No Equality in Desire

The wind exhaled a warm updraft. Her kite lifted, its tail snapping with a stream of colorful ribbons.

Starlight was a good mile from Our Town, perched on an outcrop overlooking a dry basin of powdery russet earth. It was quiet here, disturbed only by the rush of wind, sweet and full, churning up from the gully like a cauldron. Her mane tossed across her withers. The pale string of her kite caught the sunlight, illuminating the fraying fibers.

“What a great piece of sedimentary rock! This one has at least seven layers.”

Behind her, Sunburst trawled in the dirt. He hmm-ed and grunted, nosing between sand-encrusted crevices.

Starlight’s aura steadied her kite against a sudden thrash. Her jaw clenched. “You’re probably studying way more interesting magic crystals these days.” She twisted the reel, dragging the kite down a level. “Stuff that would make these desert rocks seem boring by comparison.”

“I guess so.” He trotted up beside her, a gold flicker in the corner of her vision. “But you wouldn’t really know, would you?”

Starlight’s snout twitched, the hide wrinkling along the bridge of her nose. Her nostrils flared, but she restrained showing her teeth.

“And whose fault is that?”

When there was no reply, Starlight looked down. Sunburst was on his belly, nose pointed toward a new pile of stones. His haunches flexed as he leaned to study them, his short tail an orange crescent in the dirt.

The midday heat was playing havoc on her skull. A sharp throb pulsed under her horn, twinging with the tug of the kite string in her aura’s grip.

Starlight kicked Sunburst off the cliff.

His tail flipped over his back. He rolled the length of the steep slope until his head struck a rock.

His neck jerked the wrong way.

Starlight shrieked. Her magical hold dropped. The kite snapped upward, spinning into the open air.

“No!” Her hooves scrambled for the spool, lunging queasily over the edge of the sheer rock face.

“Starlight?”

Hooves on packed earth clopped behind her. Somepony panted beside her ear. The kite was ensconced in a shimmering pale blue aura, ferried back to the cliff.

“Gotcha!”

Sugar Belle stood steady, eyes narrowed in concentration. Her mane was down, the relaxed strands of it billowing about her neck like loose silk. She brought the kite to the ground, its twine wrapping into a limp coil in the dirt, pale as a shed skin.

Starlight stumbled backward. “What are you doing here?” Her eyes darted into the ravine. Nothing was there.

Sugar Belle’s brows were furrowed. “I was taking a walk.” She gestured to the tangled kite. “I saw this in the sky and thought it was pretty. I’m glad I caught it in time.”

“I would have, too! You know. Unicorn.” Hot under her hide, Starlight wrenched the kite upward in her aura, pressing it to her chest. Her hoof slung over the sail, bending the spar. Realizing what she was doing, she threw it to the dirt. “I mean—thank you, Sugar Belle.”

“No problem! It’s just what friends do,” Sugar Belle recited with a flat grin. She glanced where the kite had returned to an earthly banishment, then remarked, “I didn’t know you liked to fly kites.”

Starlight sighed. “That’s because I don’t tell most ponies about it.” She snagged the reel, whisking the trailing twine back into the spool. “It’s kind of a personal thing.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Sugar Belle’s ears lowered. Then, she smiled. “I promise you don’t have any reason to feel embarrassed about it, though. Like I said, it’s a pretty kite.”

Starlight finished her winding. She brushed a granule of dirt off the bright turquoise sail. “Thanks. I… made it myself.”

“That’s super impressive!” Sugar Belle brightened. “Did you used to have a cutie mark in kite-making?”

Starlight flinched. She glanced behind her. The equal sign was intact. “No. Of course not. I—” She shook her head. “My mark was for something else. Kites are just something I like. And something I'm good at making that has nothing to do with my talent. That’s… what makes them so special.”

When the day had come that her mark seared its way onto her flank, both too soon and too late, Starlight turned to look and found, despite everything, she didn’t despise it. It represented her skill in magic; that was incontrovertible. But the shape of it, with its layered four-pointed stars and trails of turquoise, always appeared to her as the image of a kite in gentle descent.

“Hey, I get it!” Sugar Belle said. She scuffed her hoof in the dirt, suddenly demure. “You know, I really like nature. I like looking at flowers, and eating fresh-picked apples under a tree. Sometimes, it would even inspire my…” She gulped as her equal mark sheened over with gray. “Anyway, what I’m getting at is: my friends didn’t think of that too often. I wasn’t known for it, you know? Nopony ever just asked me, ‘Hey, Sugar Belle, want to go for a walk? I know that would make you smile.’” Her words trailed into faint laughter. “That probably sounds silly.”

“No, not at all!” If Starlight was heated before, there was a fever in her now. “It’s exactly the kind of thing cutie marks take from us.”

She stomped, hooves scraping the dirt. Sugar Belle was watching her with a dispirited little half-smile. And Starlight realized, a breath too late, what she ought to have said.

Neck raising to attention, she cleared her throat and said, “Hey—Sugar Belle. Want to go for a walk?”

Sugar Belle blinked. “Oh. I mean—I wasn’t trying to—”

Starlight lifted her kite, tucking it away beside the outcrop until her next respite. She held out a hoof. “I know. But, I want to.” She swallowed. Her pastern shook. “If you want to come with me.”

A flush emerged in Sugar Belle’s cheeks, her coat drawing nearer to the shade it was when she first arrived. “How could I refuse?” she laughed, taking Starlight’s hoof.

It surprised her this time, that Sugar Belle could just reach out and touch her in reciprocal. And Starlight believed, for a moment, there was something magnetic inside of herself. Somepony worth keeping.

—

The sunset came down like spilled apple juice on the horizon. Each night, the sweeping flatlands turned to an ocean in the blue-dark. And each night, they walked together alongside that endless sea, freed from the questing eyes of the villagers, nopony to wonder why one of them was receiving exclusive time with their fair leader. Everything was watery and dreamlike in the blue cast of evening, every accidental brush of Sugar Belle’s tail on Starlight’s flank charged with special meaning.

With one eliciting question after another, Starlight learned more of her preferences, her secret longing.

“I used to dream about owning my own bakery. It would have this big display case! Oh, the treats I’d fill it with…”

“I really don’t care for anything too flashy. I’m a simple mare, easy to please…”

“I’d like to have a family one day.”

When she said that, Starlight galloped ahead, instigating a juvenile game of chase. Sugar Belle laughed, a high baffled sound, but followed her anyway. The sand cascaded about their hooves, their loose manes whipping in rhythm. Sugar Belle reached her quick, mirroring Starlight’s stride. Her pupils were big, appearing to eat the irises. Violet, rather than magenta, in this light.

All the while, a flickering gold presence followed like a second shadow. Starlight outran it.

—

“You know,” Sugar Belle said, “I think you should share your kite flying hobby with the town.”

On a broad desert stone, they lay on their bellies, side by side. Starlight tensed. “Really?” She rolled a pebble underhoof. “It’s not like it would contribute anything meaningful to our cause.”

“Yes it would!” Sugar Belle perked up, suddenly inspired. “It means a lot to you, Starlight. And it’s not fair you feel like you should keep it a secret. You’re creating a beautiful world here. The things that matter to you belong in it.”

It was not the world, but her, that became beautiful when she chose her next words.

“Either we’re all equal, or none of us are. Right?”

An evening breeze caught her mane, enlivening it like a halo encircling her head. The rest of Equestria could have dropped away, then; the glow of the moon could have sucked down into an unending dark. Starlight would go on living—as long as Sugar Belle was beside her.

That night, anything could have happened. Starlight’s lips could have reached to brush hers. Instead, they twitched into a smile.

“Right.”

—

“Heads high, everypony! Catch that updraft!”

Starlight marched aside her row of villagers, each of them biting down on a reel. A range of kites juddered in the air above, drifting high and low, incapable of falling into a uniform row.

Party Favor’s horn ignited, attempting to wrangle his drooping line. Starlight hurried to his side. “Now, Party, remember: not everypony here has a horn!”

“Sorry, Starlight,” he puffed around his spool, spittle flecking his lip. Trying to smile, he said, “I'm glad to be doing this with you! It’s so special when friends can share their favorite things.”

As he babbled, Sugar Belle’s neck rose elegantly, her kite ascending on the breeze. She caught Starlight’s stare and smiled, twine clamped between her teeth. Starlight worked her way beside her, finally able to raise her own kite into the air.

“Starlight!” Night Glider’s strident voice broke her reverie. “Need a little help over here!”

Her kite wobbled, then dropped, clattering in the sand. Starlight’s ears rushed with blood. “Sure thing!”

As she went to the damned pegasus, something soft brushed against her legs.

“This is the true happiness you wanted,” Sunburst said. “Are you happy?”