//------------------------------//
// One Day 
// Story: Quills and Sofas Anthology 
// by Scrying Mind 
//------------------------------//

Don’t worry, Grimmy. I’ll get back to you one day.
It was Hearts and Hooves Day in Ponyville. Couples walked up and down the street, buying flowers, chatting, and generally enjoying their time with their very special someponies. Love was in the air, which was wonderful to the sentimental of heart and the florist of profession. Whether playing games, admiring nature, admiring each other, or just sitting on benches, everypony with burning love in their hearts got to express that; they got to be happy.
Everypony except Flash Magnus. He stood outside Doctor Hooves’s laboratory anxiously, waiting for the stallion to answer his knock. Maybe he wasn’t home. Maybe he had a special somepony and didn’t wish to be disturbed. Flash wouldn’t blame him, but he hoped beyond hope it wasn’t the case.
Finally, the door opened. The brown stallion behind it was clearly not expecting visitors, but had taken special interest in his appearance anyway. Perhaps someone was already visiting him.
“May I help you?” he asked.
“Yes, are you Doctor Hooves? Twilight told me this was his house,” Flash said.
Hooves glanced back towards something in his home. “I’m a bit predisposed at the moment. Would you mind coming back tomorrow?”
“No!” Flash quelled the desperation in his voice. “No, this needs to be done today. Please.”
Hooves looked him over, and Flash was sure he was about to be turned away. But just as the Earth pony seemed as though he were about to give that crushing verdict, a small noise—a cough?—from behind him made him reconsider.
“Very well. Come in.”
The inside of the laboratory was strange, to say the least. Flashes of light, sparks of electricity, and a perpetual humming of magi-electrical machinery filled the space. Bulky machines were crowded in one side of the room, and a small coffee table, armchair, and loveseat had been set up to the side. A gray pegasus already seated on the loveseat looked at them with a wall-eyed gaze.
“Hello!” she waved. “How are you doing today?”
Flash felt a bit of his heart flee as he collapsed into the armchair. It felt as though somepony had draped a blanket of lead on top of him. “I’d be a lot better if I could see Grimhoof,” he said.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” the gray mare said. “Maybe you could go visit him?”
“That’s exactly what I was hoping you could help me with,” Flash said, looking at Hooves.
Hooves looked around as he sat down next to his marefriend. “Me? I’m not a travel expert, unfortunately. I don’t think I can help you.”
Flash couldn’t help but smile. “Ah, but I’ve heard that you do specialize in travel, of a certain sort. Twilight told me that you knew a way to send me back in time. Or, to put it more accurately, bring time forward to me.”
“Why, yes! I can!” Hooves fiddled with his bow tie in excitement. “But, I need to ask, why not do it with magic? Don’t you know Starswirl the Bearded? He’s done time spells before, and I’m sure it would be more reliable.”
Flash thought back to when he thought that was a good idea. “You’re a fool, Flash Magnus. This never ends well. I have watched time and worlds be twisted for the purposes of love, and I won’t help it again.”
“I didn’t want to bother him,” Flash said.
“It’s not an easy process, you know, and I haven’t tested it fully on ponies yet. Why, who knows the side-effects!? Are you sure you’d like to do this?”
Flash took a deep breath and conjured up an image of the Cloudsdale Legion barracks, back in the old days. He conjured up an image of his friends and fellow soldiers. He conjured up an image of Grimhoof. His blue coat, his piercing eyes, his lean muscles, that scar across his right foreleg that only Flash was allowed to touch...
“I’ll do it,” Flash said. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”
Hooves looked over at Derpy, who nodded with a smile. “Everypony should see their favorite pony on Hearts and Hooves Day!”
Doctor Hooves stood up and started tugging on one of the large apparatuses tucked away in a corner. Seeing this, Flash Magnus sprang into the air and dashed over the help pull. Together, they unearthed a large, spherical machine which split open like an egg.
“You go in there,” Hooves said, “and I’ll try to send you off to whenever you’d like to go. Just remember you don’t have much time. Because time is finicky. It doesn’t like when you mess with it.”
Flash hopped into the cold brass shell, carefully placing his hooves around the bolts and rivets. “I want to go to a Hearts and Hooves Day sometime after I left. I want to tell him why I vanished. I want to say a proper goodbye.”
Hooves walked to the side of the machine and out of sight, and the sounds of knobs and buttons began to fill the room. In just a few seconds, the brass egg closed up on Flash, leaving him in pitch darkness.
If he were ever pressed to describe what happened next, Flash would have been at a loss for words. The best he could come up with when describing it to Rockhoof was that he was aboard a boat sailing down an ocean at a 45-degree angle. He felt sick. He wanted to vomit. He tried to correct for the sudden change in the angle of the ground, but this leaning made him fall onto his side. He was a shaking, panting mess by the time the capsule hatched open again and he saw the sun above.
He was obviously back home. Not Cloudsdale—not yet—but his time. He could see Cloudsdale in the distance, and it was beautiful. It was home. Flash leapt to his feet and started wobbling towards it. As soon as he was well enough to, he launched into the air and flew ever faster towards his love. He didn’t stop when Nimbus called out to him. He didn’t identify at any checkpoints. I didn’t care when Bella asked why he had vanished for three years. He made his way to a small patch of cloud a few hundred meters off the southern tip of Cloudsdale—the small patch of cloud where he had gone on his first date with Grimhoof.
There he was. Sun gleaming off his mane and letting shadows accentuate his sharp features. Grimhoof sat in the same spot he and Flash sat every Hearts and Hooves day. As he looked over, Flash tackled him with a hug.
“I’ve missed you so, so much, Grimmy.” Flash was crying. Good. He didn’t need to be strong with Grimhoof; he needed to be real.
“Flash, you’ve been gone for years! You didn’t send word. You didn’t send letters. I worried—”
“I know, I know,” Flash said, “but I’ll explain that soon. For now, I need you to know that I love you.”
Grimhoof smiled and rested his chin on Flash’s cheek. “I love you too, Flash.”
Flash cried the happiest tears he’d ever cried and lay on the ground, sprawled across his coltfriend’s chest.