//------------------------------//
// Childhood 
// Story: One Last Trick 
// by Cloud Hop 
//------------------------------//

At the mention of my family, my blood runs cold. I try to sink into the pillow, away from the expectant gaze of the nurse. Almost immediately, concern flashes across her eyes, and she turns to Rainbow Dash. "Miss Dash, could you please step outside for a moment?"

"Nuh uh, I'm—"

The nurse glares at Rainbow Dash. "This is a private conversation, Miss Dash, and you will respect physician–patient privilege. Is that clear?"

Rainbow Dash seems to shrink a whole two inches under the nurse's glare and slinks outside.

The nurse looks back to me with a small smile. "It's okay," she says in a soft voice, "nothing will leave this room without your permission. We need to let somepony know, but we don't have to contact your parents. Is there somepony else you'd like to talk to? A sibling, or an uncle, perhaps?"

I avoid her gaze. "Can't you just... tell a few of my close friends, instead?"

"I'm sorry if there's been a... problem, Mister Glider, but we need at least one close relative as your next of kin." She delicately places a hoof on my withers. "If you like, we can omit any details you want to speak to them privately about. Would that make you feel better?"

Her answer is a tiny nod from me, and I breathe in and out, wincing slightly. If only Uncle Gem Clover was still alive... I could tell my cousins, but, ugh, they aren't much better. I let out a groan. "Can you just... tell them it's because of... an injury? Without mentioning my wings?"

"Certainly," says the nurse, scribbling some things down on her clipboard.

"In that case, tell... Tell Madame Belle her son is in the hospital."

The nurse frowns. "Belle Ball? Head of Belle house in Canterlot?"

I nod silently.

"But they don't have a s—" Her eyes widen, and she looks back at me with her mouth hanging open.

My withers do their best impression of a shrug. "They weren't too enthusiastic about a pegasus colt."

The nurse stares at me for a fraction of a second longer before clearing her throat and attempting to salvage what was left of her professionalism. "Well, um, I'll be sure to inform Miss Belle of the situation." Her pencil scritches across the clipboard. "If there's, uh, a problem, we can tell her you aren't taking visitors."

I sigh. "I'll give her one chance. One."

The nurse nods sympathetically. "I'll be sure to warn you in advance." She makes a few more notes on the clipboard, checks a few monitors, takes my pulse, and finally lets Rainbow Dash back in. 

"Hey there, champ." Rainbow Dash wastes no time in zipping up next to my bed. "How're you doing?"

"Mostly the same as I was doing five minutes earlier." I let my head fall to the side, the soft, feathery pillow enveloping me in a fluffy embrace.

A snort disturbs my attempt to travel to the world of pillows. "Five minutes earlier I had to snap you out of some sort of storytelling coma."

"Good point," I concede, then lapse into an awkward silence.

"Sooooo..." Rainbow Dash begins, "what are you in the mood to do? Want to take a break from memory surfing?"

I groan incoherently. "I dunno... I guess I am a little hungry." My stomach growls in protest. "Okay, a lot hungry. I don't suppose I'm allowed to eat solid food yet?"

Rainbow Dash pats my good foreleg. "I'll go check, be back soon!" And with that, she’s gone.

Left to my own devices, my eyes wander towards the window. I can see bits and pieces of buildings, far away. It looks like I'm fairly high up, certainly at least on the tenth floor. A shadow blinks across the window, momentarily blotting out the light filtering through it. A bird, flying in front of the sun, or perhaps a fellow pegasus soaring through the air, free from the demands of the ground beneath him?

My eyes are tearing up again. I silently curse myself, not wanting to garner the pity of Rainbow Dash, but upon reflection, I have every reason to cry. A dark hole lives in my heart now, a piece of me lost forever. Never again would I be able to escape the material world, forever banished from the wonderful emptiness of the sky above.

A life, shattered.

"Hey, Prism!" Rainbow Dash's enthusiastic voice punches through my introspection. "So, I've got good news and ba—oh man, did something happen? Are you okay?"

My attempt to blink away my tears has evidently failed, as Rainbow Dash sets a tray on the counter and immediately goes to fetch more tissues. I whimper, ashamed of my weakness, as she once again dabs away my tears.

"It's alright, dude," she whispers, "you can cry as much as you need to, kay?" She turns her gaze towards the window. "I'd be crying too."

Something inside me breaks. A waterfall of grief washes over me, and suddenly I'm sobbing against the pillow. Rainbow Dash says nothing, simply wrapping her hooves around me, and I cry all the harder. The full, unmitigated reality of my life is open before me, and all I can see is an unforgiving plain of bleakness, devoid of hope. 

Rainbow Dash stays with me the entire time, holding me as best she can in a warm embrace, softly cooing and nuzzling my mane. Even as my sadness drains me of tears, I get the feeling that Rainbow Dash doesn't show this kind of compassion for anypony except her closest, most treasured companions. She certainly didn't seem the type to get all sappy unless dire circumstances were involved.

For whatever reason, this realization lights a spark of hope within me. A hope that, perhaps even after losing my most beloved asset, I had found something to replace it with. Slowly, my sobbing subsides, and I nuzzle her back, grateful for the quiet moment. A moment wherein I can simply lay my head against hers and have my tears dried.

Then I remember that she, supposedly, did this to me, and I am stricken with conflict. I desperately want to hang on to this tiny spot of hope, but at the same time, I am wary of the mare for whom it is for. Do I treasure companionship over my ability to fly? What is important to me? Has it changed, now that my old life has been forever destroyed? Must I start anew?

Eventually, I come to the conclusion that I can decide whether or not to hate her some other time. My desire for companionship trumps the doubts lingering in the back of my mind, at least for now. I don't know what happened on the fateful day that I lost my wings. I don't know how Rainbow Dash was involved, or why she blames herself for what happened. For now, this truce will have to do.

I look up at Rainbow Dash. "So, uh, did you have something for me?"

"Wha...?" She seems momentarily disoriented. "Oh, yeah! Um, the nurse said you can't have any solid foods yet, but they gave me this really tasty-looking banana-kiwi smoothie, and a bowl of strawberry jello." She extends the legs on the tray and gingerly sets it on the bed, over my stomach. "Um, the milkshake has a straw, but the jello might be a bit tricky..."

It turns out that eating without using your wings to grab things is quite challenging. I'm not entirely sure how earth ponies manage it—then again, most earth ponies probably aren't incapacitated while lying on a hospital bed, either. Still, I manage to drink the smoothie using a comically long straw without too much difficulty. The cool drink is like liquid heaven flowing down my throat, and I slurp it happily.

"So, where did you grow up?" I ask, looking to give her something to talk about while I drink this delicious smoothie.

Rainbow Dash pulls up a pillow by the side of the bed and sits down. "Well, I grew up in Cloudsdale, like you'd expect. Went to elementary school, then raced a couple of bullies and went so fast I caused a Sonic Rainboom." She smirks. "You know, normal stuff."

"I suppose you were a shoo-in for Flight Academy, then."

Her ears droop, and she averts her gaze. "I was... actually... kind of kicked out of Flight School. I never even got a chance at Flight Academy."

I almost do a spit take with my banana smoothie, but instead manage to send myself into a coughing fit. "Kicked out? Why?! You're the best flyer I've ever seen!"

Sighing, Rainbow Dash leans her head on the small banister surrounding the bed. "After I pulled off the Sonic Rainboom, the teachers didn't like me very much. Instead of going to class, I'd be outside napping on a cloud. Instead of doing homework, I'd be practicing tricks and playing with my friends. But when the tests came around, I always passed them with flying colors, so they couldn't throw me out.

"I became obsessed with the Wonderbolts, and every night I dreamed of becoming the youngest Wonderbolt in history. In my enthusiasm, I started a stunt club at school. It was perfectly safe, and I always kept an eye on all the other pegasi and taught them proper safety procedures. Then a colt got a little overexcited about the whole thing, and did something really stupid.

"Deciding that our weekly meetups in the playground weren't enough, he attempted to do a Sonic Rainboom himself and wasn't looking where he was going. Smashed straight into another pegasus. Both of them were in serious condition for a few weeks. It had nothing to do with my stunt club, but his parents wanted to blame somepony, and my teachers were all too happy to throw me under the bus." She ends her recollection with her ears folded back and a bitter grimace on her face.

"Jeez, that sucks. What did you do? What did your parents think?"

An amused snort comes out of the cyan pegasus. "My parents are great. They're also kind of... loaded. They said it wasn't my fault and that flight school wasn't really for a mare like myself anyway. They hired a tutor to homeschool me and would take me to a huge park outside Cloudsdale to practice stunts all day. My father said he didn't care what I wanted to do when I graduated, he'd always be there for me, no matter what."

Her words are like a needle driven into my heart. Rainbow Dash must have noticed my slight frown. "Oh gosh, I'm sorry. Are your parents...?"

The question was unspoken, but given what she'd heard before the nurse kicked her out, I already know what she’s asking. "Unfortunately, my parents are alive and well."

She scrunches up her muzzle. "Unfortunately?"

I sigh. "My parents were... less than supportive. Honestly, I think they wish I'd never been born. Not as a pegasus, anyway." I glare at the smoothie sitting in front of me, suddenly feeling angry. "They're just a bunch of stuck up Canterlot nobles who're only useful for whining about everything. They wanted a proper little unicorn stallion who could prance around like a bitch and go to all their stupid parties and take over the family business." I snort in annoyance. "Instead, they got me. Their ‘annoying little daredevil’, they liked to call me. Embarrassed by living proof they weren't purebloods, they kept my existence under wraps, until one day I declared I was going to be a Wonderbolt, and they disowned me entirely."

Now it was Rainbow Dash's turn to gape at me. "Seriously? Jeez dude, your parents are awful. No offense."

Taking another sip of the banana smoothie, I continue. "So, yeah, I moved out of Canterlot, got a job at the weather factory in Cloudsdale, and practiced my stunt flying all day long." The thought of flying makes my ears droop again. "Guess I won't be doing that ever again, huh?"

I look up to see that Rainbow Dash has tears in her eyes again. "S-shit dude, I'm s-so sorry. Celestia, now I feel even worse about this."

Part of me wants to reassure her, but I stay silent. My life is kind of completely ruined forever now. Neither of us speaks for a while, but eventually I get sick of all the silence. I used to like the silence, back when I filled it with dreams of flying in the Wonderbolts. Now it is only filled with sadness. "So, what'd you do instead of going to Flight Academy?"

Rainbow Dash's ears perk up, and she lifts her head. "Well, my parents were willing to let me mooch off them forever, but I wanted to be my own mare. Unfortunately, it was Cloudsdale, all the jobs were taken by pegasi with degrees from the academy and stuff. My dad offered to give me a job where he worked, but... that would have ruined the whole point. So, once I took the test and got my general education degree, I got a job as a weatherpony in Ponyville. Now, normally a weather team probably wouldn't have taken a homeschooled pegasus, but Ponyville was an earth pony town, and they could barely find enough pegasi to fill the team! I gotta wonder what they did before they had a weather team. It's so close to the Everfree forest, y'know? Imagine if they just had to let the weather do whatever it wanted!"

The various egregious sucking noises produced by my attempt to finish off the banana smoothie momentarily halt. "You're eating my jello," I casually point out.

"Wha— Fuck!" While she was talking, Rainbow Dash had absent mindedly picked up a spoon and had gotten through half the jello. Sputtering and apologizing, she starts trying to salvage the rest of it as I laugh hard enough to send needles of pain through my chest.

Waving a hoof, I try to catch my breath. "Girl, don't worry about it, I don't give a crap about the jello. Go ahead and finish it."

"But—"

I gesture at the wibbly-wobbly dessert in front of me. "It's jello."

"Guh, fine," she said, reluctantly returning to nibble on the jello again. "So, as I was saying, I got a job on the Ponyville weather team, but I didn't have anywhere to live. So, uh, my dad got me a... birthday present."

Rainbow Dash pauses, as if expecting the inevitable rhetorical question. "...Birthday present?"

"He bought me a house," she blurts out, and then immediately turns away, hiding behind her wing, blushing furiously. "It's huge, I don't even know what to do with all the rooms."

I raised an eyebrow in the most incredulous expression I could manage while covered in bandages. "Your Dad bought you a house for your birthday? Are you a princess or something?" I pause. "Then again, I'm the unwanted foal of two Canterlot nobles... Does that make me the long lost prince of Belle house?"

Rainbow Dash giggled. "Well, you can be my prince."

I stare at her for a full five seconds before she realizes what she said. She runs out of the room in embarrassment, with my hysterical laughter hot on her hooves.

I'm pretty sure she doesn't normally say things like that.