The day that Sunny Flare and her team brought home the trophy at the 2015 Friendship Games was the first time in her memory that Mother ever told Sunny she was proud of her. Even if their victory was a foregone conclusion, it was the happiest day of Sunny’s life.
The second – and only other – time Ms. Flare received such praise from Mother was the day her metamorphosis was deemed complete.
Seated in her mother's old throne of a swivel-chair, with her elbows propped on her mother’s old gilded-mahogany desk, draped in the darkness of her mother’s shadowy old office, Principal Sunny Flare held the keys and the reins to her mother's old kingdom: Crystal Preparatory Academy, Est. 1818.
Just how long had it been since Principal Flare had assumed the title?
She still remembered the day she found out it was to be hers. It was some time after Mother’s hair had gone gray, but before the dementia was more than a subtle twitch in Mother’s left eyelid. Ms. Flare had barely been home an hour – having returned from university with the master’s in education administration which Mother had so insistently steered her towards – before Mother beckoned her to follow.
There was a fire safe, hidden behind an armoire.
Mother struggled to remember the code, twisting and turning and muttering curses at the dial until, on a whim, while Mother had stepped away to call a locksmith, Ms. Flare input her own birthday, and the tumblers tumbled away.
Inside were three things: Ms. Flare’s birth certificate, signed only by her mother; a typewritten note (laminated for its protection so long ago that the lamination was, itself, peeling) in which the writer wrote his hopes that Mother’s job security and monthly bonuses would be sufficient to disincentivize her from seeking, quote, |alternative recourse|; and the photo of a balding young man Sunny Flare had seen only a few times before.
“He shall be retiring from the Board, soon, and I have my own to consider. You must arrange to meet with him before then,” Mother urged her. “This is what you’ll say to him when you do…”
Ms. Flare did not recall the particulars of the encounter itself. She was just following the script given to her. Regardless, her application to replace the retiring Principal Cinch was approved by the Board with Director Neighsay’s full and unwavering support.
This had been her office, ever since.
In this office, at present, Principal Flare was with a student, who sat opposite her in the same deliberately-uncomfortable stool which Mother always set out for problem students.
Steepling her fingers in front of her gaunt, angular face, Sunny flare took a breath in, and then a breath out… and continued to mutely stare at this student, as she had been for the past five minutes.
“…Ma’am?”, queried Luster Dawn.
Flare did not respond.
Wincing, Miss Dawn prefaced, “Sorry if I’m speaking out of turn, but…” When Principal Flare made no move to stop her, she continued, “Are you going to tell me why you called me in here?”
A breath in, a breath out, but nothing she was ready to say.
There was a problem, of course. As a rule, Ms. Flare did not meet with students unless absolutely necessary, keeping to herself in her office whenever possible. So rarely did she make an appearance in CPA’s halls that there were recurring rumors, during her tenure, that Principal Flare didn’t actually exist. Perhaps the School Board ran the place by committee, or perhaps it was the Dean who was really in charge, or perhaps F.L.A.R.E. was the acronym appelled to some unaccountable administrative AI.
But she had to exist. How Ms. Flare could she be so uncomfortable? Her suit itched at every seam, the room was at once too dark and too bright for her sensitive eyes, and someone was staring directly into her eyes.
It’s not that she was afraid of her own students. It’s just that she didn’t like them, and didn’t like the way they looked at her. That wasn’t fear, was it?
After several more tense moments in silence, Luster Dawn ventured to guess, “Is this about the Friendship Games?”
Principal Flare blinked, and gave the barest courtesy of a subtle nod.
“Look– Ma’am, I mean– If I may…?”
Sunny Flare wasn’t stopping her.
“It’s just… I appreciate how important the Friendship Games are to Crystal Prep and its image and all that, but…” She flinched, as though expecting some sudden burst of outrage, but when none was forthcoming, she settled down and continued. “I just don’t see the… point?”, she squeaked.
“Let me explain–”, Miss Dawn stammered, already on the backfoot. “I know I’m… a pretty good student,” she hazarded, as though she weren’t the best in her year, if not among the entire four classes attending CPA at that moment, “but… you know, it took me a lot of studying to get there, and the Friendship Games just seem – what with finals coming up and all… – like… kind of… a… distraction?”
Again, she braced for a retort that never came. Still, Miss Dawn felt the need to keep defending herself. “And– And there are plenty of other students here who are just as smart as me,” – there weren’t – “and they deserve a chance,” – they didn’t – “so… I thought… I’d just… sit this one out?”
Principal Flare stared at Luster Dawn.
“…So… may… I? Ma’am?”
Principal Flare stared at Luster Dawn.
“Like, I’ve got a choice in the matter, don’t I?”
Principal Flare stared at Luster Dawn.
“I’m allowed to say ‘no’.”
Principal Flare stared at Luster Dawn.
“Actually, I don’t even need to! As long as my parents don’t sign that permission slip–”
Principal Flare laid an envelope on the desktop, which she’d been keeping in a side-drawer. After carving through the fold with a dull letter opener, she extracted exactly the permission slip in question and unfolded it onto the desk, just far enough away that Miss Dawn couldn’t seize the slip and do away with it, but close enough that she could see the text thereon very clearly:
The only signature it lacked was Miss Dawn’s own.
“…Oh.”
Principal Flare placed a pen in arm’s reach of Miss Dawn.
After a minute of the young lady’s inaction, Principal Flare picked up the pen again and placed it closer to Miss Dawn.
Still without touching the stylus, the student dared to ask, “…What if I’m just sick that day?” Or faking it, she implied.
Principal Flare tilted her head a smidge to the side and sighed through a frown. It would be very disappointing if Sunny Flare couldn’t keep her mother’s uninterrupted victory-streak going.
At that, Luster Dawn looked around the room, refusing to keep eye contact with Principal Flare any longer. But besides ever so many awards – which Sunny could never quite recall whether they were granted to her or to Mother – there wasn’t anywhere else to look. No windows, no artwork, not even a tasteful plant; just shadows, the Principal, and a form on a desk.
“…Fine…”, she finally said, after what could have been five minutes or thirty.
The principal lifted her head.
“I said, fine. I’ll do it; just… Can you please stop looking at me like that?”
Ms. Flare wasn’t aware she was looking at her student in any particular way, so she turned her eyes down to the permission slip.
“…Thank you.” With that, Luster picked up the pen and filled out her name in black. “Was that… all?”
Another gentle nod, and a pointed glance towards the door. Miss Dawn did not struggle to take that hint. She was gone before her pen settled to a stop in the holder.
Alone again at last.
Principal Sunny Flare took a deep breath, but she’d hardly had the chance to let it out when her appointed dean slipped through the door just as the hydraulics had nearly closed it.
“Golly, Ms. Flare! You sure turned her around quick! I knew I sent her your way for a reason!”
Principal Sunny Flare regarded Dean Cozy Glow with the same squint of searing discomfort that her photosensitive eyes took to the light-mode applications on the school computers, or anything at all that was outside at the same time as the sun.
“Too loud? I’m sorry,” she apologized, without actually lowering her volume all that much – though it was more the pitch that was the issue. “I take it from the pep in her step that you and Miss Luster are on the same page, now?”
Sunny nodded, and then, finally, she spoke. With Ms. Glow, it was so much easier to find her words.
“…Something like that, I suppose.” Sunny shrugged, and after another pause, she added, “Truth be told, I didn’t say anything. I simply didn’t know what to say… How to make her care. She was the one to argue herself into it, in the end.”
“Then I think you said everything you needed to, Ma’am! Great job!”
Principal Flare hummed something like a thank-you, before commenting, “She didn’t seem very happy about it, though.”
“Ah, don’t you worry about it! She’ll be smiling and bragging with the rest of them when she brings the trophy home! She’ll be happy, we’ll be happy, the Board’ll be happy, and that’ll make us happy all over again!”
“You think so, dearie?” It was a canned line she already knew the response to, but that was more than fine. It was as close to a script as Sunny Flare could get.
“I know so.”
That’s where Principal Flare wanted to leave it. She didn’t have anything else to say.
But it was apparent, after a few minutes, from the way Ms. Glow was looking at her, hand on her desk, grinning and fluttering her eyelids, that she had something else she wanted to talk about.
“What is it, Ms. Glow?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing… I just wanted to remind you about your meeting with Director Blueblood later.”
The Principal could not earnestly remember what this particular meeting was about, so she stared blankly at her dean for more.
“You know, the one about whether Crystal Prep’s gonna keep to our grand old tradition with the graduation speeches?”
The tradition being that former alum Sombra, President of the Pedestrian States, was always invited to come down and deliver one to the graduating class of any given year. The controversy with that was that presidents were supposed to be limited to two terms, and he was on his, what, sixteenth? It was hard to keep count.
“Oh, that one.” Principal Flare hummed, and thought very deeply about how little she actually wanted to meet with Director Prince Blueblood. It was a meeting that could have been an email, anyways.
“I think I’ll be going home early,” she decided, after some minutes, standing up from a desk she still felt so short next to. It was a small mercy that the thought of being stuck in a room with the Board Director made her so nauseated that she wasn’t entirely faking her illness as she shuffled towards the exit.
“But Ms. Flare! What should I tell the Board?”
Principal Flare simply told Dean Glow what she always told her: “Whatever you think is best.”
Ms. Glow flashed her two thumbs up and a big, cheerful grin. “You got it!”
And then Sunny Flare was out.
It was nice, having such a useful, eager-to-please dean on staff., and hard to remember just how much Sunny loathed Cozy Glow when they were in school together. Why on Pedes was that?
In any case, these days, she was nothing short of Sunny’s savior. She made things so much easier, the way she’d take on whatever tasks and responsibilities Flare didn’t want to bother with with the same enthusiastic smile. Especially with all the decision-making.
Nothing could have prepared Sunny for how many decisions she’d have to make as a principal, nor how quickly she was expected to make them. Why was this her reward for doing everything Mother ever asked? It was a burden she was wholly unequipped to bear.
But she was off work now. Sunny found herself with a surprising amount of free time, thanks to Cozy Glow. The hours were hers, to curl up at her home computer and lose herself in the games of her childhood. It was all she cared to think about on the commute home. Perhaps she’d fire up one of the old, isometric Nuclear Winters, or maybe tend to the needs of her little household of Dupes, or even just stare at the blank, dead monitor for a little while, lost in its warm, inviting blackness.
She was home before she realized.
Sunny Flare had bought a house of her own as soon as possible – the salary of an administrator in private education was actually quite nice – but Mother had to move in, eventually.
There she was, on the couch, almost waiting to intercept her on her way to the quiet solitude of her home-office.
The old woman looked up from the cover of a book in her hands. Nobody had taken the shrinkwrap off. “Welcome home, Mother,” said Mother, and then she blinked. “…Did you visit the hairdresser?”
To this, Sunny Flare said nothing at all.
Author's Note
As Sunny Flare awoke one morning from uneasy dreams she found herself transformed in her bed into her own mother.
Some music, as befits the mood.