“You ever dream of flying?”
“Hm?”
Cherry Berry sighed, leaning back in her seat and rolling her eyes. “Ah, never mind.”
Roseluck shrugged, going back to the bushes on her right.
“Let me put it this way. Do you ever dream of something you love?”
There was a sharp crack as Roseluck’s trimmers sliced through a flower stem. “Hmm… not that I can think of.”
“Really?” Cherry turned to face her, studying the mare carefully. “You never do?”
Roseluck tapped her chin, sticking her tongue out and glancing up in thought. “Well, I love flowers. And I love my friends, too. Sometimes I dream of them. I don’t remember most of my dreams, though.”
“Okay, but do you ever dream of… non-material things?” Cherry pressed, almost desperate. “Do you dream of ideas?”
“Ideas?” echoed Roseluck, tilting her head to the side and reminding Cherry of a confused puppy.
Cherry groaned, folding her forelegs on the patio table and sinking her head into them. “I… I guess it’s hard to explain, huh?” She exhaled slowly before looking up. “Let me ask you this. Do you ever dream of being someone you’re not? Do you ever… feel like you don’t belong, and in your dreams you find that place you’ve been looking for? Where it feels like you’re always meant to be there?”
Roseluck blinked once, then twice.
“You know what? Never mind,” Cherry said, waving her hoof dismissively.
“O...okay,” Roseluck answered, going back to her flower bush.
Cherry slumped over on the table again, pressing her cheek into the cool metal surface. She closed her eyes and imagined something churning inside of her. She imagined a brief, hot flash of pain, and something erupting from her back.
But she didn’t need to turn around to know that there were no wings there.
Cherry glanced up towards the endless expanse of sky above her. It made her feel small, as if she were some tiny and insignificant being in a field of a million other things, undetectable by the eye and unfeelable to the world.
“Do you ever dream of love,” she whispered softly. “Did you ever love something so impossible, something that you can never have? Where everyone thinks you're crazy, because how can you love something like the sky? Do you ever wish you were something else?”
“What?”
“Nothing,” she answered automatically.
She turned to the right to stare at the rose bush. A bright red flower stood tall and proud, leaves turned up to the sky and almost glowing in a sacred, radiant light. The stem was still dotted with tiny water droplets, and the flower was slightly damp from its earlier watering.
It was beautiful.
Then Roseluck snapped the stem and it was gone.
Cherry sighed again, heaving herself back up to a sitting position. She straightened herself out and tried to smile.
“Maybe someday,” she said, looking up at the sky. Then, she wilted. “Maybe never.”