You've got to be kidding me. That is my cutie mark. I don’t even enjoy it, why is it there? It doesn't make any sense to me, but I decide to go with whatever the 'Cutie Mark Gods' decided to give me, even if its not something that I would generally like. I had the sudden feeling of... Pinkie Pie. Why would I think –
*knock knock knock knock* in a rapid fire succession at my door. Who in the world would even know where my place is yet? Can't be rude though, so I open the door to get blasted with a face full of confetti. And cake mix. That makes more sense now why I had thought of Pinkie Pie, right before she came knocking on my door.
“WELCOME! I'm SO glad I can finally throw you your welcome party! Too bad everyone else couldn't come though, but a party of 2 is still a party! And boy do I love parties they're SO much fun and exciting and I love throwing parties for my friends and this is gonna be the best welcome party EVER!” Pinkie said in one swift breath.
“Pinkie, can we do this some other time?” I asked, wiping the cake mix off my face, “Sorry, but I kinda need to get familiar with the town right now so I'm gonna walk around for a while, alright? I promise that we can do this in a week.”
“But do you PINKIE PREOMISE?” she asked leaning towards me. “Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye?”
I let out a deep sigh, “ Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye. Ow!” accidentally poking myself in the eye while doing this.
Pinkie Starts to giggle incessantly. “I can't believe people actually poke themselves in the eye when they do that! Ha ha ha! Better get to planning for next weekends party! Later Sky!” she says as she disappears in a puff of pink, cart and all. I just shake my head at her over-excited personality with a smirk on my face, leave the hotel and close the door with a faint 'click' to ensure me its locked, inaccessible without the room key. The room key, of course. Of course I would forget about it, exactly what I'd do. I'll just have the lady at the front desk give me another key I thought to myself. And that was exactly what I had planned to do, walking out of the hotel to go explore Ponyville.
The air was enough to make me content with living here, so clean and refreshing to the soul. I just stood for a number of minutes outside the hotel, staring at the sky and enjoying the breeze. I had enjoyed the gentle air, and thought that I needed to explore the rest of town. I had continued to stare at the sky, walking through what I thought was the town square since there were vendors on each side of me selling items from apples to fabrics. The town was really nice, I was thinking before I collided with another pony.
“EEEK!” Fluttershy squealed before laying flat against the ground, looking down and saying in a low voice, “I-I-I'm s-sorry... I should've w-w-watched where I was g-going...”
“Not your fault Fluttershy, I wasn't watching my step.” I said to her with a calm voice, to let the sensitive pony know that I wasn't angered at what had just occurred.
“Oh... OK... well I b-better be going...” she said as she walked away with her pink mane covering half her face.
I had ended up near Twilight's house... or tree, or whatever she called it. I knew that she had wanted to do some research on how my recovery was, so I thought it wasn't a bad idea to stop by. Sub-consciously, I had other reasons that I wanted to go and see Twilight, and I had nothing else to do or even planned for that day that I remember so it was a good time to stop by in my opinion. I raised my hoof to knock on the door when it got opened by a little purple dragon, accidentally facehoofing the little guy.
“Hey! What was that for!” he shouted at me while rubbing his nose.
“Sorry... Spike, right? It was an accident, you OK?” I said trying to calm the young dragon.
“Yeah, I'm fine, just be more careful with your hoof, those hurt more than you think. You're here to see Twi?”
“Yeah, she home?”
“Twilight!” he shouted, “Someone at the door for you!”
“I'll be right down, once I get this book where it needs to be...” as a pile of books suddenly flow out of the bottom floor of the library. “Or when the entire shelf of books break, heh.” she embarrassingly said.
“Uh, hi Twilight,” I stuttered.
“Oh hi Sky! You need something?” she asked while picking up the previously fallen books.
“Just wanted to know when you wanted to do your research thingy,” butterflies in my stomach as I spoke.
“It's not just a 'thingy!' It's way more than that!” she said looking at me, “My name will be in the Canterlot Archives for having research on how well uhh... something... adapts to pony life!” she said with a vast amount of excitement. “My name will actually make it into the history books, MY name! How exciting is that?”
Spike and I looked at her with a bit of confusion of what had just happened, in her excited rambling she had reversed what she had done with the books pulling most of them off again.
Spike looked at me, “She gets a little carried away with things when she gets excited,” he whispered, “but it isn’t always good for her,” ending with a faint chuckle and a hand over his mouth to muffle the laugh.
“I can come back later ya know, if you're too busy.”
“Yeah, that's probably a good idea, I have a lot of books to clean up. Tomorrow sound OK?”
“Yeah, why not,” I said casually, “That'd be fine. You want me to come over here?”
“No, I'll come get you tomorrow morning,” she said with some confidence. “There's more room near the Hoovtel 6 to learn to fly.”
She knew where I was staying somehow, maybe from the princess, but that didn’t matter to me much. “Alright, so I'll see you then. Later Twi.”
“Wait. What did you just call me?” she asked while looking at me baffled.
I look back at her, “Uh... Twi?” I said questioningly, thinking I had crossed the line. “Is that alright?”
“It's just kinda weird to hear you say it, I mean, it's OK but I'd like you to call me 'Twilight' until I get to know you some more. OK?”
“Yeah... Sorry about that Twilight. See you tomorrow.” I said as I walked back off to the hotel.
“Wait!” I heard her call out from behind me. “Is THAT your cutie mark?”
“Yeah, it is. Don't really understand why I have it, I don't like it that much.” I said with a 'whatever' tone.
“Well, I kinda like it. Its not too bad and I've seen worse.”
“Yeah? Like what?” I retorted challengingly.
“A couple years back, when I was in Canterlot there was a young filly with a – ”
“Heh-Hem!” Spike coughed for attention. “These books aren't gonna clean themselves up Twi. You care to help?”
“Yeah sure Spike. Well, nice seeing you again Sky. I'll talk to you tomorrow,” she said. “Bye!”
“Later uh... Twilight. See you tomorrow,” I said as I walked back to the hotel o get a good nights rest before actually trying to fly for the first time.
I didn't have any idea on how exhausting flying would be, and it doesn’t seem like asking any normal pegasus would do any good since they have been up in the air since they were young fillies or colts. I thought about this the whole walk back to the hotel, and I was glad that I had learned to have some control over my wings. I could feel them loosen up from being near Twilight once I had reached the hotel. I didn't have any idea how difficult tomorrow may be, or what it may hold or if I'm even going to be able to fly.
I walk into the hotel lobby and ring the bell on the front desk to call for Violet. I had started to wonder if anypony was even in this hotel, and decided to ring the bell again.
“I'll be there in a sec,” she said, “just had to finish up some work. What do you need Mr. Sky?”
“You can just call me sky, and I need another room key. I left mine in the room when I left.”
“I have to address you by Mr., Mr. Sky. Its the policy here, and for your key, I will be right back.” She walked into the room behind the front counter again, coming out with another key labeled '2A Spare'.
“Please don't lose this one Mr. Sky, its our last key for your room.”
I said my thanks and headed back to my room, thinking about my cutie mark the entire way there. I sat down to find the mattress to be soft as the clouds, making my eyes droop just sitting on it. It was THAT comfortable. I thought that I should get some rest, so I put my head down on the pillow which was exactly how I liked it.
Why... Why this cutie mark. I don't like them. I HATE reading, but when I knew that I just... Know things it appeared... Maybe that is my special talent. Knowing. But how is knowing anything special... I thought as my mind fell prey to the sandman, the image of an open book on my flank resonating through my mind as if it wanted me to know something about it...
)()()()()()()(
I was waken up the next morning sometime around 8 AM by Twilight because he believes that everything needs an early start. And according to spike, she would have been here earlier, had he not convinced her to stay home for a little while longer to get his sleep. She led me to an open, grass field that was no more than a minute walk away from my hotel, although I would've liked a longer walk to maybe get and know her a bit better.
The first thing that Twilight had wanted me to do was a galloping test. I assumed it was running, so I went along with it. She tested how well I had gotten the hang of galloping from my time in Equestria so far but it didn't turn out how either of us expected it to be. I failed at my first attempt at a real galloping pace, I got my hooves mixed up and fell flat on my face just because of my own legs. It made her laugh, so I assumed that I would hopefully be getting closer to her in one way or another. It took me at least a hundred tries before I actually had a smooth gallop going, and it was onto the next test that she wanted me to do.
I was pretty reluctant to do the next test because it involved learning how to fly. It's just something that I've never really wanted to do because I'm afraid of heights. I've been terrified, ever since I... I don't remember what made me afraid of heights to be honest. The memory... Its just gone, like many of my other memories that I thought I once had.
“You alright?” Twilight asked, waking me from my train of thought.
“Yeah I'm fine. Just thinking about some stuff. So... Flying next?” I said as I shook my head of the previous train that was in my mind.
“Yes! Flying! Its going to be so great to watch somepony learn to fly! I've never had the opportunity to watch somepony! I've read up so much about it so I know just what you need to do!” she said as if she had read every book on flying that there was.
“If you say so, lets go.” I replied.
We started with a low hover at first, which to my surprise wasn't that hard to do. She didn't have wings herself, but she sure knew what needed to be done to do any basic flying things. After I had gotten the low hover down, my wings had already started to ache from exercising them since they had never been used. My real trouble with flying came during the next area that she had wanted me to try, gliding. After writing her notes from the previous tests, Twilight told me that in order to glide, you need to be aeroline or aerodanyumic or something like that, and what she had pretty much meant was to pull my legs towards my body as I was gliding. The first attempts at gliding seemed successful, but quickly failed as I had sent myself plummeting straight to the ground. It hurt to test, but it was something that I was willing to do to hang around Twilight.
I still had no idea why I was attracted to her, but something just felt right about it. Something just... clicked. At least for me, it did. By the end of the day, she had me flying around, surprisingly a good flying instructor for somepony without any wings. The sun was starting to set, and she had run out of paper and ink and my wings were aching terribly from learning to fly. I didn't care how much that they ached, I had decided to walk, or at least fly Twilight home.
I was flying beside her the whole time that we walked back to her home, which was about a ten minute walk for her, although I could have easily made it in a minute now I knew how my wings worked. We talked the whole way there, learning a little bit about each other on the way. When her home was in sight, I decided I'd have to ask sooner or later.
“Umm... Hey uhh Twilight?” I asked nervously.
“Yeah Sky?”
“I kinda wanted to ask you something, but I just, don't really know how to ask it, but I kinda wanted to, if you're up to it, maybe sometime, – ”
“Sky STOP!” she yelled.
I tried to say 'What?' right as I smacked face first into her home landing on the ground with a dull thud, most likely ruining any chance with Twilight. I sat there for a minute, baffled I had missed a tree that size and had actually ran into it. Rubbing my head and dusting myself off, I casually walked back over to Twilight, who was giggling at me for flying directly into her home.
“You were trying to ask me something before you,” she said with a small laugh, “ran into my home?”
I had only a second to think about what I would say to her, maybe even salvage what I'd done. “Umm yeah... I did. I just wanted to know, if maybe you'd want to – actually, is it OK if I call you Twi?”
I had blown it. A chance to ask for a walk, because walks aren't really dates, they're just walks and that means that your not serious at all right?
“Sure you can Sky. We'll continue tomorrow, OK?”
“Alright, I'll come and get you when I'm ready though.” I stated, hoping she would accept.
“That's fine. It is dark out, and Spike is really tired,” but you can hear spike in the background , 'No I'm not!;, and she finishes, “so goodnight!”
“Night Twi, see you tomorrow.” I stated casually as I flew away with my aching wings.
It may not have been exactly what I wanted to ask her, but I had some guts and asked her something. I thought about how I could have made the situation better, running over different scenes in my mind. Before I knew it, I was at my hotel. I walked up to my room, not forgetting my key this time. I walked straight into the bathroom, turning the tap for the hot water in the bath, letting it fill to half-way. I dropped a bath calming soap into the water, which turned it a light lavender color. That reminded me of her and how she let me call her 'Twi'. I stepped into the hot bath, resting my wings under the water burning them as they were submerged, but the pain quickly turned to soothing relaxation as I let my mind drift.
My mark still rested in my minds eye, but why is knowing my special talent, I don't know anymore than anypony here. It just didn't make sense to me. My mind drifted from the thoughts of my cutie mark because of one thing. She let me call her 'Twi'.