A Little Taste of Home

by Lord Derpington

Chapter 2

The door to the Canterlot Crêperie jangled open and a group of ponies (and one dragon) bustled in out of the rain. Rainbow Dash, her nose buried in her operational procedures manual, didn’t notice her friends from Ponyville until they were almost at her table, and then only when the pink puffy-maned earth pony piped up.

“Rainbow Da~ash!” sang Pinkie Pie.

Dash jolted, upsetting her coffee cup and splashing the pages of her manual. She blurted out a curse and reached for a napkin.

“We didn’t mean to startle you,” said Fluttershy.

Rainbow Dash shook herself, still a little bewildered at their sudden presence. “Sorry, Fluttershy,” she said, noticing her friend blushing at her uncharacteristic outburst. “Y-You must have crept in or something!”

“We didn’t creep into the crêperie, Dashie!” said Pinkie Pie. “Crêperie creeping should be a crime. Hey, can I have that cranberry and cream cruller?” She helped herself to a pastry from the tray Dash had ordered earlier but left untouched.

“Here, let me clean that up for you,” said Twilight, levitating the soggy book out of her friend’s grasp and mopping at it with a napkin.

Rainbow Dash’s face relaxed into a languid smile and she rubbed at her weary eyes. If there was one thing she could count on to remain a constant, it was her friends. Here was Pinkie, as carefree as ever. Here was Twilight fussing over her like a mother hen. Here was Fluttershy, her oldest and closest friend, and making their way to her table, Applejack, Rarity and Spike.

“Hey, there’s our little Wonderbolt!” said Spike. “How are you doing?”

“Hi guys,” said Rainbow Dash. “I’m doing great.” She grabbed her manual to make room at the table and stuffed it into the saddlebag at her feet.

“My goodness, have you seen that rain?” said Rarity. “Have the Wonderbolts been punching holes in the sky or something? Oh, hold still Applejack, you’re absolutely drenched!” She was trying to dab at the earth pony’s orange coat with a towel.

“It’s just water,” said Applejack. “Don’t make such a fuss!”

“Well, I warned you to pack your cape. I had Twilight put a water-resistance charm on it and everything, and you never wear it!”

Dash sniggered. Even after a long journey in inclement weather, Rarity had still managed to keep her white coat gleaming and her purple mane and tail impeccably coiffed where everyone else looked at least a little bedraggled. Some things never changed.

“I don’t know what you’re laughing at,” Rarity went on. “Look at the state of your mane! Have you been brushing it with a twig or something? Come here...” The unicorn sat herself at Dash’s shoulder, took out a stiff mane brush and began untangling the multi-coloured mess of hair. Ordinarily Dash would have protested; she hadn’t let anyone groom her for years, insisting on doing it herself, but she was tired and she found the sensation soothing.

“How are you finding the training?” asked Fluttershy.

Dash furrowed her brow. It had been another difficult day, and while she was starting to get used to formation flying, the challenges just kept on stacking up. Despite being the reserve flier, she still had to know the ins and outs of air show procedures in time for the first display, and that meant wading through a stodgy, jargon-filled manual as thick as her own hoof. To cap it all, the Canterlot weather team had been rolling out clouds the whole day ready for an urgent overnight downpour, and flying under that bleak grey sky felt dull and unsatisfying. Back in Ponyville, days like this were once a time to be lazy, to read and take long naps (longer than usual, anyway), to hang out at Fluttershy’s cottage or Sugarcube Corner.

Fluttershy noticed the faraway look in her friend’s eyes. “Rainbow Dash?”

“It’s going okay, I suppose. It’s pretty hard work, but — ow! Take it easy, Rarity!” she said as a particularly bad tangle caught in the brush. “But here I am, living the dream!”

“So when’s your first show? Is it true you’re gonna be performin’ in Ponyville soon?” asked Applejack.

“Ah, the secret’s out! Yeah, it was supposed to be a surprise appearance at the Spring Has Sprung festival next Monday. Mostly a publicity thing, really — autographs, hoof-shakes, that kind of thing, with a short display for the crowds. But I’m only a reserve flier. Right now, I just step in if somepony can’t perform.”

“Are you gonna—” Pinkie Pie began through a mouthful of pastry, but Dash cut her off.

“So, how are things in Ponyville? What’s the news?”

She listened while the others recounted the goings-on back home, the small-town gossip, the little day-to-day adventures. They laughed and joked together, and ordered elaborate crêpes and drank steaming mugs of hot chocolate. Twilight held an impromptu lecture about the reason for the Spring Has Sprung festival, the vernal equinox, using plates and cups to illustrate the planet and sun, until Spike put her in a huff by snoring theatrically (to laughter all around). Pinkie related heartwarming tales of how the Cake twins, Pound and Pumpkin, were getting on with their “Auntie Pie”. It came as a minor surprise to Dash to be reminded they would be starting kindergarten soon — the time, and the last year in particular, seemed to have flown by. Only Fluttershy seemed out-of-sorts; while she still joined in with the revelry, she stayed huddled close to Rainbow Dash, and several times made to ask her something, only to immediately clam up again.

As night set in and the café gradually emptied, the party wound down. While Dash, at her own insistence, paid the tab and the others were gathering their cloaks and umbrellas, Fluttershy trotted over and finally spoke up. “Have you decided where you’re going to live now? I mean, when you’re not touring.”

This gave Rainbow Dash pause. She’d been caught up in the tryouts, then went straight into training and hadn’t given it much thought. She had stayed a few days at a hotel in the city, then when training began she had moved into the dormitory on the training grounds. Most of the Wonderbolts had places of their own in Canterlot so she had the dorm to herself. It was small but comfortable enough, though hardly suitable for the long term. She’d known she would have to move out of her cloud-sculpted home over Ponyville eventually, but that had a stark finality to it and she’d put it to the back of her mind.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I guess I’ll start renting a place here in Canterlot and see how it goes.”

“But you’ll still visit us in Ponyville, won’t you?” There was a beseeching look in her eyes.

“Easy, Fluttershy! I’m not going anywhere just yet! I’ll be back in Ponyville next Monday anyway.”

“You’re sure you won’t join us at the castle?” Twilight called from the doorway. “The princess is letting us use one of the suites for the night.”

“Sorry guys, but I’d better get back to the dorm. Early start tomorrow.” She turned back to Fluttershy.

“You know you’re welcome to visit me anytime,” she said. “Well, the training grounds are supposed to be private — crew members and their family only, really — but I’ll talk to Spitfire and see if they can make an exception for you. How does that sound?”

“I’d like that,” said Fluttershy. “Take care, Rainbow Dash.” She nuzzled briefly at her friend’s neck before trotting back to join the others as they stepped out into the rain.

Dash stood befuddled at the counter, feeling strangely hollow. An otherwise lovely evening had ended on a jarring note, bringing up questions she hadn’t wanted to answer just yet. She had been ignoring the inevitable; an exciting new chapter in her life was opening, but this meant another had to close, whether she wanted it or not. There was a bitter irony to it — Fluttershy had been the one who’d finally convinced her to take her aspirations seriously, and now it meant they’d be apart.

She gave a deep, weary sigh, and as she turned to leave her eye fell on one of the few customers remaining in the crêperie. She had spotted this solitary pony earlier in the evening, seated at a corner table and mostly hidden behind a copy of the Canterlot Herald. Occasionally the stranger had rapped a pale yellow hoof on the table to demand a refill of her coffee, and Dash was sure she’d caught her staring at their party once or twice. Dash’s curiosity got the better of her and she craned her neck to see over the newspaper. Her eyes met those of another pegasus, a familiar face she couldn’t immediately place. Heavy-lidded magenta eyes gazed back from under the fringe of a tousled pastel-striped mane.

“Rainbow Dash, as I live and breathe!” the pegasus said, breaking into a broad smile.

“Skydancer?” said Dash. “I haven’t seen you in, what, it must be ten years! What the hay are you doing here? Last I heard you were pushing cumulus at the cloud factory!”

“Moved to Canterlot last year,” Skydancer replied. She gestured for Dash to join her at the table.

Dash hesitated. She knew Skydancer from school back in Cloudsdale, but not particularly well — more than acquaintances, but not quite friends. They had shared several classes and been on friendly terms, but they had different circles of friends and had never really clicked. At another time she would have been happy to stop and chat, but it was getting late and she was mindful of how early training started tomorrow. Even so, she reasoned, what were the chances of bumping into a link to her childhood in Cloudsdale, even a fairly tenuous one, here in the city? She glanced out of the window at the downpour and remembered she hadn’t brought anything to keep her dry. Surely a few minutes wouldn’t hurt...

“So...” said Dash, feeling a little awkward as she sat down again in the nearly deserted café, “how are things with you?”

“Not bad. Just keeping myself busy, y’know,” said Skydancer. “You’re doing well for yourself though, I hear.”

Dash was puzzled for a moment until Skydancer indicated a column in her newspaper. It was a tiny piece, just a few sentences about the Wonderbolts’ new recruit, sandwiched between the hoofball results and an advertisement for manecare products, but there it was in black and white.

“Glad to see somepony from our school finally hit the big time,” Skydancer went on. “Remember how coach Fireball used to say we’d never amount to anything?”

Dash chuckled. “He was such a jerk — he said that to everypony. Pssh, shows what he knows!”

“Hey, remember when everypony was saying he got Miss Honeycomb pregnant, then she left a month later?” said Skydancer in a theatrical whisper. “I used to see her around with the foal sometimes — he looks just like him!”

Dash snorted with laughter. “Oh, oh, remember when Windy Wisp tried to style her own mane for the ‘Enchantment Above the Clouds’ ball and ended up cutting most of it off? It took months to grow back!”

They both dissolved into gales of laughter. “Ah, happy times,” said Rainbow Dash, slightly wistfully.

“You visit Cloudsdale much?” asked Skydancer.

“I can’t seem to find the time any more. I still think about it a lot though. I mean, I love Ponyville, but you miss the little things, you know?”

“Ponyville? Aren’t you living here in Canterlot?”

Dash wrinkled her nose. “Well, I’m kinda between places right now. Floating free, I guess.” She rested her chin on a front hoof and stared out of the window.

“You know what I do when I miss Cloudsdale?” Skydancer reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a package wrapped in wax paper. She unwrapped it, revealing half a dozen small, golden brown cakes baked in the shape of a cloud and studded with tiny purple berries. “I tried making them myself, but you can’t get the mix right at this altitude. A baker I know in Cloudsdale makes up a batch for me every couple of months and sends them over. They’ve got real wild cloudberries in them. Want one?”

“Nimbus buns? Oh, I haven’t seen one of those in years!” Dash’s stomach called out to her noisily. She hadn’t eaten much all evening, just picking at her own crêpes and letting Pinkie Pie finish them off. While those tiny cakes were hardly enough to satisfy her hunger, there was a craving that reached beyond simple nourishment. They were a little taste of home.

“Go ahead,” said Skydancer.

The instant Dash placed the cake in her mouth, the sensations transported her. The sweetness of the rich, dark sugar reminded her of warm summer nights under a sky sprinkled with stars. The pastry began to crumble on her tongue, moist and soft like the feeling of scrunching one’s hooves into the city’s cloud fields. The taste of the syrup recalled how the cloud banks at sunset seemed to glow with a golden light from within. She squashed the cake against the roof of her mouth, releasing the tangy flavour of the berries, sharp and refreshing like a winter’s morning when the weather factories started pumping out the snow. She had eaten these simple little treats with hot cocoa on Hearth's Warming Eve, found them slipped into her bags as a surprise the first year she went away to summer flight camp, bought some with the first pay packet from her first job with Cloudsdale weather patrol. They were little baked punctuation marks that had given structure to her young life.

To her surprise and slight embarrassment, she found herself fighting back tears. She sniffed deeply, her breath shuddering as she tried to contain them.

“Yeah, they have that effect on me too,” said Skydancer, gently placing a hoof on Dash’s shoulder.

Dash turned away to quickly wipe her eyes. She swallowed the cake and let out a long-held gasp.

“The first time I remember eating one of these,” she said, trying to keep her voice from quavering, “was at a Wonderbolts show. I’d have only been four years old. I saw Spitfire perform, then went to get her autograph, and dad bought us all nimbus buns to eat while we waited. That was the day I knew I wanted to join the Wonderbolts.” She was amazed at how clear the memory suddenly seemed, every detail bright and well-defined as the day it happened. “You have no idea how much these things mean to me.”

Skydancer listened, a faint smile playing on her lips, as Dash enthusiastically recounted her lifelong fascination with the Wonderbolts, jumping from one story to another and beaming with delight. Details she had long forgotten were flooding back, a wellspring of inner joy bubbling over faster than she could convey in words.

“Hey, remember that time you badgered me into going to those after-school wing-ballet classes with you?” Dash said. “Boy, if I’d known back then what it took to be a Wonderbolt, I might’ve taken it a little more seriously.”

“I remember how much you hated it.” Skydancer said flatly.

“Yeah, I used to get so frustrated when I couldn’t get the moves right. I remember... oh...” Dash’s face fell. “I remember I called you a stupid girly mule-face and stomped all over the tutu you lent me. Uh, sorry about that...”

“Oh, don’t be silly. That was a long time ago. We were just foals.”

“Yeah... Say, did you ever make anything of that? I know you loved wing-ballet, and you were gonna go to dance school or something.”

At once something imperceptible about Skydancer shifted, and Dash noticed her heavy-lidded eyes were careworn, and her pale yellow coat drab and unkempt.

“No,” she replied. “It never really came together for me. Life got in the way, I guess.”

Rainbow Dash shuffled awkwardly. All the energy had fled the conversation, and her bragging about the Wonderbolts suddenly seemed crass and insensitive.

“Well...” she said, getting up from the table, “it’s getting kinda late, and I’ve gotta be up early, so I’d better be going. Nice to see you again, though. Uh, thanks for the nimbus bun...”

“Here, take the rest,” said Skydancer. She tossed the package to Dash, who stuffed it quickly into her saddlebag. “You’ll probably enjoy them more than me. Take care, Rainbow Dash.”

Dash smiled back weakly. She was beginning to wish she had just stayed at the dormitory and finished her manual. She’d upset Fluttershy, and now another old classmate — was becoming a Wonderbolt going to make anyone besides herself happy? She cast a final glance over her shoulder at the figure now sitting alone in the café and stepped out into the rain.

Comments

[RedAllex]

Not even halfway through the first chapter did I realize this would be a good story. You've got yourself a favorite.

EDIT: Also, have a follower!

[Stereo_Sub]

This is great so far. Can't wait to see what you have in store next.