//------------------------------// // Chapter Four // Story: Wingmares // by CouchCrusader //------------------------------// The two fillies soon fell into a comfortable routine: they met twice a week at the bottom of Skyhead Falls while the rest of Team Firefly went off to fly the Circuit. Sometimes, they stole away to the city proper—Fluttershy’s meekness gave them the edge when it came to evading counselors. For the most part, however, they stuck to the campgrounds and journeyed to the top of the falls for the afternoon. Rainbow Dash spent much of that time figuring out how to get Fluttershy more comfortable in the air. She knew the fundamentals after three years of camp attendance, but her ponderous wingspan gave her grief with burst maneuvers like hovering, cutting, and climbing. Rainbow suggested she try to make her flight more fluid—gliding, using updrafts, turning in large, sweeping arcs—and that was that. The air accepted Fluttershy as eagerly as she accepted it. The look on her face when she flew all the way down Skyhead Falls for the first time—the astonishment in her eyes, that ear-to-ear grin—would stay with Rainbow forever. Eager to pay something back for her lessons, Fluttershy took Rainbow sightseeing. Three years of camp had given her ample time to find places not even the Cloudsdale native had known were there before. She showed her a little alcove just behind the top of Skyhead Falls where tiny bluecaps glowed quietly on the walls. She took her to the cloudvine trellises on the west side of camp to play tag amid the tendrils of white foliage. She also brought her to the Dragonpact Gardens, a memorial to those who brokered the alliance between ponies and their fire-breathing neighbors, where they watched fires dance in raised bowls until well after the sunset. Days flowed into weeks with the lazy ease of time well spent. Word reached Rainbow Dash’s counselor that she was skipping her assigned laps around the training course. When he tried to confront her on the issue, however, the filly peeled off a hot lap only a mare's breath from breaking the camp’s record time. She still wasn’t allowed on the Circuit, but that didn’t seem like such a huge deal anymore. They could have their dumb racetrack. Hanging out with Fluttershy was much more fun. That filly had come a long way since the beginning of the summer. She was the pony who met Rainbow Dash at her tent before morning assembly, and the newfound joy with which she sang the Equestrian anthem beneath the flagpole turned heads at first—including Rainbow’s. She was still pretty lousy at talking with the other ponies, having spent several minutes on her knees begging a colt’s forgiveness after brushing him with a wingtip. But progress was progress, and Rainbow was happy to see it blooming in her friend. *** “I’m telling you, he wouldn’t shut up. He just laughed and laughed and laughed—boy, he got on my nerves. So I waited until his fat mouth opened as wide as it would go, and bam!” Rainbow Dash pantomimed a vicious sidearm pitch. “Hard-boiled egg, straight to the back of his throat! Mwa-ha ha ha ha!” Fluttershy winced. She maintained her opinion that Rainbow Dash was a nice pony from the day they met, but she had her... moments. “Ha ha?” “Aw, lighten up.” Rainbow Dash’s voice peaked as it usually did when she got excited. “It’s not like he died or anything, right? Took him a week to cough all the pieces back up after that, but he got better.” The final week of flight camp had arrived much too quickly. In less than three days, Fluttershy could finally tell the place goodbye for the rest of her life. As she walked with Rainbow Dash along the road lining the training course, she glanced over at the one place that had given her the most misery she’d ever suffered in her life. How often had she crashed into one of those rings, or veered off course into a nearby pillar? How often had she posted the worst lap times in her team? She remembered looking forward to the day when she would never have to fly the course again, but now that she had completed all of her required sessions, she only felt confused. “Hey, Fluttershy?” The inquiry snapped her out of her blues. Shaking her head, she said, “Ah, sorry. Yes?” Rainbow Dash tapped her temple a couple of times. “I just remembered Leica told me that I could pick up my flight goggles from her today. You feel like coming along?” “Well...” Fluttershy stole another peek at the training course. “Actually,” she said, turning back to her friend, “since this is my last year at flight camp, I was thinking about taking one last lap around the course.” Rainbow Dash blew a raspberry. “That old thing? Puh-leeze. You’re too good for it now. Are you telling me you’d rather fly that brain-drain than feast your eyes on a pair of official, shiny, and just-like-new Wonderbolt flight goggles?” In a word? “Yes.” “Bah. Sometimes I don’t know what to do with you.” Though Rainbow Dash shook her head in consternation, her ill-concealed smirk told Fluttershy the full story. “I’m telling you, you’re gonna miss out.” Fluttershy replied with a smile of her own. “I know.” “Be that way. I’ll meet you back here in a few.” Rainbow Dash took off at a forty-five degree angle toward the campers’ tents, taking a little bit of the wind in her wake. Fluttershy watched Rainbow go as she retreated into the distance, all the way up to the moment when her friend dropped behind the first few rows of tents. Then she turned her attention back to the course. She had paused by its longest straightaway in the hour after lunch, when everypony had open access to the training course. Streams of buzzing colts and fillies raced each other through the rings, but they collided with each other with discouraging frequency. She began to suspect that entering the course at that part was a poor idea. Unfortunately, poor ideas have a way of conspiring with determination to ensure they are carried out, and the latter was something Fluttershy had had no idea existed within her until a couple of weeks ago. She had uncovered it deep within herself as a little, glowing node attached to the back of her heart. Furthermore, it reacted to Rainbow Dash’s presence—it grew whenever she was nearby, spreading through her core like the roots of a vital plant. She was a different pony now. She didn’t need an instructor to tell her to fly anymore. She could take to the skies on her own cognizance, and embrace the wings she’d once thought were accidents of her birth. Just after that filly passed by, of course. And that one. And that colt as well. And his friend. And that cluster of five, pushing and shoving each other out of the way—oh dear. Her chest constricted. Come on, Fluttershy, she told herself. Just remain calm, and remember what Rainbow Dash taught you. She waited for a pink filly to pass through the ring in front of her. Taking a deep breath, she pushed off of the cloud and flapped her wings. What if somepony caught her doing this? She dropped back onto her hooves. No. She cut herself off before she could question herself further. So what if somepony saw her? Again. She leaped, flapping her wings harder. Her eyes drew level with the bottom of the first ring, then rose above it—just a little bit more to go! Suddenly, the rings lined up before her. Her lips parted into a huge smile as she eased her flapping. She was on the course, all by herself, and nothing could stop her now! That was the moment gravity pulled up alongside her, pointed at her now motionless wings, and grinned its irresistible grin. Before she knew what was happening, Fluttershy’s front hooves struck the bottom edge of the ring—the world tumbled around her—she crashed onto the slope below and proceeded to pick up a terrifying amount of speed— The edge! It flipped up at the very last possible moment, shooting her through the sky like a stone. Her stomach evaporated, and her vocal cords followed its example. An orange pennant rose into the center of her vision on her downward arc, and then all she saw was orange. Moments later, she crashed on the clouds below. Shaken, but unhurt, Fluttershy lifted the fabric draped over her eyes. “Aw haw! Haw haw haw! Haw haw!” The cold daggers of humiliation pierced her heart. She recognized those voices. “Nice going, Klutzershy! They oughta ground you permanently!” *** “What the hay, Leica,” Rainbow Dash muttered as she flew away from the campers’ tents. “Telling me my goggles are suddenly missing like that? How do you misplace goggles? They’re not that hard to keep track of. They have smaller plates at the cafeteria, for pete’s sake!” With her only errand up in flames until Leica straightened her act out, Rainbow Dash decided to check up on Fluttershy. The cyan pegasus would be flying against the flow of the training course, so she didn’t think spotting her friend would take that long. She made her way past the slalom, the double corkscrew, and even reached the S-turns without running into her target. The back-half hairpin was empty, too. The straightaway, then— “Baw haw haw! Haw haw haw haw!” She recognized that laughing. Jerking her head down, she glimpsed a familiar, dark brown colt and his dirt-colored crony standing over a shock of pink mane. Blood surged into her cheeks. Those creeps! She dove like a hunting peregrine, only she landed at Fluttershy’s side instead of on their big, fat heads. They had the good sense to gape at her arrival, at least. “Leave her alone!” she snarled. “Oooh,” said Buck, recovering his jaw remarkably quickly. “What’re you gonna do, Rainbow Crash?” “Keep making fun of her and find out!” Her voice squeaked as if someone had replaced her throat with a rubber toy, but she could hardly care less. Buster glared at her. “You think you’re such a big shot?. Why don’t you prove it?” “What do you have in mind?” At this, the bullies turned to each other, hiding their mouths behind their hooves. The tall one said something that brought both their brows down maliciously. He turned back to Rainbow Dash. “How about a race?” “Done!” Rainbow Dash spat on her hoof. “Now wait a moment,” said Buster, sneering. “You don’t even know when or where we’re gonna do it.” Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Ugh, come on. I’ll take you guys on anytime, anywhere.” “Oh yeah?” Buster shot the filly a grin so full of teeth that it begged to be punched in. “Sunrise. Tomorrow.” “Where?” “Cloudsdale Circuit.” Fluttershy gasped. “What?” Rainbow Dash’s ears flattened back. “Are you stupid or something? The counselors will eat you alive.” “Then too bad you weren’t out there with us last month, Rainbow Crash,” Buck squawked as he circled around to her other side. “The instructors decided to open the Circuit to anypony who could finish a lap under two minutes.” “We blew that time away!” said Buster. “That means we can go on the Circuit. Any. Time. We. Want.” Buck punctuated each word with a jab at Rainbow’s chest. “We’ve gone every day for the past month, and now we know it as well as we know your mom.” Rainbow stamped her hoof on the cloud. “You’ve never even met her!” Her nemesis jammed the tip of his muzzle against hers. “That’s not important, Rainbow Crash. All you need to know is that we’ve been training on the Circuit, you haven’t, and we’re gonna crush you so hard that you’ll get kicked outta Cloudsdale and live the rest of your life on the ground.” It was all Rainbow could do to stop herself from biting that hay-eating grin off of that stupid mug. “In your dreams, maybe. You chumps had better show up at the Circuit tomorrow, ‘cause I’ll be out there, permission or not.” “Shake on it!” Spit-slicked hooves hooked around each other and the race was on. Rainbow Dash wished her glare could have melted the bullies on the spot, but she had to settle for watching them fly away. She turned to Fluttershy. “Hey. Did those goons hurt you at all?” The older filly shook her head in silence and looked away. “C’mon,” Rainbow tried to smile as she knelt by her friend’s side. “On your hooves, let’s go—hi-hup! There you go. You wanna head to the shop and grab a juice box or somethin’? I’ll cover you.” Fluttershy shook her head—at least that was what Rainbow assumed she was doing. It was hard to see face underneath all that mane. Rainbow’s almost-smile washed away like a napkin in a rain shower. This was all her fault, she realized. She could’ve held off on grabbing her goggles for another day (and she hadn’t even gotten them back, anyway). The idiot twins would never have entered the picture had she stuck around instead. No wonder Fluttershy didn’t want to look at her. “Sorry.” Rainbow’s apology sounded thin in the cooling afternoon air. She raised her wings to fly away, unsure of what good her presence would do now. “It’s okay.” Rainbow Dash furled her wings and turned around. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything earlier,” said Fluttershy as she walked over by Rainbow’s side. She tilted her head up toward the sky, as if trying to hold back tears. “I was just... those colts.” Rainbow Dash only nodded. “What are you going to do?” Fluttershy wiped the back of her hoof across her eyes. “Are you really planning on racing them tomorrow?” “I don’t really have a choice anymore, do I?” Rainbow Dash beat the air with two curt wing strokes. “If I don’t go out there, they’ll never let me show my face around here again.” “And if a counselor catches you out there, you’ll get kicked out of flight camp forever.” “I know, I know.” She planted her face into the cloud and groaned. “I know.” The sounds of camp crept into her ears, one by one: the oblivious giggling of campers navigating the training course above her, the breeze swirling in from the west, the muted rush of rainbows cascading into the lake just over there. These were the sounds she’d known during her past two years at camp—the whole idea struck her as kind of dumb, but she found herself missing those sounds already. Something brushed the inner edge of her wing. The face-down filly leaped to her hooves with a strangled noise, and she whirled on the culprit. “Fluttershy? Was that you?” “I-I-I-I’m sorry!” The hapless filly drew her hoof to her chest as if she’d burned it. “I... I—” She folded in on herself. “D’ooh.” Rainbow Dash swept her hooves in front of her with embarrassed speed. “No, no, I’m not mad or anything. I just wasn’t expecting you to do that—that’s all.” Fluttershy hesitated. “Well, um. I know you’re in a little bit of a tight spot with the race tomorrow, and that no matter what you do, it probably won’t end up all that well...” “Thanks.” Rainbow’s brows fell flat enough to build a house on them. “No! I mean, what I mean is...” Fluttershy tapped her front hooves together, her next words becoming quieter and more hesitant. “that I... just want to...” She shut her eyes in exasperation. “I want to help you win!” she blurted. It was Rainbow Dash’s turn to shrink back. The moment her friend said those words, her eyes flared open as if somepony had stoked bonfires behind them. The heat of that look washed over Rainbow, and for a moment, she thought she saw her friend’s mane ruffling in a gale that wasn’t actually there. The moment passed as quickly as it arrived, leaving her with the strange urge to smile when she should have been scared silly. “You’re right!” she exclaimed, punching the cloud with a hoof. “Who cares if I never come back here again? All I care about is getting those two morons back for messing with my girl!” She threw a foreleg around her friend’s shoulders. “Nopony gets away with that, you hear?” Fluttershy nodded. “So, what’s your plan to help me beat those two?” asked Rainbow, rubbing her hooves together. “Extra training? Sabotage? A secret technique?” Fluttershy motioned Rainbow to follow her. “S-something like that. Let’s head to the showers first, and then my tent. I’ll show you when we get there.” *** A damp Rainbow Dash landed in front of Fluttershy’s tent with a heavy pink towel slung across her withers. Drops of water arced from her mane as she shook it out. “Did I seriously have to take all of those showers?” She pointed this question at the yellow pegasus landing by her side. “Geez, I was perfectly fine after one—I do keep myself clean, you know.” Fluttershy closed her eyes and pressed a hoof to her chest. “Father always says, ‘When unsure, clean some more.’” “What is he? Some kind of neat freak?” The look Fluttershy leveled at the soggy speedster could have silenced a morning assembly. “He’s a doctor,” she replied. Rainbow Dash wasn’t the kind of pony to pay attention during morning assemblies. “I don’t follow,” she said. Fluttershy gestured her into her tent. Rainbow Dash had never thought about what Fluttershy’s living space looked like. The other pegasus was the one who showed up at her tent most mornings. And really: what would a pony like her put in her tent, anyway? Whatever she could have imagined, it wasn’t this. Strings of firefly globes ran in arcs along the uppermost edge of the tent’s interior. Squares of earth-toned fabric imbued with airy patterns covered the walls on either side, and long-stemmed flowers with pointed petals cropped up in places Rainbow only saw in the corners of her eyes. The air was warm and thick like a full-body scarf, and a slight trace of spice drifted across her nostrils. She spotted a jar of thin sticks with their bottom ends dipped in some amber liquid on a small table by Fluttershy’s cot, which took up the center of the carpeted floor. A cluster of vials joined the jar of sticks on the table along with a photograph propped against a small stack of books. “Well...” Fluttershy’s hoof poked the carpet underneath as she gave her friend the biggest smile she could manage. “It’s not much, but... welcome.” Rainbow Dash was too busy retrieving her jaw to answer right away. Who in their right mind would ever bring this much stuff to camp? She thought back to her own tent and its only decoration, new that summer—a photo of her and Fluttershy during one of their trips into Cloudsdale. Fluttershy’s tent made no sense—and, at the same time, it couldn’t have fit the filly any better. She led Rainbow over to her cot and helped her lie down on her stomach. The pillow beneath her muzzle smelled like lavender, and it sent her thoughts elsewhere as a pair of hooves rotated her head to the side. One by one, she felt her limbs being moved toward the foot of the cot. Her towel ran up and down her mane, tail, and wings a few more times for any straggling moisture before it lifted off of her. Then she heard a ruffling sound, and a heavy blanket settled over everything between her dock and withers. “So, uh,” Rainbow started, shaking her head. She had no idea where she’d been during those last few moments. “What are you up to, anyway?” “I’m helping you win tomorrow.” Fluttershy’s voice was soft, even more so than usual, but there was no missing the touch of purpose beneath her tone. Rainbow Dash decided not to ask any more questions—at least for the moment. She still wasn’t sure what was going on, especially when she heard the quiet tinkling of glass somewhere behind her, but she was getting this impression... The impression, however it all worked, that things would work out okay. “Are you comfortable?” Fluttershy’s voice crooned from somewhere above her. “Say something if you aren’t.” The blue-coated filly inhaled, but remained silent as the seconds stretched in her head. “That’s it.” The warmth in that voice was unlike anything she’d ever heard from anypony speaking to her. “Breathe however you like, but make sure you keep doing so. It helps. Now, I’m going to take a wing, and we’ll go from there.” There was a moment between when Fluttershy stopped speaking and when she started working, and it reached down to grasp the very heart of the world. Rainbow felt a pair of hooves shore up her wing and lift it into the air. She wasn’t sure how to describe the feeling of moving her wing without moving it. The deliberate arc it traced as it descended to hang off of her flanks was equal parts soothing, terrifying, and exhilarating. The inside of her head went a little woozy. She pulled another lungful of breath through her nostrils just as the sound of hooves tapping together reached her ears. Grasping the base of Rainbow’s wing, Fluttershy rolled her hooves all the way down to its tip with several smooth motions—press, roll, release; press, roll, release. Every new stroke left behind a coat of oil that sank beneath her feathers and liberated tense filaments along the muscle fibers below, draining away sores and strains Rainbow had hardly even felt before. She wondered how long Fluttershy would be at this—just this—press, roll, release; press, roll, release. A glow coalesced within her wing like the heat of a fire after a cold winter’s day. How was it even possible to feel this good—or to make other ponies feel this good—with just a little rubbing? She didn’t even realize she had moaned until Fluttershy whispered into her ear. “Too hard?” “No, no...” The front of Rainbow Dash’s head was beginning to swim, but the feeling would go away if she talked too much. “Keep going.” Fluttershy paused to warm some more oil between her hooves. Then, one by one, she gently sandwiched each of Rainbow’s primaries at their bases and drew them out to the tips. “I should’ve asked to do this sooner,” she mused, nudging a section of misaligned barbs into place. “How often do you preen yourself?” “Say what?” “It’s when you groom your feathers to fly better. It’s a bit like flossing. Not everypony does it, but it’s very good for those who do.” A heady thrill coursed up Rainbow’s wing as another one of her primaries was gently pulled outward. Her thoughts wandered back to the first day they had met, back when they sat together in the head counselor’s office. The way Fluttershy’s feathers caught what little light there had been, how smooth they looked—they didn’t look nice on accident. She probably did this preening thing every day or something like that. For all the effort Fluttershy put into maintaining her wings, they had yet to repay her kindness in full. Rainbow Dash had to wonder at that. She’d never bother taking the time to care for her wings that often if they wouldn’t keep her in the skies. “Who taught you how to do this?” she asked. “Papa did.” Finishing with Rainbow’s primaries, Fluttershy reached over for more oil. Bottles clinked together. “I told you he’s a doctor, right?” “Yeah, so what?” “He’s been one for a very long time.” With more oil on her hooves, she started to work through Rainbow’s secondaries, always slow, always gentle. “And he has to stay at the hospital late to take care of all the patients he sees. Sometimes they’re sick, and he treats them with medicine. He sees injured patients more often, though, so he spends a lot of time setting bones, healing burns, mending tired wings...” Firm hooves pushed deeper into Rainbow’s wing, and her feathers continued to transmit every little press, tug, and knead down to their roots as their barbs untangled, zipping back into alignment. She was beginning to slip away.. “Back home, Papa takes me with him to visit his morning patients,” Fluttershy continued. “I don’t usually say much to anypony while I’m there. But I’m learning a lot just by walking with him during rounds. It’s... nice.” A puff of curiosity swirled through Rainbow Dash’s mind. “He sounds like a pretty cool pony,” she said into her pillow. “I’d be okay with meeting him someday.” Fluttershy only smiled. Finishing her work on Rainbow’s first wing, she tucked it against the younger filly’s flank and covered it with the blanket. She kept one hoof on Rainbow’s back as she circled around to the other side of the cot, where she drew out the other wing like a violinist drawing her instrument from its velvet case. As waves of pressure traveled up her wing, Rainbow Dash caught her memories wandering again—organizing themselves not in sequences of time, but presences. She turned to those that made her happy inside: winning her first sprint ever beneath the skies of dawn. Her first lap around Cloudsdale Circuit. The first day the instructors coached her team on inversions, and flying with the ground above her head and the bright sun on her belly. The first time she dropped into Deadmare’s Dive. She remembered the weather had been pretty bad—that decision hadn’t ended all that well. Oh, it hadn’t, now? Smiling, she motioned that notion over and escorted it around to the back of her mind, where she imagined herself bucking it straight into outer space. Deadmare’s Dive had ended well. If anything, it ended even better than she could have hoped for than if she had just flown it. “Thanks for—mmph. For all this,” she grunted, her pause triggered by Fluttershy’s hooves rotating her shoulder. “It’s nothing at all,” said the other pegasus. “No.” Rainbow Dash shook her head. “It is something. And it’s more than this.” Complete sentences were becoming harder and harder to come by. She winced, remembering how she’d yelled at Fluttershy the first day they met. She winced harder when she remembered the other filly had convinced the instructors to let her stay. “You’ve done a lot for me since I’ve known you. Hanging out with you’s the most awesome thing that’s happened at camp, ever.” Fluttershy’s hooves stilled. “You’re... you’re too kind,” she stammered. “I-if anything, I should be thanking you. Just knowing you’re there for me is enough to make me happy.” “What? Aw, geez.” Rainbow raised her head a little, finding herself struggling for words of gratitude. Strange work for a pony who’d grown used to relying on herself. “I don’t feel like I do enough for you.” “Well, I’ve never asked you for anything, have I?” Fluttershy resumed her ministrations, nudging an errant primary back into alignment. “Not that I can think of.” Fluttershy made a contented noise. “Then everything’s fine.” “But—” “Shhh... lay your head back down, now, and just focus on breathing. Let Auntie Fluttershy take care of the rest.” Rainbow paused, opened her mouth to protest—and, seeing the contented smile on Fluttershy’s face, closed her eyes and did as she was told. A little smile of her own emerged soon afterward, and her mind went blurry.