "As a filly, I'd practiced so hard to cast a protective spell on her flight suit, so it would catch her if she fell. I didn't learn until later that it wasn't that easy. The magic never took."

“What happened to her?”

Flaire opened her eyes. Fairy stood before her, no longer in hunched defeat. That secret gentleness had come out from behind her rascally, coltish face. And it was given to Flaire wholesale.

“Clarity dreamed of being a Wonderbolt. She loved them. And all she ever wanted was to see the annual performance at the Summer Sun Celebration, but Mom never let her go. So I… I made it happen.” Flaire began to speak, because how else could she stand the silence. Her voice stumbled, craggy with smoke. But Fairy listened.

“It was the eve of the five-hundredth year of Celestial Peace. Clarity… she had just turned eight. I was nine.”

It begins with Clarity’s face in the blue-dark, her velvety pink nose above the covers. Flaire crosses the floor of their shared room on hushed hoofsteps.

“Clarity, get up!” she whispers. “We've got to meet the train!”

“Getting the train tickets wasn’t easy. I stole bits from my mother’s purse and Clarity distracted her long enough while we were out on an errand so I could make the transaction at the nearest station. Two tickets for Canterlot. The train would arrive just before the Wonderbolts began their performance.”

Giggling, racing to the San Palomino station, the carpet of grass sweeps under their hooves. Clarity is low in the air, her wings stirring up the scent of the cool, gusty outdoors. She’s wearing her blue and gold flight suit, laughing with abandon. The golden lightning streaks along her sides seem to glow.

She naps on the train ride, struck drowsy from the late hour. Leaning on Flaire’s shoulder, her feathery mane tickling her snout. The big, dark sky rushes past in the windows.

“Nopony paid much attention to us. Two fillies, alone. I was nervous the whole time, worried we were going to get caught or questioned. But we just blended in with all the ponies heading to the city square. We ended up at the back of the crowd. It was the only place left for us and the show was about to start.”

The two of them are huddled in a square of manicured lawn, stomping their hooves in time to the rolling drumline. General Flash steps out onto the stage, young, fresh-faced, in his third year of leadership. His smile illuminates the nighttime sky. Clarity shrieks, her wings quivering. “That’s General Flash! I’ve got to go up higher! I want him to see me!”

“It was beautiful. The show was beautiful. The ideas I had. The inspiration that came to me when I saw the Wonderbolts fly. And Clarity… I think that was the happiest day of her life.”

She’s spinning, rising into the air. Confetti blasts from the cannons as though it's for her, blue and gold squares flaking beneath her ascent. The floodlight lanterns miss her, but she is spotlit by the moon, a full, pale circle — a doorway through which the Mare in the Moon bears witness to the Equus-bound from her heavenly heights. Her light kisses Clarity, higher than she’s ever flown. And Clarity laughs. A high girlish giggle, full of wonder.

“Back then, I didn’t know why Mom never agreed to take Clarity to the Summer Sun Celebration performance. I thought she was just being unfair, because that’s all a child can understand: the unfairness. But, it was unfair. Clarity never had it fair from the start.”

Twirling, the shiny gold material of her flight suit’s lightning bolt patterns glinting, catching the light. They are a quiet prelude to the final act of the show, the drums a rising crescendo of thunder. The Wonderbolts sweep through an elaborate formation, spinning above the stage, rushing past each other, near collision, never touching. And through their center, erupts General Flash. He exclaims, hoof outstretched, touching the stars: “Altius Volantis!”

The crowd wails. And the sky goes white.

So full of energy, so highly charged — magical lightning strikes down. Flashing and flashing and flashing and flashing and flashing. Entering through Clarity’s wide eyes and setting off an electrical storm in her brain.

“Clarity had epilepsy. She was born with it, perhaps inherited by our father. Who’s to say. He left when I was young. And I never knew what it was called as a filly. I just knew Mom was always so careful with her. So careful to keep her away from anything that would trigger a seizure. Like flashing lights.”

Her body judders; her wings splay. Her hooves kick like she’s running through the sky. And she falls.

Her flight suit doesn't protect her.

Clarity cracks onto the grass. An explosion of feathers. Convulsing, coughing tracks of spittle into her pretty rose coat. A lightning-strike brightness reflects in her blown pupils.

“I had seen Clarity have seizures before, even though I didn’t know what they were called, then. They were often atonic. She would go limp suddenly; her head would drop to her chest. Mom made her fly low to the ground in case she fell. But I never saw her have a seizure like this before.”

“Somepony help! Help! Mommy!” The crowd is roaring, stomping hooves and shouting mouths. Drowning Flaire’s cries. Clarity gagging, teeth clicking. Wet shining under her chin, the collar of her flight suit. Her neck and haunches jerking faster than the flashes of lightning.

“I didn’t know what to do.”

Flaire drops to her belly in the cold grass and shoves her hooves over her eyes. She begins to count, because that's what she did when the lightning came. Thirty seconds. If the the thunder booms after thirty seconds, she will know it's all right.

“One… Two… Three…”

“Nopony heard us.”

“Eight… Nine… Ten…”

“Nopony turned around.”

“Thirteen… Fourteen… Fifteen…”

“They were watching the lightning.”

“Twenty… Twenty-one… Twenty-two…”

“And why wouldn’t they?”

“Twenty-eight… Twenty-nine…”

“It was beautiful.”

“Thirty…”

It’s silent. Flaire never hears a thunderclap. She doesn’t hear the cheering, the crowd’s own atmospheric crash.

She hears only the absence of her sister’s voice.

And the sun rises anyway. Flaire opens her eyes.

A steady creep of warm light casts across a pair of motionless pink hooves.

The storm moves in.

—

“Clarity was declared dead later that morning at a hospital in Canterlot.”

That was the easiest part of it for Flaire to say, the clinical report.

“Some ponies at the show eventually saw us,” she continued. “She was unconscious and they brought her there. They sent for Mom; she was with her. But there were too many complications. Broken bones from the fall. Loss of oxygen. Things that were preventable.”

Flaire’s eyes sealed shut, her brows kneading. “I should have turned her on her side to open her airway and prevent her from aspirating saliva or vomit. I should have cleared out her mouth. I should have loosened the collar of her flight suit. I should have performed chest compressions when she stopped breathing. I should have… flown up and caught her.”

“Flaire,” Fairy said, her voice feather-soft, “you were a kid.”

“I know,” Flaire sobbed. And she ached with it, the burden of having been young, once.

Fairy took her hoof. Squeezed it hard. The honesty of the gesture embarrassed them both. But neither let go. Even though Flaire had been split nose to tail, the lovely silks of her dress having been pulled aside to reveal the gaping inner wound of her history, all the wet, twisting stuff behind her ribs on display.

“Mom blamed herself for what happened. She just… went away. She became distant. She never made a report, never attempted to change what happened." Flaire's voice was a trembling whisper. "I was the only one who ever tried to do anything to make up for it. I studied, I learned, I tried. Because I brought Clarity to the show. I’m at fault for that.”

“No. You’re not.” Fairy squeezed her hoof harder. “If you go by that logic, then my mom and dad are at fault for how I am because they got together twenty-two years ago and decided to have a foal.”

Flaire's breath hitched. “No, Fairy, you can’t… That’s not the same.”

“Sure it is.” Fairy smiled. Firm, but not unkind. “Ponies make choices all the time that can cause anything to happen.” She tossed up a wing. “You could say I’m at fault for what happened to Swift because I didn’t yank those stupid trousers off him after you warned us!”

“But, you aren’t.”

“But you warned us. And even then, I didn’t do anything. So, blame me. Right?”

Fairy met Flaire’s eyes. Her face was sad in a light, wistful way that was so unlike the permanent feature of detached misery Flaire knew affected her own.

"You were nine," Fairy said. "And your mom never told you anything you would have needed to know."

"She didn't," Flaire breathed. "When I look back, I think she always felt... powerless. Like there was this impossible thing she should have been able to do to help Clarity. But couldn't."

Fairy nodded. “You know, I think something kinda messed up happens to ponies when we feel powerless. We try to find a cause for it. As though the reason for us not having control over something bad that happened to us is something we’re responsible for finding the answer for. But, it’s not.”

Fairy’s eyes crimped; her jaw set. “Look, I tried to find the cause of everything about me for way longer than I wanna admit. I did the whole self-hating thing. I had all the ‘I’m no good’ and ‘There’s something wrong with me’ thoughts. But how can that be true when I’m not the only one like me?”

She chuckled, wiping a wing under her eye. “It’s pretty clear that Flash believed making me a Wonderbolt was the answer to the fact he’s powerless to control the magical lightning. But that hasn’t stopped him from becoming convinced that all the accidents in the ‘Bolts must be normal and just a part of our work — and all he can do is react when they happen. Because, if they’re not, what then? He’s supposed to be a hero.”

Again, she laughed, teeth chattering. “Lady, don’t get mad at me when I say this, but you and Flash are a lot alike. You both have been going around in circles all these years trying to make sense of something really, really painful that just can’t be made sense of. But when you go searching for answers, you’re always going to find a way back to yourself. And then it’s not an answer anymore, is it? I think it turns into blame. And you don’t deserve it."

Fairy stared hard into Flaire's eyes, her attention no longer relaxed, but still gentle. "You brought Clarity to that show because you loved her. And it should have been safe for her.”

Hoof in hoof, Flaire held tight to Fairy’s soft grasp. Her heart pounded. There were protests she wanted to make, a scream in her that was no longer accessible. And it hurt, down inside of her.

“It’s hurt for so long, Fairy,” Flaire gasped. “And there’s no correct name to write next to it.”

“I don’t think there has to be. Because, when something hurts, it doesn’t mean anything about who you are.” Fairy rocked her fetlock against Flaire’s. “It just means that it hurts.”

Somewhere in those last two kindred months, Flaire had underestimated Fairy’s capacity for wisdom. She pulled her cigarette from her lips, emptied her lungs of smoke in a slow sigh. And she asked a long held, helpless question.

“If I’m not to blame… then why is my sister dead?”

“I don’t have an answer to that,” Fairy said. “But, I do have this.”

She wrapped Flaire in a hug, her feathers sweeping upward to enclose her withers, holding tight to the place where Flaire’s wings would have been.

A sob punched Flaire in the gut. She clutched Fairy to her chest. She bowed her head and wept.

—

Somehow, Flaire made it back into the bar.

Without her full faculty of thought, her hooves stumbled over the wispy clouds underhoof, through the double doors, and onto the wood-paneled floor, Fairy’s wing grasping her shoulder the short way there. Flaire met Flash inside. He was back on the barstool, battered and remorseful, and she said a long string of apologies that ought to come after such a nasty scuffle. Words spilled out of her, over-honest and gasping, because she’d been opened up and all she could do now was bleed. She was as raw as an exposed nerve.

Flash apologized, too. Not just for tonight, but for five and thirty years ago. “I’m sorry,” he said — and that devastated her. Because he saw her.

And then Fairy spoke. She stepped up to her superior and said with unflinching certainty, “Do something to fix this. Find a way to make the magical lightning stop. Or I walk.”

Flash, weary and leaning against the counter, shook his head. “There’s no need to threaten me, Fairy. If there’s a real way to right this wrong, I will do it. I’ll do it gladly.” His blue eyes were sunken and so impossibly sad. “But… there simply hasn’t been.”

Fairy’s wing skimmed across Flaire’s withers, pulling her close. “Until now maybe. But we haven’t had Flaire’s clever mind and her fancy magic.”

Flaire shook her head. “Fairy… I don’t think this is the sort of thing magic can help.”

“Sure it is. The lightning is magic.” She took Flaire’s face in her hooves – before her nerves had her flinching away, yet it still surprised her – and said with earnest intensity. “Nopony thinks like you do. Nopony comes up with ideas like knitting fabric fibers together at a cellular level. And if a solution exists, I know you can find it. Because you’re good at what you do, Flaire. You aren’t powerless. You help ponies.”

It all became small, then. The sprawling world beneath Cloudsdale dropped away and she was in the air, flying over glimpses of every choice she had ever made. Every stitch she had ever looped through a dress, just to see somepony smile. Every word in her Neigh’s Anatomy textbook she had ever underlined, just to know how the body could be protected. Every long night studying magical protection spells until her horn ached. Every shared whisper with Clarity in their room, just to show her sister that her dreams mattered more than a life that told her she was too different to hold them.

Every half-drawn circle she completed, just for the hope of a glimpse into another, better world.

What had it all been for, then? If not to help.

Fairy went on. “You’re going to make our new uniforms, and they’re going to be your vision. Not Flash’s. And you’re going to test them until you’ve cracked the magical theory to making the lightning stop for good. And I know you’ll do this.” She took Flaire’s hoof in her strong grip. “Because I’ll be by your side every step of the way.”

“Okay,” Flaire said.

And she tried again.

Fig. 7. — The Wings (of a Future)

On the eve of the five-hundred-and-thirty-first year of Celestial Peace, Flaire d’Mare stood at the base of the Canterlot city square stage. It didn’t terrify her.

Today she wore a charming button-collar dress, accessorized with her pearls and gold earrings, suited to an evening event of aerial wonderment. Flaire watched the Wonderbolts run through their warmups, wings extending through a series of routine stretches. Each of them wore a sleek flight suit, rendered in a cotton-elastane blend of azure blue. Lightning bolts encircled their pasterns and blazed along their barrels. Thick aviation goggles were wrapped snug across their faces, the lenses catching the hot glare of the floodlight lanterns.

One of them lifted off, alighting before Flaire at the base of the stage. Her landing was flawless, supported by a pair of blue ring splits wrapping her fetlocks. Lifting up her goggles, she grinned, her dimple pushing through the fabric mask hugging her wily, coltish face.

“The splints look like they’re working well,” Flaire remarked.

“Better than I could have dreamed! Can’t wait to debut ‘em.” Fairy Flight giggled. She extended a foreleg, displaying the shiny new ring splint encircling her fetlock like a fetching bangle. “Stars, I’m still a little giddy about how much easier things are with these, lady.” Her eyes drooped and softened. “Thank you. For everything.”

Flaire snorted, batting a hoof. “Oh, no need to be mushy. You needed them.”

Fairy shook her head. “Still too quick to dismiss your own worth.” She fluttered her wings with a rascally grin. “I’ll work that out of you, yet! Pegasus-style!”

Flaire raised a manicured eyebrow. “Is that a threat?”

“More like a promise.” Fairy giggled. Then, she sobered. She pat Flaire’s shoulder with a wing. “You feel ready for today?”

“I ought to be." Flaire let out a quick sigh through her nostrils. "The crash tests were all passed with flying colors. Each magical simulation was a success. I wouldn’t have allowed you all to perform, otherwise.”

Fairy nodded. “So this is it.”

“This is it.”

The stage was decorated with a glittering foil skirt and a row of ruffled banners bearing the Wonderbolts’ winged lightning insignia. It was the seasonal decor of the performance, paired with iconography of the Celestial sun. Above it all, General Flash crossed the stage. It was difficult to make him out at first, his face concealed by the azure blue of his flight suit, a shade that still clashed with his teal coat. He met Flaire’s eyes once, nodded, and looked away.

Fairy said, “You know... I think Clarity would be really proud to see the Wonderbolts wearing her design.”

Flaire blinked. Fairy said all things with a rakish confidence. But this she said humbly, nervously. Like it risked coming off as untoward.

And as she stood there in the dim gray light – wearing a little half-smile, splinted hoof scraping the ground, mane gleaming with a thick lacquer of gel – Fairy embodied a heroic Wonderbolt paragon in every degree of her manner.

Flaire smiled. “She is.”

There was a sharp whistle from the stage. A ‘Bolt swept a wing, beckoning Fairy to join them.

“Sounds like that’s my cue. Performance is on in five!” Fairy crouched, wings crooked to take off — and Flaire’s magic halted her, wrapping a gentle grasp around her hind hoof.

Fairy turned. “Lady?”

Flaire took a deep breath, speaking quick, before the nerves caught up with her. “When you first came to my boutique, you told me about that article that had been written about you. You wondered where you fit in with the Wonderbolts.”

She closed the distance between them, embracing Fairy Flight with all the wingless sincerity she could offer. As hugs went, it was stiff, a touch awkward. But Fairy was warm, the scent of her breath tangy with the sweetness of baked beans, her feathers tickling Flaire’s neck. She shook with a shocked little laugh, squeezing Flaire in return.

“You are the Wonderbolts, Fairy. You’re worth all of them combined, then or since.”

And Fairy said, “I know it."

Maybe the grief would never fully leave her. Flaire had carried it inside for more than thirty years. If she woke one day, touched her chest, and felt the absence of it — would that be a terror, or a comfort? She didn't have an answer. But she knew the name and shape of every part of the equine body. She knew the nature of wounds. They longed to close. And as Fairy embraced her, she felt those seams tighten around her heart.

When they parted, Flaire gave a firm salute, performed with a hoof rather than a wing. “Soar high today, Future-Admiral.” She smiled, truly and genuinely. "I look forward to making your admiralty uniform for the day you lead the Seventh Squadron." She winked. "And I may even be convinced to include polka dots in the patterning."

Fairy laughed, a bead of moisture catching on her lashes. “Yeesh, lady. And you told me not to get mushy.”

—

The stallion at the V.I.P. box unclipped the velvet rope. Flaire entered with a nod, finding her way to her seat. She had the clearest view of the show, overlooked from a nearby shop balcony that had been rented out for the event. Flaire could see the second floor window of Beware the FLAIR from her seat, looking in through the glass rather than out. She caught the faintest indication of her reflection, the pale face of a distant ghost.

Missus Flash, as always, was among the V.I.P. crowd. Flaire hadn’t spoken with her since Whinnyapolis. Sometimes, she wondered how much the gentle-mannered mare knew. If her husband had sat at their bedside weeping the night after Flaire told him what his show had done to Clarity. Had he looked into her sweet blue eyes and admitted the awful, sudden weight of his guilt? Or, had he been rendered unable to speak, too ashamed, the curse of silence now his to bear? Flaire would never ask.

At the end of the row, Flaire saw the flushed face of dear Paisley Pincushion, a Wonderbolts flag clutched in her hoof. Her disapproval of Flash was short-lived, eased after Flaire explained that Swift Kick was recovering safe at home, and that the article had not been her story to tell. Flaire had discreetly slipped Paisley a V.I.P. ticket along with her owed bits at one of her recent excursions to the textile shop. She had already turned to leave when Paisley started squealing.

Settling into her seat, Flaire reached into the pocket of her dress, withdrawing a cigarette from her pack of ever-reliable Marelboros. Her horn clicked with a spark as she lit up, the smoldering cherry casting a low warm light against the cupped sole of her hoof.

The sound of slow approaching hooves was behind her.

“Excuse me. Are you Flaire d’Mare?”

The question was cloyingly familiar, but the voice was not. It had a warm, authoritative timbre, and despite the question, spoke with the foreknowledge that its asker already knew the answer.

Flaire lifted her gaze to another white-furred face — meeting the soft rosy eyes of Princess Celestia. The air between them was warm and sweet-scented, a preternatural heat wicking from the Princess’ divine coat. In the dim, pre-dawn light, she glowed from within.

Flaire became very aware of the jittery animal nerves beneath her hide. “Yes,” she breathed, her cigarette wobbling between her lips. “Pleased to meet you — your highness.” She was unsure of the correct manner of greeting, the degree of obeisance to be offered. But she was never a mare for deference. So, she remained as she was, frozen in the V.I.P. box, sharing air with the Princess of Equestria.

Celestia smiled. “The pleasure is all mine, Flaire. I’m impressed by all you’ve done for the Wonderbolts and wanted to thank you personally.” She laughed in a remarkably innocent way. “And, I wanted to ask if you would be available for commission in the near future. This year’s Grand Galloping Gala is approaching after all, and I’ve been remiss to not have a d’Mare original in my wardrobe.”

“Oh. Certainly, Princess. Come by any time.”

That was all Flaire could say to such a request. A personal commission from Celestia herself, an opportunity most couturiers would kill for. It should have shocked her more than it did. But shock was familiar.

A low rumbling started up, the drumline rattling their snares. The murmurs of the crowd erupted into a cascading cheer as the Wonderbolts marched in formation onto the stage. General Flash was at their center, wings held wide. “Altius Volantis!” he exclaimed, his voice carrying with all its weathered might.

There was a great sigh from the Princess of the sun. “The Wonderbolts have always been dear to me. No matter how many performances I see, I am always moved. But I tend to become… especially sentimental at the Summer Sun Celebration.”

“Oh?” Flaire glanced upward. And she asked, already suspecting the answer, “Why is that, Princess?”

Celestia smiled placidly. “It reminds me of the worst day of my life.”

The Wonderbolts navigated through a twirling aerial formation, sweeping over and between one another, trailing silvery clouds of smoke. They were lithe blue silhouettes in the sky, spotlit from behind by the Mare in the Moon.

Flaire swallowed. “Ah, yes. The history, the legend. General Firefly’s first performance, the year following Nightmare Moon’s defeat.”

Celestia nodded, never losing her smile. Her eyes didn’t leave the stage.

“My little ponies get to live in a world full of wonder,” she said. “And I go on living in a world without my sister.”

Flaire’s heart pounded. Her chest ached, an old familiar pain tugging at the seams of her inner wound. She took a long drag from her cigarette and breathed smoke into the dark air. She pulled the Marelboro box from her pocket and offered it to Celestia. “Care for one?”

Celestia curtly shook her head. “No, thank you. I don’t indulge my vices publicly.”

“Oh.”

Out above the stage, Fairy Flight cut a clear path, leading a trail of her wing-mates. They swept into a spinning circle, executing the Ringlet and encircling the moon.

Flaire asked, “How do you think I'll be remembered?”

This time, it was Celestia's turn to say, curiously, “What has you wondering?”

Flaire scoffed. “Because everypony seems to think my name will be in history books some day. And, well…” Her eyes moved up over Celestia’s figure of alicorn resplendence. “You'll be there to see it, if it is.”

Celestia nodded. “Indeed, an unavoidable truth. Well, Flaire, how might you like to be remembered?”

The Ringlet burst apart like a firework. Fairy Flight dropped into a solo aerial dance, splinted hooves held above her head in triumph. Even from a distance, her shining, elated grin was visible.

“Ponies have called me a good mare. I have a suspicion that’s how history will recall me. But, that’s so… incomplete. I didn’t do this because I was good.”

Her eyes turned to the sky, blue and open and free. A place that could hurt you.

“I did it because I was afraid.”

Celestia hummed. “The books about me are already being written. They tend to call me ‘good,’ too.” Her head tipped to follow Fairy Flight’s departing path, and she said, “I suppose none of us have control over what is lost in our accomplishments.”

An elaborate formation began to take form, the drums a rolling swell of thunder. The Wonderbolts darted and weaved, near collision, never touching. And through their center, erupted General Flash. He exclaimed, hoof outstretched, touching the stars: “Altius Volantis!”

The crowd wailed.

And the sky was dark.

“Oh,” Celestia gasped. “No lightning this year.”

In the beautiful darkness before dawn, Flaire d'Mare clenched her teeth on her cigarette, awaiting no thunderclap.

And she smiled.