We’d been afforded time, and with that time, I really started to look for houses and actually talk to Soarin. The fighting simmered, decisions were made about the when and where, and as Haze came closer and closer, we had just about everything figured out.
We’d stick around Cloudsdale for the first six months because that was when Soarin’s contract with the Bolts ended: third quarter, 2012. We’d prepare and save, collect old and unwanted furniture from our friends and store it at the Acres. All things considered, District 10 seemed like the best place for us with the massive Ponyville Park stretching from its east side into parts of Districts 25, 26, and 27. With all the room we could ask for, Prism would have no trouble flying and gliding as much as he wanted.
The airport in the South Cardinal, District 28, was closer than I’d liked, but any further out and we’d be too far away from everypony. Applejack was one district away, Twilight was two, Rarity and Fluttershy were three, and Pinkie was five. At most, it’d take forty-five minutes to go see Pinkie by car, but that wasn’t too bad; it was better than the couple of hours it took to get here from Cloudsdale.
It’d be a while away, but we also got an idea from Rarity to apply to one of the Ponyville Charter Schools. I wouldn’t take a job until Haze starts schooling, but since Soarin’s contract ended around the same time a Charter School contract started, this would be the ideal way to go. Rarity also chewed me out for getting Pearl to ask her how foals were made. Open mouth, insert hoof, just how it is.
I overestimated the costs of things initially, so we were pretty set to make payments for a while just on savings even if we moved now without a job in place. I’d get my driver’s license in April, and we opted for a convertible sedan to ease my fears. At least without a roof, I could grab the kids and dip if things went too far south.
Twilight went over the taxes with me, and it made me realize just how good I had it in Cloudsdale. Homeowners association fees, property taxes, vehicle insurance, public school taxes (even though we’re going to use charter schools), sales taxes, city taxes, and apparently Twilight had plans to unveil a new road system called ‘highways’ that’d have tolls and higher speed limits on them for quicker access to important parts of the city—so highway taxes too.
Still, it wouldn’t be that bad after Soarin takes the job with that school. Fin was right: if they hire him, they get to use him as a selling point for their private model. The place was nice, all the kids wore awesome uniforms, and most importantly, my friends sent their kids to school there. It was one of the few private buildings in District 1, and if we were honest, it looked a lot nicer than the many public schools around. Prism turns three in June, so he’d start at one of those by next year’s fall. He’d be a little young, but four to five was generally the age range for preschool.
Almost everything had been decided and readied before Haze was born. The only thing that wasn’t decided was the important question: should we stop with Haze or could we consider more in the future?
This was… a shift in my life. A major shift. A major shift in all our lives. Chances are good that I’d never have another earth pony even if we did have a few more kids, and if we didn’t, I… I didn’t know how I’d feel about Haze being the only non-pegasus in the family. He couldn’t fly with us. He’d need the band every time we go to Cloudsdale, and we’d always need to get a ride to go see his grandparents. He was gonna be an outcast in his own family, and I don’t know that I want to make that worse.
That one would have to wait.
The 2011 Hearth's Warming party brought with it the announcement of Applejack’s new set of twins and me announcing the final plans of my move to Ponyville. We’d found a place on the northern edge of District 10 that had four bedrooms, a decent-sized front and backyard, and two floors with a balcony on the second. It was average as average got in the nature-ridden parts of Ponyville, but pretty much what I wanted.
With said announcement, all my friends gifted me new furniture, each piece with the giver’s own unique spin on it that really made me… well, cry. I was about forty days away from popping and my moods swung all over the place, but I was happy all the same. The doom, the gloom— they’d given way to the joy of a new son, and things were good.
January came and went, and on February 10th, 2012, Haze took his first breath. As Prism predicted, he had a cyan coat just like mine, magenta eyes just like mine, his dad’s dark blue hair on his head and tail, and little hints of the rainbow at the back of his hooves, meaning he might have the same rainbow highlights there that Prism had.
Small for an earth pony, massive for a pegasus. I hadn’t felt much of Prism’s birth, but for Haze, I felt the whole thing and then some. He didn’t outgrow me or anything, but he was almost forty kilos on the day he was born, nearly double what Prism had weighed, and way more than ten percent of my weight.
Forty kilos is a little on the light side for earth pony foals—at least he was completely healthy with no ailments at all. Hearing that number for the first time made me realize that both Applejack and Pinkie had about eighty to ninety kilos sitting in their bellies at one point; I couldn’t even begin to conceive doing that. I could barely fly by January with all the strain just standing put on me. Earth pony twins would’ve made flying a pipe dream.
The ride back from Ponyville Hospital a week later was a nervous one. Twilight assured me that the band wouldn’t be too tight on him at any point in his life, but that didn’t comfort me. Haze didn’t seem to mind it though. Among other things, Prism had finally become articulate enough to use sentences, so he did. The whole way home. He kept saying things like, “He doesn’t have wings, Mama! Why doesn’t he have wings, Mama? Mama, will he grow wings? Can he fly, Mama?”
No. He never could, and he never would.
It was on the afternoon of May 15th that life changed again.
The noon day sky was bright and blue outside the kitchen window. It wasn’t all that necessary, but I liked to keep the lights on in here just in case Prism came looking for me. The TV in the living room showed footage of the race in Ponyville today, and Prism and Haze were in there playing. He wanted a snack and it was close to time to feed Haze again, so I was preparing just that when…
“Mama! Haze won’t give my block back!”
I took a sharp breath and let the apple I was peeling for Prism fall out of my hooves. One thing I didn’t consider, nor was prepared for, was Haze’s strength. At three months old and nearly three years old, Haze and Prism were of similar weight. At his age, Prism was average for a pegasus weighing in at about fifty-two kilos. Also average, Haze came in at about forty-five. There would be a very short period in his life where Prism would be stronger than his brother, but that gap was already closing fast.
I left the kitchen and made my way into the living room to see the scene for myself. Over the years, Prism had become something of a little architect and started building bigger and more extravagant structures out of his blocks. Today, he was recreating Ponyville castle again, but there were a few pieces missing. He needed one of the trapezoid cones to finish the main tower, which Haze was sucking on.
“Can’t you use a different one?” I asked.
My little rainbow-maned colt shook his head. “The… the colors aren’t right.”
And that was his thing right now. The colors always had to be right. A different color for each day, every building needed to be unique, and he couldn’t build the same one in the same color twice. Applejack’s colts played with blocks. Pinkie’s colts played with blocks. Fluttershy’s colt makes blocks on occasion, but he had his father’s powers. None of them, however, had the same level of engineering that came naturally to Prism nor the artistic finicky-ness that reminded me of Rarity at times.
Haze probably just wanted to play with his big brother, but that wasn’t allowed when Prism was in the middle of construction, oh no. The absolute meltdown he had when Haze knocked over one of his towers was a day to remember. Prism sure was my kid.
“Well, give me one of the ones you don’t want, Prism. You gotta share, dude.”
Prism frowned, looked away, then put a hoof on his snout as he considered which block he’d have to part with. This time, the castle was mostly violet with a few hints of blue and cyan here and there. To his credit, Prism’s creations had been getting more accurate as the days went by. I was never much of an artist and neither was Soarin, so where he’d gotten this from was beyond me. Maybe it was more to do with that grandmother I didn’t know and still hadn’t met. Haze, however, currently had the violet cone Prism needed for the castle in his mouth.
A few minutes of impatient waiting passed by, and Prism found me the cyan cone. “Haze sucks on Mama, so Haze gets the Mama-color block.”
“Wow! Phrasing!” Good Goddess, he’s me!
He flew over and deposited a cyan cone block on my open hoof. “What does… fray-zing mean?”
At least he hasn’t started picking up on Grandpa Flare’s vocabulary yet. That’ll be a day. “It’s how you word a sentence. Please don’t say ‘sucks’ anymore, okay?”
Prism shrugged while he buzzed his little rainbow wings in the air. “’Kay. Block please!”
So I went to Haze. Mostly compliant and far more passive than his brother, Haze wiggled his little hooves at me, keeping the block firmly between his milk teeth. His weren’t as sharp as Prism’s had been, but he had a stronger jaw, so he didn’t have to work hard to milk me. This kid was more gentle, which I was thankful for.
I leaned down and picked him up. “Hi there, Haze!”
Haze made baby noises at me. Somewhere between the delight and joy it was to hear him, there lurked a strange familiarity: he couldn’t make any words yet, but without a doubt, the same voice I’d heard in my dreams was speaking back to me. Happy little magenta eyes staring back at me over the cloud flooring of the house. The missing word had to be… Mom.
I presented the ‘me-colored’ block and watched his eyes track it. “Can I trade you blocks, buddy? Your brother really wants that one for his castle.”
I managed to get my free hoof on the violet block, but Haze pulled away from me. I sighed. Here we go. Tried to get the block a little more forcefully this time, but somehow, the kid wormed his way out of my hooves.
“Oh, come on!”
He darted to the other side of the living room, and now, it was a game. Call it a blessing or a curse, but ponies were born and expected to walk and run within a day. It was an old defense mechanism from the days long before the ponies of today, but it wasn’t gone. This made playing with much younger foals very easy. It also made catching foals a parental pastime.
Rather than help me, Prism raced to guard his castle, complete with shaking head and outstretched forelegs. “Nuh-uh.”
So much for team play. I lunged after the foal, but just before I got my hooves on him, he broke away and went to hide behind Prism’s castle.
Mortified, my rainbow colt shooed his brother away not unlike a bird defending his nest, wings flapping and all. “No! Go away, Haze! This is mine!”
Though unintended, this made Haze gallop to the other corner of the living room, and I didn’t feel like letting this go on any longer. Breaking my wings out, I flew where my youngest was headed, and just as he entered my reach, I tried to grab the back of his neck. He saw me before I did though and sped up a little. This led to me grabbing the band he was wearing.
And then, all at once, everything went wrong.
The mostly elastic band was not difficult to get off. Between my diagonal momentum and Haze’s forward inertia, the band slid down his torso. Horror-stricken, I tried to stop in place, but instead of helping, that made Haze trip.
The band came off.
Haze disappeared under the house.
“HAZE!”
Every single sense, every single muscle, all the power I had to think devoted to one thing, and I launched. I grabbed and ripped the floor of my cloud house away and dove into the deep blue. Haze was falling, and he was falling fast.
I beat my wings as hard as I possibly could, harder than I ever had. I had to catch him, and then I had to keep pace and slow down gradually. It wasn’t the fall that would kill him, but the landing. If I tried to stop too quickly, who knows what that might do to him?
Little else mattered. Save my baby.
With each flap of my wings, I got closer to Haze, and I could start to see the cone forming around my face. Subsonic? I’m gaining, but he’s still too far away. If I break the barrier will it hurt his ears? Deaf better than dead.
Faster!
He’s flailing. Droplets fly past me as I descend. He’s crying. He doesn’t have wings, he never will, he wasn’t meant to fly.
FASTER!
I can see him clearly now. I’m so close. Just a little more.
FASTER!
The cone broke.
The sky behind me exploded in color and sound, and I passed Haze.
I took the crying foal in my forelegs and started to swoop upward, carefully covering his ears as we passed through the rainboom. Sound was lost to me. Silence washed over the sky and my baby latched to my barrel. Slowly, carefully, gradually, we came to a lazy flying pace, and I held my baby tighter. My muscles ached and burned, a fine sheen of sweat cooled my coat, and my throat was dry and raw. But all that was nothing. He was safe in my forelegs, and now that I had him, I’d never let go.
When the ringing stopped and the sound of the high winds came back, so did the crying. I let my body gently sway in an off-canter flapping pattern to rock as we ascended. “Shh… Mama’s here. Everything’s gonna be okay. Mama will always be here.”
By the time I’d made it back to the house Haze had stopped crying. Sleeping softly in my forelegs like nothing ever happened. He won’t remember today when he gets older, but I’ll never forget. I didn’t even realize I was shaking. I threw the band back on him, but after I sealed the hole, I realized just how meaningless that was.
I’d never let him go.
Never again.
Never again.
Never again.
A few hours later, there was a knock at the door. I’d hid in my room for so long, trying to still my beating heart and holding both my sons captive, one sleeping soundly, the other complaining in my forelegs; I didn’t realize what was happening at first. My grip loosened on Prism just enough to let him escape, and he flew off to get it.
Only after I heard his concerned, “Mama?” did I finally move.
It was difficult at first. I’d used everything I had to save Haze. My exhausted wings didn’t want to recoil, my legs still shook and vibrated like I’d tried to lift the world with my hooves, and my heart had only slowed so much. Still, I never let go of Haze and eventually made my way to the living room.
At the door was Soarin. And two police officers. Fight or flight hadn’t turned off yet and my pulse was immediately back up to speed. Why were they here? Why did he look like that? Did Soarin get arrested? What happened?
My husband stepped in. “Prism, buddy, can you go play in your room for a bit?” What’s that tone? Soarin doesn’t emote much, sure, but that’s not just the usual, that’s flat. Sober. Monotone.
Little green eyes slowly looked from one parent to another before taking their leave with an equally cautious, “‘Kay.”
Colt up the stairs and out of ear’s reach, the officers stepped in as Soarin took the lead. Just shy of snout to snout, my husband put a hoof on my shoulder and pleaded with me, “Dash… what happened?”
I swallowed. This was all wrong. Everything about this was wrong. What happened? Why would he ask me that? How did he know? My mouth was so dry it felt like I was choking on the words. “The… the band. It came off. H-he fell.”
Pain washed over Soarin’s face. He slid to his knees and covered his face with his hooves. “Goddess damn it, Dash. I knew we should’ve moved before February. If you’d just listened to me for once in your life!”
No… No, no, no. What’s happening? What is this? “S-soarin?”
Agony scarred his face, tears welled up in his eyes. He couldn’t look at me. He ran his hooves through his mane, covered his head, and screamed. “Damn it! Damn it, damn it, damn it! Do you have any idea what you’ve done!? You went supersonic under the hospital! You cut power to the whole city! Ponies are dead!”
My mind started racing. He didn’t mean that. This couldn’t be right. I saved my baby. That’s all I did. There’s no way. I… I couldn’t have. Could I?
And then, I noticed. While I was peeling that apple for Prism, the lights were on. The TV was off, but the computer was on. I never turned anything off. It shouldn’t be dark in here. My breathing started to match my pulse.
“N-no. I- Haze, he…” I tried to take a step back, but my hoof caught something and I fell to my haunches. Instinct made me brace for Haze and my wings flared out. The officers sprung and flew to cover the window and the door. To… to prevent escape?
Why is it so hard to breathe? Where is Prism? He shouldn’t be alone. Not like this, not like this!
Tears welled up. Soarin crawled to me, pushing aside that stupid cyan cone and wrapping himself around me. He shouldn’t be crying. Soarin has cried twice in my presence, and both times, I’d just given birth. Why now?
He sniffed and swallowed. Took a shaky breath and said, “I love you. I always have, and I always will. But you fucked up. You fucked up big time, Dash. You need to call Twilight. Right now.”
That day, I caused the deaths of two ponies. An open cavity surgery that couldn’t be completed. A heart attack caused by the shockwave and unable to be restarted. A loss of power in most circumstances would be covered by a backup lightning matrix. In this case, both were destroyed by the boom.
Luck and quick thinking saved all the other patients in critical condition. But two families had been broken, and it was all my fault. One father, one foal. That’s what I paid for Haze’s life. And it could’ve been avoided entirely if I’d just… listened.
On top of the two lives, the bits required to pay for the repair of Cloudsdale’s lightning matrix, the hospital’s matrix, and every bottle powering all the homes around the epicenter of the shockwave would number in the millions if not billions. It would take a decade for the city to financially recover from this, and I would’ve paid for it with my life if not for Twilight.
Nopony knows what caused the power failure. Nopony knows what the source of the shockwave was. A perpetrator was never accused, and the victims would forever believe that it was some freak accident that killed their family. And I was exiled from Cloudsdale forever.
I’ll never live it down. I’ll never forget the names of the two lives I ended. And I’ll never, ever, let Haze go again. If I’d just been more careful, if I’d just been more patient, if I’d just listened in the first place, they would still be alive. But because they aren’t, we have to make up for it.
He’ll live long and happy and healthy, and he’ll never be put in a situation where I could lose him. I’ll always have an eye on him, I’ll always keep him safe, and I’ll never let him anywhere near danger again.
Haze was still alive. I didn’t lose him. I didn’t lose another baby. As long as I live, I will never lose another baby. We’ll disappear into Ponyville, and as time goes by, ponies will forget what happened. Haze won’t remember. Prism won’t remember. Soarin will try to forget. And I can never forget. It was all my fault. It will never happen again.
No risks. No chances. Never again.
All I need are my boys.
Because I have them, that’s all that matters.