Dinky Doo: The Scion of Wind

"Psst, kid. Kid. Hey. Kid."

"Mgruhh… buh…"

"Kid. Wake up."

"Mgruhuh…? A-aunt Daring?"

Dinky was blinking the blur from her vision to find that somehow, it was dark already. Blinking at her were a pair of eyes. Unsurprised, she groaned and tried to sink back into her armrest.

A hoof jabbed her in the belly before she could. "Kid, this is important," hissed a scratchy voice.

With one hoof, Dinky was massaging her belly; she was stretching the other high above her as she gradually settled into an upright position. "Couldn't you have waited 'til m-m-morning?" she whined, scratching the crust off her eye.

That earned her a violet roll of the eyes.

"Look. Kid. Keep your voice down," the mare hissed to Dinky, who was refamiliarizing herself with the sofa cushion as best as she could in the dark.

Dinky smacked her lips. "What do you want?" she croaked.

The table lamp came on.

Dinky was revealed, sitting with her forehooves planted in front of her. A bored look was on her face; the bags beneath her eyes suggested that she wanted nothing more to return to the bliss of that dream she could hardly remember at this point. Her mouth inflated into a big O as she gave a much-needed yawn.

Settling her bare haunches onto the coffee table opposite was a mare, her coat like the color of late-summer goldenrod. Her mane was of stripes of differing shades of grey. She didn't have her usual hat on; instead, unceremoniously flattening the top of her bangs was a simple brown mailmare's cap, complete with a colorful logo of an envelope with wings. An equally brown collared shirt adorned her chest and smothered her pride; ever since her sister Ditzy had forced her to don the whole outfit, she never stopped complaining about how it made her look like company property. Her only silver lining was that it didn't obscure her cool new mechanical wing. After her latest adventure, she had lost her real one — along with most of her bits, which had gone into replacing it.

Daring Do spread her wing to the fullest extent possible, like she wanted to show off how it shone like obsidian in the criss-crossed rays of the lamplight and moonlight. Except at the moment, she was actually spreading it to clear the rest of Ditzy's junk off the table, even though she had plenty of space to park her bare haunches on it already, where Ditzy least wanted it. Noticing Dinky, she scoffed. "Kid, what is it now?" she snapped, following her eyes to the staircase. Daring started, and swiveled Dinky's head back to face her. "Hey, c'mon. It's okay. Don't rat me out, kid."

Dinky lazily flicked the hoof off her chin.

"Anyway," Daring went on, swiveling her forelegs forward as though to let Dinky in on the big picture. "Kid. Get off the cushion. I need to check on somethin'." Dinky's eyelids squelched as they blinked, one after the other. "C'mon, we haven't got all night."

So getting up, Dinky walked one cushion over and watched the one she had been lying on get thrown aside.

The curve of the tongue was pointed up; the careless gaze somewhere on the ceiling; the foreleg lodged into the inner pocket of the sofa as Daring dug through it. "C'mon, c'mon…" she muttered.

Dinky couldn't really tell why her eyes, which were watching Daring's latest excavation, were half-open. Be it out of exasperation or drowsiness, Dinky did not really know. Nor did she really care.

From the goldenrod lips came a gasp. Triumph had seized her heart, stiffened her wings, natural and otherwise. Her gaze was suddenly blank, unseeing; then they lit up. Slowly and carefully, Daring Do reeled back her hoof, taking an awfully long time to extricate, from the Crevice of the Doo Living Room Sofa the artifact she had sought. And so from the crevice the end of the hoof emerged, and Daring held atop it, high and proud above her head, with a smile stretching the ends of her face —

"Seriously, Aunt Daring?" Dinky said flatly, staring at the expensive glass bottle as it was emptied from the other side. "You woke me up just to get cider?"

Aunt Daring held up a hoof, then with it, flicked off her mailmare cap before expertly sliding apart the buttons on her vest. The sight would have been indecent to Dinky, had she not known that her aunt always wore under her package-brown non-explorer vest, her jungle-green actual-explorer vest. Still, Dinky couldn't help but be impressed how none of the drink got on the adventuring attire signature to the brave adventuress who lived and chugged before her: Daring Do.

"Hey, kid," the aforementioned brave and totally-not-drunk adventuress exhaled, finally putting down the bottle; she smeared the magenta off her mouth. "Don't judge. Momma needs her juice."

"Aunty," corrected Dinky, her forelimbs judgementally knotted.

"Right, right," Daring droned absently as she straightened out her vest, "you know what I mean."

Giving it one final pat, she crossed her hindlegs and snatched up her bottle again. She held it against the lamplight and squinted, shaking it a bit. "So, what are you doing crashing on the couch anyway?" she said conversationally. "I thought this was my cot." Eyeing Dinky, Daring raised the cider to her lips again and was about to drink. But then she noticed the glint, the sad wink of metal on Dinky's horn. "Oh," she said quietly, setting the sloshing glass down again. "She finally found out, did she?"

Dinky bowed her head, either in shame or by way of answer.

Giving a sympathetic hum, Daring leaned back on her forelegs to stare thoughtfully at the ceiling. "She was supposed to be the smart one in the family. The detective." She shook her head. "I guess love makes you blind. Am I right, kid?" she said, leaning forward to give a playful jab to her niece's shoulder.

But Dinky didn't so much as flinch; she mumbled something.

"What was that?" Daring said in a slight slur, angling her ear to Dinky, who repeated herself in a whisper; Daring snorted. "Fair enough, kid. She has enough on her plate."

And then Daring relocated her bare haunches off the table, and onto the carpet. What she didn't relocate was her drink, which she started to eye ruefully. "What am I gonna do, Aunt Daring? You're the one who told me to broaden my…" Lip wobbling, Dinky screwed her eyes up. "'Four-eye-scones'," she finally said, voice shaking with uncertainty. "This is your fault."

Daring looked surprised at the amount of accusation in Dinky's eyes. "Sheesh, don't let me take all the credit, kid. But yeah," she said, facing the window. "I guess it kinda is." Dinky followed Daring's gaze, and sighed with her. "And it's 'horizons', kid," she added, her tone underlining the word in question. "Put it in your journal later, will ya?"

The chirp of unseen crickets doped rhythm into the ambience of the night. Not a thing stirred. Neither had said a word, and yet, both Dinky and Daring blended in with the unspoken cues, as though they understood themselves to be part of some play for which they were both performer and audience. The hollow winds hummed their low hymn; leaves jostled and scraped across the empty streets, glimpsed by the moonlight before slipping shyly away. It was as cloudless as the day before; moonlight started to peek into the living room as an uninvited but not an unwelcome visitor.

It shone upon a patch of carpet, from which Daring averted her gaze. "Pretty night, eh?"

"Yeah… Princess Luna's the best."

Daring's ears perked up. "Who?"

"Princess Luna," Dinky repeated, the end of her cheek puffed out.

"Princess Moona. Got it."

And then Daring gave Dinky one of her trademarked winks.

Dinky spluttered as she tried to restrain her giggles. But who could have blamed her? Dinky found it hard to straighten her face with Daring giving her a look of both adoration, charm, and humor. "You're funny, Aunt Daring," Dinky said, finally giggling; she returned her gaze outside.

Daring followed Dinky's cue this time. "Yeah… I guess I am."

And with that, she fell backwards, her plinth hat shadowing her eyes. Ditzy's gossip was not wrong: Daring did snore like a pig.

Dinky pounced off the sofa.

Tucking her muzzle between the folds of Daring's forelegs, she bit and she pulled. Wrestling it out of her hooves was hard even with magic. Dinky's neck was stretching and tightening with the effort of it. Finally, she jerked her head away; she wheezed, her tired breath a hollow congratulation.

Clink; the empty cider bottle had wandered to the tray of ruined muffins.

Meanwhile, Daring continued to snore happily. If Dinky didn't know any better, she would have said that the adventuress was now wearing a satisfied smirk on her face. Shaking her head at her, Dinky marched silently past. She gripped the neck of the bottle with her teeth, shook off an ant or two, then marched back. Hurling the bottle onto her most recently occupied sofa cushion, Dinky went for the sofa cushion that had been carelessly tossed aside.

The Mystical Bottle of Funny Juice disappeared back into the Crevice of the Doo Living Room Sofa.

The cushion slid over it, with Dinky patting it back into place.

'A close to the story,' she silently recited to herself with a silent hum.

Dinky resettled herself on the cushion like a Diamond Dog that would guard and conceal its sole secret. Shaking her bangs out of her face, she rested her head on the crook of her foreleg. For a while, she just stared lovingly at her aunt Daring. For about eight years of her life, Dinky had not known that she was her aunt; nor had she known about the secrets that her mommy had done so well to protect.

Snores were rumbling more loudly from Daring Do. She lay; her back was flat on the carpet, her hindlegs sprawled shamelessly far and wide for none to see, and still shadowing her eyes was her signature plinth hat.

Dinky smiled, but not because she found the sight funny. Peacefully shutting her eyes, she curled closer into herself. "Good night, Aunt Daring."

"Sweet dreams, Dinky."