Seashell (print rewrite)

SEASHELL

Excerpt IX
From the journal of Sunburst, June 20, YS 1329:

I had this week off, so I spent it in Cloudsdale visiting my dad and my aunt. There should have been more than enough to do there to keep me occupied, but the thing with the roses just won’t stop running through my head.

I may have done something a little foolish in that regard.

I hadn’t planned to ask Aunt Spitfire what I did… at least, not exactly. Or maybe that’s just what I want to tell myself because I sort of knew I shouldn’t ask but I couldn’t stand it anymore. What matters is, it happened, and I’m not sure if I really wanted it to but it did so here it is.

To the best of my memory, it went like this:

I went with Aunt Spitfire to one of her favorite restaurants. It’s a small hole-in-the-wall that she likes because fan-fillies don’t know about so she doesn’t get harassed for autographs when she’s just trying to eat lunch. We’d been seated, the waiter had come around for our orders and gotten back with some ciders, and we were still waiting for sandwiches and hay-fries.

“So, royal guard duty, huh?” she asked. “Sounds like you really arrived, Sunny. Lots of Wonderbolts can’t even get that gig. How do you like it so far?”

“It’s pretty good,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting it, and I’m not even sure what I did to get it, but I’m definitely not going to complain.”

“Twilight Sparkle’s the princess you’re guarding?”

“Yep.”

Aunt Spitfire suddenly grinned. “Rainbow Dash is the Captain of the Guard, right? Pretty sure she was still there last I heard.”

“She is,” I answered. “And yes, because I know you’re going to ask: she keeps us in shape. Lots of training. No time to get soft and slow on her watch.”

“Good. Wouldn’t have expected any less.” My aunt settled into thought for a moment or two. “Hey, when you get a chance, ask Rainbow about the time her unicorn friend kicked me in the face at the Best Young Fliers’ competition. The white one. Purple mane. Butterfly wings. She’ll know what I’m talking about.”

Now that had to be a story—and probably a little bit of an embarrassing one for Captain Dash. I couldn’t even imagine what it was, but not knowing didn’t stop idle speculations from flashing through my mind. In my meandering thoughts, all sorts of scenarios came and went, all of them undoubtedly not even close to reality. But one thread ran through them all, and all the other shifting details flowed like water around it.

‘The white one.’

White.

And as this newly introduced detail scraped like flint and steel against the existing preoccupied thoughts in my daydreaming, sudden sparks shot off and struck dry-brush tinder ideas, setting them aflame with new cross-associations.

White.

White roses.

The look of grieving Captain Dash had.

The tears, not quite being shed, but welling up.

Pain.

Longing.

I suddenly felt cold. “I don’t know if I want to ask about something like that,” I mumbled.

“Eh.” Spitfire shrugged. “Up to you. But it’s the best way to hear her story about the sonic rainboom.”

I blinked. “Sonic… rainboom…?”

“Yeah.” Aunt Spitfire smirked. “Fair warning: once you get her started, you might not be able to get her to shut up about it. Worth it for the story, though.”

“Oh.” I shifted in my chair. “Okay. I thought it might be… a different kind of story.”

“Huh?” She gave me a look. “Whaddya mean?”

“Just… I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Nothing, I guess.”

“What is it, Sunburst?” Spitfire leaned just slightly closer. “What’d you hear?”

“I didn’t hear,” I said. “I… I saw. But I don’t know what.” I said the words, and I was surprised with myself. I wasn’t sure why I was talking about this at all, something so personal for somepony else. It didn’t feel quite right, but I also just felt so trapped with it. Some part of me needed an outlet to somepony I could trust. I hadn’t realized how much until that moment, when it was spilling out almost unwilling.

Still, Aunt Spitfire was cool about it. She just tilted back in her chair and waited, leaving the ball in my court. I knew that look. She wasn’t going to pressure me. I could change the subject and she’d let it slide, let me keep my secrets.

Maybe that’s just what I should have done, but I couldn’t help it.

“You said a white unicorn. You know anything about white roses?” I asked. “Would those mean something?”

She looked at me blankly. “What? Not following, sorry.”

“There’s white roses in the center of the palace gardens,” I continued. “And the other day… Captain Dash… and the princess…” My seat suddenly felt uncomfortable. I squirmed my wings, trying to adjust them for no particular reason. “I saw them there together. Early in the morning, right before sunrise, when they could be alone. And I think… I think Captain Dash was crying. It feels so weird to say that, but I’m pretty sure it’s what I saw.”

“Wait, you mean the…” Aunt Spitfire sank into thought, trying to remember something for several long seconds. “The rose garden with the tree in the middle? With all the hedging around it?”

“You know about it?” I was hit totally off-guard, not expecting that.

“Know about it?” Spitfire laughed. “I was there on the big day the whole garden was planted for, Sunny! It wasn’t for a unicorn. It was for an earth pony.”

Earth pony? I hadn’t seen any earth pony. I gave my aunt a curious look and waited to see where this next turn in the story would take things.

“That’s the garden Rainbow Dash got married in,” she went on. “I was at her wedding. I watched her and her wife plant that apple tree and say their vows in front of it. Remember it like it was yesterday. The whole team was there. Soarin got so drunk…” She rolled her eyes and shook her head with a reminiscing smirk.

No slight to Soarin, but I couldn’t care less about his storied antics just then. “Captain Dash is married?” I asked.

“Was.” Spitfire’s smirk died, fast.

I didn’t want to ask, but I didn’t need to.

“Damn Apple family curse,” Aunt Spitfire mumbled sourly, glaring into her cider.

“What?”

“That’s what Rainbow Dash called it.” Spitfire shook her head and waved a hoof. “See, her wife was a pony named Applejack, from the Apple family out of Ponyville. They’d known each other for a long time before they went ahead and tied the knot. Rainbow told me part of the reason they took so long was because of a superstition that when Apples fall in love and get married, they have a way of dying young sometimes. Happened to Applejack’s grandfather on her mom’s side. Then it happened to Applejack’s mom and dad. And then… then they finally got over it and just had their wedding already, and of course it wasn’t long before it happened to Applejack. Because of course the ‘tradition’ had to hold.”

“Like… a real curse?” I don’t even know why I asked. It was a dumb question.

“Nah. I don’t believe in curses.” Spitfire shook her head. “Runs of bad luck happen, though. And that is some run, you know? It really sucks. They loved each other so much, but they only got to have a few short years together. Then one day. Just—” she slapped the table with her hoof “—just like that. ‘Jack was just gone. Taken away, snatched out of Rainbow’s hooves.”

“I never knew,” I said quietly.

“No reason you would. Just about killed Rainbow Dash at the time, too.” Aunt Spitfire suddenly had a wistful sadness to her voice and a look in her eyes that I couldn’t remember ever seeing in her before. “I mean it. Like, literally. I thought… I guess I shouldn’t be tellin’ you this, kiddo, but I honestly thought she was gonna die too. It was like… like… damn it, it’s still hard to even talk about.”

Spitfire’s voice was starting to shake. She choked up and shook her head.

“Like what?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking after a long moment. I’d like to think I asked for her sake, because now I could feel how she was the one who needed to talk. But I also know I needed to hear the rest, too. I suppose I could just say I asked for the both of us and leave it at that.

“I guess it’s like this: have you ever heard about what happens to swans when they lose their mate?” she asked. “Sometimes, they die from grief. They spiral into depression. They won’t eat, they won’t fly, they just stop doing anything at all. They don’t want to live anymore, so they just quit.”

“That doesn’t sound like Captain Dash,” I said.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought so either,” Spitfire said. “Except, I saw it. After Applejack died, of course the ‘Bolts gave Rainbow a lot of time off to deal with everything she had to figure out. But eventually that time passed, then even more time just kept going by with no word, and she just never came back. So I finally went to go see what was up, and when I found her, I swear to Celestia, it was the most scared I’ve ever been for anypony. I found out she hadn’t flown since the funeral. She wasn’t eating, either. She’d lost so much weight she looked like a blue bag of skin and bones. Her hair was falling out. She wouldn’t even preen her wings. Most days all she would do was lie around in bed moping or crying. And I thought, this is it for her. She’s got the swan syndrome. She’s on her way out, trying to follow her wife.”

“Jeeze.” I was almost breathless in a kind of fascinated horror. “What did you do?”

“I started by wondering if I should do anything at all, to be totally honest with you,” Aunt Spitfire confessed. “‘Cause, yeah, this is gonna sound bad, but seeing her like that, with her heart broken so hard it was killing her—I thought it might be kinder to just let her go instead of fighting to try to drag it out and forcing her through even more. I was afraid interfering would just make her misery last longer and it would only turn out the same in the end, one way or another.”

I just sat there in stunned silence. Something felt heavy on my chest and tight in my throat.

“At least, that’s what I thought for about three seconds. But then I made myself shake off that nonsense and I said to myself, oh hell no, screw that, Rainbow’s not a swan. She’s a pony! And I got mad about what I was seeing. Not at her. Just at what was happening to her. So I decided, okay, you know what? We’re fighting. Whether it’s right or it’s wrong, it’s what I know how to do, and anything is better than doing nothing. So I made up my mind, and the first thing I did was go get a chocolate milkshake and the greasiest, most calorie-packed oatburger I could find and practically force ‘em down her throat, ‘cause jeeze did she need it.”

She cracked a crooked smile, and I couldn’t help but smile back wryly.

“Well, I guess she made it,” I said, feeling a bit lifted with relief.

“Hell yeah she made it!” Spitfire said proudly. “Like I said, Rainbow’s not a swan. She’s tougher than that. She’s a real pegasus. Blood of the old Cloud Empire. I mean… it wasn’t easy for her. She had a long road to get anywhere close to being okay again. Grief counseling. Therapists. All that stuff. Heck, when I checked in with her friends, they told me sometimes on bad days somepony had to drag her flank into the shower with them and scrub her down just to make sure she’d bathe. But in the end she didn’t quit. Eventually she started having less bad days. After a while she was back to standing on her own four hooves. She started working out again. Started flying again.”

“Must have been good to have her back.” I let myself relax into my chair again, letting the tension fade.

“Well, seeing her get better was a relief,” Aunt Spitfire responded. “But she never came back to the Wonderbolts. Said she just couldn’t do it. It hurt too much now. She was away on tour doing shows when Applejack… when it happened. I think she blamed herself for not being there. I don’t know what she thinks she would have done to change anything, but… eh, doesn’t matter. That’s just how it felt for her, you know? It killed all the joy in being a ‘Bolt. I could tell. It was over.”

“Guess that explains the career change,” I mumbled.

“Yeah.” Spitfire nodded emphatically. “Yeah, it does. And I wanted you to hear that explanation from me, Sunburst, instead of ending up getting half-truths from rumors somewhere else, after what you saw. It’s something I don’t know if I should have told you. It’s too personal. A guard shouldn’t know that kind of thing about her captain. But I think you get that, and I think you can handle it. Now that you know, I hope you’ll know enough to understand that it’s always gonna hurt like hell for her, and just leave it alone. For Rainbow’s sake. Alright?”

I was inclined to agree very much by that point.

That story’s gonna give me nightmares and I wasn’t even there.
 
 
Enough bad memories for today.