Chapter 2: Sky High.
Clear Skies was quite the heartbreaker.
Her confident strut caught the attention of everypony in the room, male or female, and almost challenges them to refute her or approach her. Not many of the fillies took her seriously, but the colts certainly did. She’d had several of them literally fight over her. Mind you she headed those off quite quickly and forcefully. She wouldn’t have anypony being hurt on her behalf.
Be that as it may however, she wasn’t above making them buy her lunch for even the briefest nuzzle. She was secretly convinced part of her charm was that she was the daughter of a famous Wonderbolt, but she hadn’t told even her best friends that before.
Her entrance to her classroom the following morning was no different. She strutted in almost automatically. She had the attention of ever single colt and filly in the room, although many of the fillies were more looking at her jealously than anything else. Normally, this feeling would make her feel good and confident, but today? Clear Skies had something much more curious on her mind. Her mother had always been there, obviously. As had her scars. Patient, gentle, loving.
Eternal.
Even putting up with her pranks with but a smile, a short laugh and a soft reprimand to be a little more careful if it didn’t quite work, Skeleton had been patient with her. She loved her father as only she could, the two shared a special bond that wasn’t reciprocated by any of the other fillies, but her mother had and always would have a special place in her heart specifically for her. She’d never really given much thought to the scars, simply thinking them as part of her mother.
This new revelation scared her.
She started seeing her classmates with new eyes, especially the ones of the male persuasion, and even more so the athletes. She saw the captain of the cloudball team shoot a barely hidden glance of longing at her and she pointedly ignored him. She’d sat down a little while ago and was barely paying attention to the teacher, and she wasn’t talking. There was a flyer who fancied himself talented looking over at her. A filly over the other side of the room who was very shyly glancing at her every now and then, the twin pegasi of the class quietly discussing her. She could hear every word they said, or close to, having been blessed with her mother’s sense of hearing. She tuned them out and tried desperately to focus on her work.
First period and already behind? Unacceptable. Her father would never take her out to see the team like he’d promised her if she couldn’t even pay attention in class. He’d said if she could keep her grades up, he’d take her. He was coming to pick her up that very afternoon to speak with her teacher in point of fact, during school hours. Picking her up early was part of the deal.
Her mind roamed across the story she’d been told the previous night and it stuck and held to one part.
“I remember screaming it hurt so much, tears came to my eyes”
She could never see her mother crying, not even as a filly. She seemed so cool all the time and even when she was angry she was cold, calculating. Skies had been told she wasn’t always like that and that, once, she was prone to jumping to conclusions and over reacting to the smallest things, but she refused to believe it. Skies looked down at her book, not a single thing written on it. She felt a shadow fall over her and she looked up. The teacher stood before her with a concerned expression on her features.
“Skies? Are you okay? You haven’t written anything down and you look a bit worried. Is everything alright?”
Clear Skies nodded quickly.
“Yes miss, I just… I was just thinking about stuff. I’m sorry I worried you.”
The teacher smiled, relieved. Although Skies was certain she wasn’t convinced, she could see it in her eyes.
“Oh, well okay then dear. Just make sure to study okay?”
Skies nodded tiredly as the bell rang to go to lunch.
“Yes Miss, I will.”
~*~
Lunch. The most anticipated part of the day for anypony in school. The time to go out, eat your food and play to your heart’s content until the bell called you back into class. Clear Skies revelled in it.
Normally.
Today, she sat to one side of her incredibly chatty group munching on her sandwich. It was a simple sandwich, lettuce and daisies, but it was a good sandwich. Unfortunately, the taste of her sandwich was far from her mind. Even now, at school, she thought over the tale her mother had told her and her sisters the previous night. And every now and then she’d glance up at the members of her friends that were male and a stab of fear would shoot through her.
Now, now Skies… You’re in Cloudsdale here, not some little town where everypony keeps to themselves, nothing’s going to happen.
“Skies!”
She was jolted from her reverie by a close friend of hers. A pretty pink filly with azure eyes, sparkly red mane and an over the top way of speaking. She looked worried, probably because Skies was acting weirdly, the complete opposite of how she normally would. Her serious frown and refusal to participate in the conversations running across the group had them all looking at her in confusion. She shrugged.
“Sorry, I was just… thinking.”
A small, wiry colt with brown mane, orange coat and a whiplike mind tilted his head to the side.
“Thinking about what?”
Skies shrugged.
“Stuff.” She answered evasively.
“What kind of stuff?”
She looked at the colt, her temper rising in hot bursts that she firmly quelled.
“Private matters that have nothing whatsoever to do with you.” She responded coldly.
Cowed, the colt backed down, looking at his hooves in a show of embarrassment. The other members of the group still chatting stopped and looked at Skies. Suddenly under the intense scrutiny of fifteen sets of eyes, Clear Skies huffed and her temper flared. Rather than risk confrontation, she stood up, swung her bags of her back, snapped open her wings and sprang into the air, leaving the group far behind her.
She chose a much more remote part of the schoolyard to sit in and waited. Her father was meant to be here at any minute now. In fact, he probably already was.
“Clear Skies, please report to the office immediately please.”
Letting her temper ebb away, Skies lifted off once more and flew towards the administration building of her little school.
~*~
Spitfire. Household name and Captain of the flight team the Wonderbolts. Coming in second only to a first class, express mailpony, Spitfire had flown more miles than virtually any other Pegasus in existence. She was hard on her team, she was loyal to her team and she looked after her team. She was tough, ruthless on the track and beloved as a bit of a party animal off duty. Her flight suit was specifically tailored to her. Leaving virtually nothing to the imagination, Spitfire’s flight suit was designed for manoeuvrability, style and creating the least amount of drag possible. It also helped her keep warm, and attracted a hell of a lot of stallions and quite a few mares.
Yes, Spitfire was quite the mare. A mare who had, after her unfortunate but mutual breakup with Firestreak, remained adamantly single. No foals, nothing to tie her down and nothing to hold her back.
Well, not counting the filly clinging to her left hind leg as though she was about to vanish into thin air.
Spitfire looked back and smiled at Clear Skies as the excited filly hugged it happily and laughed.
“Hello there little Skies! I didn’t know you were swinging by!”
Skies giggled, her worries pushed to one side for the moment.
“Auntie Spitfire~”
Shaking the filly off of her leg, Spitfire turned around and embraced her properly, looking over her shoulder to her father with a smile. Soarin smiled back.
“Look how you’ve grown! Such a pretty young mare now aren’t we?”
Skies beamed proudly.
“Of course! Mother is beautiful too you know, so it’s only natural.”
Spitfire laughed. The other team members were poking their heads in now to see what the hullabaloo was about.
“No Skies, I’m afraid you take a little more after your father, goofball that he is.”
She giggled as Soarin put up a face of feigned injury.
“Spitfire! I’m not that bad!”
She giggled and shot him a disarming smile.
“Of course not Soarin! Don’t be silly.”
It was at this point Clear Skies spotted Fleetfoot and squealed in delight and ran to her, being caught up in the hooves of the laughing mare and hugged quite affectionately. Soarin smiled at the pair as they embraced, a faint thought echoing in the back of his head.
She could have been her mother had Skeleton not come in beforehoof.
He shook his head and put it out of his mind. He watched the pair talk quietly before Skies and Fleetfoot left the room in favour for a little privacy. He watched them go with a faint smile still on his face.
~*~
“So you want to know about your mum huh?”
Skies nodded earnestly, eager to learn what she could from the Wonderbolt she held in the highest esteem second only to her father. Fleetfoot pursed her lips.
“I’ll tell you what I can, but I’m afraid I didn’t know her until after your father started dating her, and even then it took time to coax her out.”
Clear Skies sat down and looked up at Fleetfoot in rapt attention as the swiftest of the Wonderbolts began telling the little filly the tale, or what she knew of it, of the nervous, fear driven mare Skeleton Grin.
"She was... very nervous at first. She was quite terrified, it seemed, that another mare was going to swoop down and snatch Soarin right out from under her hooves. She kept her eye mostly on me, since I, I will admit, had my eye on Soarin for some time. Even asked him out at practice once but he told me he wasn't interested. It was... Well, it hurt, but not as much as I thought it would. "
She coughed before clearing her throat and continuing.
"She was extremely affectionate towards him, and very, very jealous of anypony who spent time with him that showed any interest in him at all. The two very quickly became an item and Soarin quickly became tired of the paparazzi shooting pictures of him and her and trying to wrangle it into a scandal. Then your mother put those scary teeth of hers to work. For a while the pair went through a rough patch as the paparazzi pinned her as a madmare and a freak and Skeleton became a recluse, staying indoors and away from cameras. Soarin became adamant that she was not and Spitfire backed him up."
Fleetfoot smiled wryly at the expression of rapt attention she got from the filly before her.
Maybe foals wouldn't be so bad...
"She warned them that if they didn't stop making Skeleton out to be a freak or a bad pony she'd personally petition to the princess about having their organisation permanently disbanded and then made illegal. Nopony believed her of course. Then Skeleton came back out of hiding and she looked like thunder. She glared at Soarin when he tried to stop her and she gave those ponies a piece of her mind."
Fleetfoot shuddered at the memory, reliving it vividly. She had been there after all.
Bunch of nit picking, rumour spreading, flea bitten, no good, worthless....
"The insults... your mother has a very extensive vocabulary dearling, she's rather well spoken and can be very poetic when she's busy insulting somepony for all she's worth. She questioned their breeding, their legitimacy. She questioned whether or not they actually knew what they were really doing. She was very moving. Even the heartless paparazzi were in tears by the end of it. I remember one of them actually smashed his camera and publicly apologized to her as well, in front of all the others. She'd thanked him as gracefully as she could before walking up to Soarin, kissing him and saying they were a couple regardless what others thought. I don't think they bothered her after that. They still pester Soarin of course, but not when she's near."
Fleetfoot smiled.
"Sound like your mum to you dearling?"
Clear Skies made a curious sound in her throat.
"The last part... Well, no none of it did... She's always so calm and nice..."
Fleetfoot nodded with a smile.
"Yes she is. She's one of the nicest mares I know Skies. She just took a beating for her love of Soarin and her peculiar looks and she finally got sick of it and let it be known how she felt. It's been seven years and your father and her are still going on strong."
She smiled and ruffled the filly's mane before looking around. They were in her personal little area of the locker room and a letter sat on the table addressed, ironically, to the very mare she was talking about. She gave the letter to Skies and smiled.
"Here, give this to her for me okay? There's a good girl. We'll have to go out and have a girls day sometime hmm? Even tomboys like Icecream and movies right?"
Skies took the letter and nodded enthusiastically. Fleetfoot smiled.
"That's my girl."
~*~
The mood at the dinner table was sombre that night and they all felt it. Nevertheless, Pepper Pot asked, nay, begged her mother to tell them more of the story that night before bed. So, with a patient smile and the firm belief that they deserved to know and with her beloved Soarin by her side, not to mention Fleetfoot's letter waiting for her on the table, Skeleton Grin once more opened her heart to her children, regaling them with the second part of her tale. She had not plan on telling them about all of her scars, they were too numerous for that. But the major ones… that she could deal with.
“It was soon after I ran away from home at my parent’s insistence to protect me that I collected my next scar…”