Life in the theatre was great, sadly it didn't last and now I'm stuck here.
Wings was a very happy pony, she had a family and a life but then something from her past came back to get her and now she's been taken from her mother and everything she had known.
My life was happy, the key word being was. I was fine, we were fine until someone ruined it and now I’m here. And they had the nerve to give me a diary. A diary! They said it could be a friend in this hard time, which is probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. Honestly! I had friends back in Manehattan, the other theatre foals were like family to me! Everyone there was, we were one big, faintly weird, happy family. Then they decided that no, I can’t have nice things. So now I’m in this scary clean house and my only friend is a book with 250 blank pages.
May 11th (Later)
Sorry I threw you across the room, I’m not usually so angsty, I’m kinda having a hard time. Anyway what I wanted to say, or is it Write? Nevermind, what I was going to say was that it wouldn’t hurt to tell someone about what happened, even if that someone is a book, no offence. Congradulations! You’ve been promoted to the position of best friend, which sounds really sad when I go back and read it. My best friend is a book, that hurts, not that you’re not great! I mean, you’re environmentally friendly and you’re easy to carry, just the right size for a saddle bag, I couldn’t carry my old friends around with me.
Look, it’s getting late can we talk in the morning? I’ll see you tomorrow, goodnight (I’d say ‘sleep well’ but I don’t think books sleep).
Good morning! I know, it’s not really morning but saying ‘Good dawn’ sounds weird. I’m sorry for, well I don’t know what, I didn’t wake you up books don’t sleep. I’m sorry that it’s so early, I can’t sleep in this bed, I feel like it’s strangling me, the blankets are really stiff and scratchy. Plus Dawn Chaser pulls them so tight, I swear it’s like a special talent, Celestia knows why she didn’t get her cutie mark in extreme bed-making. If there was event in the Equestria Games for bed making she would win a gold medal every time, in fact she’d send all the other competitors home in tears when she tidied circles around them showing them the complete futility of even trying compete with her level of sanitary excellence.
Moving on my name is Wings and I’m thirteenish, (we don’t really keep track). I could give you the short version of my story but then it would end up with so many side notes and explanations that it would be far too long, so to prevent confusion we’re going way back to before I was born, but not too far because that would be history and history is boring. Another reason I hate my foster parents, one is a weatherpony which in itself is a pretty cool job but when your cutie mark is a cloud so neat and perfect that it looks like a postcard it’s pretty boring. The other is a historian in the Canterlot Archives, that one’s pretty self explanatory, nothing says dull like musty old books about old dead ponies.
My mother was an apprentice light board operator on Bridleway when our story starts, one night she had to take over the lights, it was a really big deal because it was the first night of a big show with lots of big stars in it. She aced it, everything went perfectly and her friends decided that she deserved a night on the town in celebration. They all got really drunk and the last thing Mum remembers is dancing with some guy, or at least that’s what she told me.
I mean five teenage ponies at a club, what could go wrong?
So where did I leave off? Party, dancing, drunkenness, etc. okay I think I’m up to speed. So mum woke up in some hotel room by herself with a massive hangover, a note, a potion and a complimentary breakfast. Mum won’t tell me much about this bit, I think she’s worried I’ll try to find my father, but from the little she will tell me he said that the potion would get rid of her hangover. It also said that he had already payed the bill so she didn’t have to worry about it, which as she always says (misty-eyed) was very gentlecoltly of him. That’s all I could get out of her but I know there’s more, I also know that she still has the note and I will find it, someday.
Day two in the house of horrors and guess what! I still hate it (in the off chance you hadn't noticed). I mean it's nice, cloud houses are pretty cool, particularly mansions, but it's all white, makes me feel like I'm in a mad house, right down to the padded walls. Dawn Chaser took me shopping for fancy clothes to wear to some function she's giving for her work friends, it's going to be elegant and sophisticated which means that it's going to be a total yawn fest, great. She told me to choose something and then grabbed one and was like "It's perfect!" Dawn Chaser chose it so naturally it's itchy, uncomfortable and really uptight, literally. I think there's a built in corset or something because the top is really, really stiff, I have no idea how I'm going to be able to eat in this thing.
Dawn Chaser is coming to enforce curfew so I better put you away. Until tomorrow!
I’m gonna pick up where I left off yesterday, sort of. So not much happened for a while and then Mum figured out she was pregnant, when she started to suspect she went to the doctor and she confirmed that my mother was going to have a foal. The first ponies Mum went to were her parents obviously, they didn’t take the news so well. The were shocked and horrified that their daughter was going to be a single mother. They decided that abortion was the only option because Celestia-forbid they have a bastard grandfoal, Mum being a headstrong seventeen year old told them that she was going to keep her foal, scandal or not. Her parents argued, pleaded, cajoled and threatened but Mum stood strong. So they just went with the easiest option, they disowned her, they couldn't let their irresponsible daughter tarnish the family name. Turns out that both my parents came from pretty important families and their union would have been A) the match of the century or B) a massive scandal frowned upon by all society.
The party was earlier, and when I say party I mean it in the loosest sense of the word, the whole thing was so dull that I actually nodded off a couple times (and was subsequently scolded for it). I was hoping I could find something to do but Dawn kept me with her so she could parade me around like a a trophy, it was really annoying. All the ponies teated me like some poor orphan who Dawn had saved and who deserved pity and patronizing smiles, I tried to be as rude and antisocial as possible without upsetting Dawn.
Today was a bad day, Dawn Chaser got mad at me because I won’t call her ‘mum’. Then I got mad because she isn’t my mum so I shouldn’t call her that, so I told her that she wasn’t my mother and she said something about saving me. Then I calmly informed her that she had RUINED MY LIFE! She got upset and was all like “Moon Chaser! Go to your room this instant!”
Did I mention that she renamed me? Well she did, she called me Moon Chaser ‘cause I’m kind of silvery-gray like the moon and Chaser is the family name. My real name is Stage Wings but nopony calls me that, it’s always just Wings. It might seem like a silly name seeing as it’s part of the body but Mum was on sedatives and painkillers so she was a little woozy. She was so surprised by my pegasusness that she just named me Wings, the Stage bit was added later so it made more sense, when the midwife asked what she wanted to call me. Which brings me back to the the fascinating tale of how I came to be. So after she was disowned Mum went straight back to the theatre to tell her mentor, the now retired lightboard operator, Flick Switch. Flick Switch’s reaction was completely different, she was so excited for Mum, she and her husband Theatre Ticket were horrified at Mum’s parents. They told her not to listen to them, that she was a wonderful mare and she would be a great mother and if her parents couldn’t see that then they were fools. Theatre Ticket and Flick Switch adopted her and she became Spotlight Switch, she dropped her old family name, which she never told me. I’m starting to realize just how much Mum kept from me, she had a lot of secrets. Granny helped Mum with everything, from picking out the curtains for the nursery to dealing with morning sickness. She was a miracle worker and it didn't take long for her to work out not only adoption papers but getting a raise for Mum so she could get her own apartment for the two of us to live in when I eventually turned up.
I remember Mum describing one shopping trip in particular, she and Flick were looking for furniture for the nursery. By that time Mum was visibly pregnant and, being a bold young mare, she wasn't afraid to show it. A couple of mare's who hadn't liked Mum before she was forcefully ejected from society noticed them and came over to talk. According to Mum they called her a bunch of horrible things, things that made her question her decision to keep me. Then Flick came to Mum's rescue, Mum could never quite describe why but she said that when Granny stood beside her she didn't feel afraid anymore. The Mum stood up and told those mares that she didn't care about what they said, she was fine and she wouldn't give me up for anything. She always finished the story by telling me how glad she was that she hadn't.
Several months later Mum went to the hospital and returned with a fluffy little bundle of joy (That was me by the way).
We’ve finally gotten to the good bit, I mean if I’m in it it must be great. Flick Switch retired and Mum took over which meant we had more money, Mum got us an apartment of our own near the theatre. Flick and Ticket took care of me at their house while Mum was at work until I was deemed old enough to go to the theatre with her. We had it good, everything was great. We were living ignorant bliss.
We had no idea that though my father wasn’t looking for us, his parents had somehow got wind of my existence. Even as we were going about our everyday lives they stalked us, hunting us down until they pounced, armed with the best lawyers in Equestria.
That’s where things go downhill, things were great. Mum was getting payed, I was running errands and getting ready to live my dream of being a Bridleway stagehoof. Not very ambitious I know, all we do is move stuff and run errands but there’s something magical about it. To me, a little starstruck filly who’d only seen the hidden world behind the curtains, it was incredible, I wanted to wait in the wings until I could run on under the cover of darkness and transform the stage into another place entirely. Most fillies who dream of Bridleway dream of being the star of the show and standing in the spotlight hearing the applause and knowing it’s all for them. Not me, I want the darkness, the twisting maze of curtains and ropes, set pieces and props and to know the way around like I know my own hoof. Most of all I want to hide in the space above the stage and move the aerial pieces, a job only a pegasus like me can perform.
I was so close and then it was gone, snatched away by rich ponies with lawyers.
My dad’s parents wanted custody of me and being rich and important with lots of connections they got it. Mum said no, so did I but that doesn’t really matter very much to lawyers. They took Mum to court and of course we didn’t have enough money for a fancy lawyer so the one we had wasn’t very good, they put up a good fight but they lost in the end. Then the Chasers were like “Hey kid! We’re here to take you away from everything you’ve ever known and loved, isn’t that great?” Then the had the nerve to rename me, honestly they have no sense of tact.
So that’s how I came to be here, in my very own personal circle of hell, lucky me.
I may have exaggerated just a bit, they try to be nice I guess but we want different things. They want me to follow in one of their hoofsteps and I want to follow my mother’s back to Bridleway and behind the stage and the lights. They want to be my new family and I want my old one back, with the possible addition of my father. I still haven’t met him yet, that was the one perk of being forced to come here, the possibility that I might meet my father, but no, I can’t have nice things.
I’m grounded, or as grounded as I can get when I live in the clouds.
I had a huge fight with Dawn about my father, I don’t remember exactly what was said but I know it went something like this. I asked if I would get to meet my father sometime, she said that I sat with him at dinner everyday. As you’ve probably guessed that isn’t true so I got really confused, than light dawned (no pun intended) Dawn meant Myth Chaser, her husband. Then I told her I meant my real father, as in the stallion who knocked my mother up at some party. She told me off for language and said that Her Son, no pony will tell me his name I think they’re afraid that I’ll try to find him, is at the Wonderbolt Academy. I asked why I couldn’t live with my father and she started yelling at me about how he was irresponsible and unfit to be a father to me.
After giving me a lecture on how she had to send him away to learn how to be a responsible adult she looked like she was going to leave me alone, then I made the mistake of talking back.
I think I said something along the lines of “I’m sure you would have put my mother there too if you could.” She totally freaked, between the unintelligible yelling and the panting I could get the basic idea of what she was saying. She had a few things she was mad about, I need to be more grateful to her for ‘rescuing me’, my mother was just like my father and how she was my mother and not my actual mother.
Sorry, I’ll clarify the last one using the same word too many times can get really confusing. So Dawn was telling me that she was my mother and not Spotlight who is my real mother.
I tried to sneak off but she grabbed me, by my ear which really hurt, and dragged me back so she could tell me off for not listening to her. Then she grounded me on accounts of multiple offenses including disrespect and the dreaded crime of talking about my real parents.
I can’t stay here! I’ve been cooped up in this room for two days and I’m already going insane, seriously it’s only a matter of time before the hallucinations set in.
It’s not a bad room but, like everything else in this house, it’s too neat. The bed is straightened within an inch of its life and I think she used a ruler when she put up the pictures. It kind of feels like a cell in an insane asylum, not that I’ve ever been in one; you tend to learn a few things in the theatre business, it’s completely white and the walls are made of clouds and therefore padded. No wonder I’m going nuts.
I have two options now, one I stay and lose my mind in this place or I go and try to survive on my own until I get back home. Obviously I’m going, I can’t spend another second here, especially not with that witch, but home is a long way from here and I don’t think I could survive on my own for so long. So what to do?
Simple! I have two parents and while my mother is in Manehattan my father is at the Wonderbolt Academy, which is probably in Cloudsdale, which is my current location. So all I have to do is go to the Academy, find my dad and get him to take me home.
But this is me we’re talking about and my luck has been out for a while, I think it died or something, because of that there have to be a bunch of problems, like me being under house arrest. I’m confined to my room until Dawn Chaser is satisfied with my attitude; the only way out is convincing her that I’m the kind of filly she wants as a daughter. So I have to be good so that Dawn lets me out, finding the Academy shouldn’t be too hard; all I have to do is ask. Finding my dad is another matter entirely; I don’t know anything about him, his name, what he looks like, anything! I guess this is what Dawn was preparing for, well played Dawn Chaser, well played.
But you underestimate me! I won’t give up because of a little thing like that! I shall prevail by using the ancient strategy of Gathering Facts!
What do I know about him?
One, he’s a stallion.
Two, his last name is Chaser.
Three, he looks like me.
And that’s about it, well it’s still helpful I guess. I could just ask if they have a cadet who’s last name is Chaser, I’ll just tell them that I’m on a quest to find my real father with permission from my mother who can’t come because she’s a unicorn. They’ll probably be willing to help a little filly with her mission of self-discovery.
I’m off to be a nice filly to Dawn so that she’ll let me out. Wish me luck, I’m so going to need it.