A Bridge to Somewhere

by Skywriter


Friends

"Friends are a terrible thing, y'know?

"Hey, hear me out on this! I should know. I had the worst friends. My whole life long.

"Y'see, Mom... wasn't home much. I guess she had to work a lot more after my dad left? Make ends meet? Always taking extra shifts cleaning up after fancy parties in those big midtown Manehattan hotels. And she'd always try to be home to tuck me in at night, but it wasn't until late, and even on usual nights that still left a good five, six hours in the evening for me to just, y'know, hang around.

"So it was this real pretty evening one fall and I was bombing around with my crew smashing up whatever Nightmare Night pumpkins we could find, chucking bogrolls over trees, stuff like that.

"'Cause... 'cause we were bored? I dunno. Anyway, we were right in the middle of makin' horseapples in bags so we could light 'em on fire and leave them on ponies' front steps. Ponies'd come out and try to stamp out the fire, and squish!

"...Yeah, pretty dumb. Seemed hi-larious at the time. Anyway, so we were in a back alley doin' our business when this really cool blue peggie in some kinda dress uniform gives us the stink-eye and trots over. Just this super-classy older stud with a wavy gray mane and a scarf and everything. He gives us this mouthful about disrespecting stuff and wasting our potential and tells us to basically go take a flying feather. Says he knows something about potential, 'cause he's an EUP, a full-on Wonderbolt. My pals just laughed it off but... I dunno. Something he said really hit me, right in the chest.

"Yeah, I still lit the bags on fire. But my heart wasn't in it. And I never did it again after that night. I got a library card and checked out all these books about the EUP and I think Mom thought I got nabbed by a changeling or something, 'cause there I was the next night, studying away in my room. Everypony I used to glide with, they all hated me. They thought I thought I was too good for them now. Maybe they were right, a little. I didn't care, 'cause I was shooting for the sky.

"Grades went up. Started paying attention. Went from 'maybe not gonna graduate' to 'top ten.' 'Cause I was gunning for Wonderbolt Academy, see. I wanted to be like that Wind Rider guy. 'Cause he cared. Nopony else cared what I was doing. That guy was military, yeah, but he wasn't Guard. It wasn't his job to tell me not to be a screwoff. He just did it because he cared. It was just... so weird to feel somepony caring what I was doing, even if it was just him telling me to stop lighting my poop on fire.

"So yeah. Graduated. Got into the Academy. Scrubbed out. Don't really wanna talk about it.

"No.

"I said no!

"Augh! Okay, fine! Cadance's butt, mare! Here's the quick version: turns out, Wonderbolts don't care. I guess Wind Rider was the exception or something. They're just a buncha bullies who talk big about putting morals before winning and then lie and stab you in the flank when they see a chance to prove they're the best. They're these legitimately terrible ponies, just as bad as my friends in Canterlot, except worse, because they go around pretending they're better but they're not. End of story.

"So I hit the streets again, found all the old crew still there. They were all either unemployed, or had these dead-end jobs totally unrelated to their cutie marks, or were workin' on foals after getting hitched to one of the first two types. Yeah, they were happy to see me, at first. 'Til they figured out I was a total drag. On account of my dreams gettin' crushed.

"They fight it, at first. You get exactly one pity party. One time when everypony gets together and tries to lighten you up. They see you dragging, staring down spending the next sixty years in a cider coma, and they do something big and stupid to try and get you happy again.

"When that doesn't work, they start just kinda leaving you alone. They figure, hey, this gal's obviously not having fun with us. Why are we even bothering? Eventually they stop asking you to hang at all.

"And it's not that you don't wanna hang. It's like, the only thing in the world you wanna do. You wanna just scream at them, say, 'Keep including me until I feel better!' But you can't. Because that would look dumb. So you keep wishing they would deal you in but you keep acting like you don't want 'em to and I so guess that's not their fault when they don't."

Suddenly I snort and kick the leg of the stool next to me. It falls over and I don't even pick it up. I dunno why I just did that. I just said it wasn't other ponies' faults, so why am I ticked off?

"You're lonely," she says, like she was reading my thoughts.

I cough so it doesn't look like I'm sobbing, which I totally am. "Yeah," I croak. "I gotta get out of this place. Maybe someplace without all this baggage. All these ponies judging me for who I was, who I am, who I was tryin' to be."

"I know of a place full of friends for you," she says. "Someplace far, far away. A fresh start. A clean slate. No one will hate you for striving higher than your station, because there are no stations. Nopony will betray you to be the best, because there are no bests. One herd. All friends. All working together, with one mind, for the betterment of Equestria. How does that sound?

"Mare," I say, draining the last of my mug, "that sounds like paradise."