No matter how much she scraped and scrubbed, the taste of soap wouldn’t be leaving her mouth anytime soon, not that it stopped Apple Bloom from trying.
“And what lesson have you learned?” Winter Gem asked sternly as she glared down at the small filly.
“A little foal like me shouldn’t swear…” Apple Bloom responded sourly.
“Very good,” Winter Gem said. “Now,” She turned to the other two fillies. “Who would you like to ask next?”
“Ooh!” Sweetie Belle raised her hoof and pointed at Wind Whistler. “How about the filly here? After all, you likely got your mark way more recently than the grown ups, so you could probably give us more details about how you got it!” She couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice.
“Me?” Wind Whistler asked hesitantly, turning to face her mother.
“Go on, Wind Whistler,” Her mother urged, sliding the blue filly towards the trio with a hoof. “This should be an interesting tale for these three fillies.”
“Well… alright.” Wind Whistler took a breath to steel herself before launching into her tale. “We had an exercise in school called Griff-Ball. Basically, one pony team would be the filth…” Wind Whistler fell silent when her mother rested a hoof on the filly’s withers.
“Oh, right.” Wind Whistler caught on immediately, took another breath, and began again.
***
Do something! Wind Whistler mentally screamed at her team leader who was too busy nervously dodging balls from the ‘griffin’ team to advise her own.
Another pony went down and Wind Whistler swore out loud. “Curse it!” The filly was finally fed up. They were outnumbered almost two to one already and all their “leader” had done was cower behind her ball.
What if these were real griffins? We wouldst all be dead!
“Bow Tie, Blossom, Shady!” Wind Whistler yelled out as she flared her wings and snagged a ball out of the air and launched it back into the crowd, pegging the ‘griffin’ that had thrown it in the face and eliminating him from the match.
“Yes?” The tiny blue unicorn foal addressed as Bow Tie asked in between pants of breath; the other two gave brief acknowledgements.
“The three of thee art the most dexterous. Get to the front of the line to catch or deflect the balls!” Wind Whistler ordered with authority.
The three foals rushed to the center of the field that served as their mock battlefield and quickly got to work doing as they were told. Each of them intercepted the balls the ‘griffins’ were chucking at them in methods varying from magic to catching them to deflecting them with a ball of their own.
“Lofty, Tiny Bubbles, Half Note!” Wind Whistler moved directly behind her three frontline ponies. “On me!” The three addressed ponies moved to obey. “Bow Tie, Blossom, Shady, when you catch a ball, throw it back to us; we shall be the shooters!” Wind Whistler could see the scenario play out in her mind’s eye, having discussed such strategy with her mother and father regularly.
The three didn’t vocally acknowledge them but they passed balls back as ordered.
“Frosting, Lucky!” Wind Whistler called out to the remaining colt and filly in the game, one of whom was her former ‘leader’ and relaid her orders. “Gather up the loose balls on the sides of the field and run them to the shooters!”
Lucky looked like he wanted to object but when Frosting moved to follow without hesitation, he too followed without protest. Within minutes, the opposing team that had been dominating the field was down to two-thirds of their numbers.
After five minutes, they had fallen below half.
As soon as only three or four of the opposing team remained, Wind Whistler shouted her last command. “Everypony, grab a ball and throw! Their defenses are broken! Let the slaughter begin!” The battle cry had the desired effect and the line of colts and fillies opposing them broke, seemingly trying to flee.
The commanding tone in her voice had the remainder of her team rushing to obey and within seconds they had utterly destroyed the retreating team of ‘griffins’ and were praising each other for their hard-earned victory, each pony covered in the sheen of hard-earned sweat.
Nopony noted the absolute grin their teacher wore on his muzzle.
***
“It wasn’t until after the match that I realized I got my cutie mark.” Wind Whistler was bringing her story to a close, the three fillies utterly riveted by her storytelling.
Even Barrier admitted, however silently, that the way she had told it had a certain flair.
“Frosting pointed it out, and when I got home, Mother and Father threw a small party for me.” Wind Whistler sat down as she finished, glancing back at her mother for approval.
Fleetfeather chuckled slightly and nuzzled her daughter. “Words could not express how proud your father and I were when he heard how you’d earned your cutie mark.”
“So…” Scootaloo began with the slightest hint of disappointment. “You got your mark by... being good in gym class?” She sighed.
Wind Whistler didn’t care; her mother's approval was all that really mattered to her in regards to her mark.
“How about your mom tells us the next story? She’s got an eye-patch, so I bet she’s got a great story about fighting off pirates or something!” Sweetie Belle piped up, drawing a happy nod from Apple Bloom.
Fleetfeather snorted in amusement and shook her head. “I’m afraid my cutie mark story is likely the most mundane out of those present. The eye-patch is actually from a fairly recent injury.”
The Cutie Mark Crusaders looked up at her, interested regardless.
“Very well,” Fleetfeather tugged her daughter into a warm embrace with her wing. “I will ‘regale’ you,” she emphasized the word, knowing what was to come. “With the story of when I realized I left my book-report at home. Tis truly an epic for the ages.”
***
The powder-blue filly’s blood ran cold when she upended her saddlebags and a particular parchment was nowhere to be found.
Her teacher would be beyond disappointed and her mother… She swallowed. Her mother was gonna skin her, or at least tan her hide for this.
Fleetfeather upended her empty saddlebags once more in a final desperate act.
“Drat!” the filly hissed under her breath. “Didst I drop it on the flight over?” She began to sift through the contents of her saddlebags once more, growing discontent as every overturned item revealed what she already knew.
“Sweet Faust’s teats,” Fleetfeather groaned and began stuffing her school supplies back into her saddlebags save a piece of blank parchment, an inkwell, and her favorite quill, fashioned from one of her mother’s feathers. Sitting at her desk, she took a deep breath and tapped her quill to the parchment, mumbling to herself and glancing at both the door and the foals around her. “Have all those night reading ‘Of Mice and Mares’ been completely for naught?”
How long did she have? Quickly glancing out the nearby window, she reasoned by what sunlight and shadows she could spot that she had arrived at school a few minutes earlier than normal. That was good. It wasn’t great, but it was good.
“Mayhaps I shall be able to recreate my report before Mrs. Moon Shadow arrives…” Her thestral teacher always seemed to run a few minutes late. Fleetfeather nodded resolutely and dipped her quill in the inkwell before setting it to paper, her feathers twitching with her movements as she began to move the quill at a blinding pace.
It didn’t register to the young Fleetfeather when the teacher came in, and only reflex had her announcing her name during the attendance check, muttered aloud and between the quill still held firmly in her teeth. She kept her focus solely on trying to scrawl out her new book report, even ignoring her teacher when she ordered the other students to gather their reports for her to inspect. It wasn’t until the feeling of a stack of papers which tapped her on the back several times in quick succession thanks to the colt that sat behind her, that she snapped out of her daze and jerked around, carefully lifting her quill from the paper so as to not ruin her efforts.
“Sorry,” She muttered her apology to her classmate and reached out with a hoof to retrieve the stack of papers before looking down at her own.
Giving it as brief of a glance-over as she could, she sighed and nodded. She’d recreated her paper well enough, but it was a little late to try and proofread it. “Zacherle, please be in my favor…” She gave the parchment a light blow to ensure the ink was dried before she added it to the growing stack and passed it forward.
***
“After school that day, I realized I had attained my cutie mark.” Fleetfeather finished before adding with a faint smile. “I also received the second highest grade in the class for my report. Quite good, given the circumstances.”
Scootaloo groaned. “So you got a cutie mark for writing fast?”
“In the simplest of terms, aye.” Fleetfeather added with a chuckled before she noticed Sweetie Belle’s contemplative look boring into her one eye. “What is on your mind little one?” She urged Sweetie’s speech with a soft tone, a warm smile aimed at the cream-white unicorn.
“Um, well…” Sweetie Belle looked up and met Fleetfeather’s eye, as Rarity had taught her to do when addressing somepony. “I was wondering, and I mean no offense, but why would a soldier have a cutie mark for that? Writing fast, I mean. I just don’t understand how it fits.”
Barrier shook his head in amusement at how Sweetie Belle had asked the question. The filly was far more aware of a social faux pas than her companions.
“There is quite a substantial amount of paperwork required for a military to run and function.” Fleetfeather explained, reciting the statement with an ease that screamed practice. “Helping to arrange and organize deployments, documenting various battles and operations for future reference, reports to our officers -” She pointedly glanced at Barrier and injected just a hint of bite into her tone.
“Some of them required an unecessary amount of detail in both my own and many others opinions.” She turned back to Sweetie Belle. “Secondly, we accepted any able-bodied pony in the military in our era. We needed all the help we could get. Many of the ponies serving in the military -army, air-force, the navy- were doing so solely to fight for Equestria and protect their loved ones from the griffins, our enemy at that particular time. Cutie Marks were little more than an identifying mark to the guard. Whether you had the mark of a guardspony or not, you were welcomed with open hooves.”
A light tapping drew the group’s attention to Barrier. “While marks such as mine and Swiftsword’s weren’t terribly uncommon in our era, they were far from normal fare.” Barrier glanced at Fleetfeather and smiled at the shorter cycloptic mare, though he doubted she saw it as she had taken to conversing with Wind Whistler who still resided beneath her wing.
Apple Bloom nodded in understanding before pointing at Fleetfeather’s most identifying feature. “Well how ‘bout yer eyepatch? Can yah tell us how yah got that?”
Sweetie Belle and Barrier both winced when Apple Bloom’s question tapered off.
The pegasus swallowed and shook her head, glancing sadly down at Apple Bloom. “Tis… not something I would like to discuss. It is a reminder of a very painful memory and I would rather not relive it if I can help it. It… reminds me of things best left forgotten.”
Scootaloo groaned and flopped around the floor briefly before shooting upright. “Whatever. Can we at least get a cooler story, please?”
“Oh, um…” Sweetie Belle raised her hoof. “Before that, can I use your bathroom, Mr. Barrier?” She rubbed her hind-legs together. “There wasn’t exactly one in the box.”
“Of course.” Barrier glanced at Sweetie Belle and then at Wind Whistler who had extricated herself from her mother’s wing. “Windy, why don’t you show Sweetie Belle to one of the restrooms?” Barrier glanced down at the filly in question.
“Yessir.” Wind Whistler answered dutifully, causing Barrier and Fleetfeather to chuckle and watch the pair go.
“Hopefully by the time she gets back, Ah’ll have the taste o’ this dang soap outta mah mouth…” Apple Bloom set about scraping her tongue once more before belching up a bubble.