Friday
"You need me to what?" Rainbow Dash said, her mouth twisted into a grimace. A muffled, high-pitched voice responded from the other side of the bathroom door.
"Look, I need help changing them because I can't reach all the way around my back. It's not that bad."
Rainbow's stomach flopped a little bit but she pushed the feeling away as best she could, setting a hoof on the doorknob. "Okay, kid, I'm coming in now..."
Gabriel sat on his hindquarters in the middle of the sparsely-decorated upstairs bathroom, fiddling with the yellow-white bandages around his foreleg. He'd already removed the bandages around his head—they'd come away clean, so at least she wouldn't have to rewrap that particular wound. She watched as he undid the wrappings around the enchanted splint that clung to his foreleg with his teeth, taking care to extract the bits of faintly-glowing wood and set them on the tile floor. Then he removed the bandage underneath, pulling at layers of cloth that became progressively more yellowed and browned as they came away.
"You gonna just stand there and stare?" he muttered through the bandage without looking at her.
Rainbow coughed and pretended she didn't have an embarrassed blush growing in her cheeks. "Er, yeah, of course." Then, more confidently: "How can I help?"
The colt jerked his head. "C'mere, I need you to hold this," he said through his teeth. The cyan pegasus sat down beside the much smaller foal and leaned in to grab the end of the bandage from his mouth. He spat a little once it was free. "Augh, that tasted kinda like pus."
"Gross," Rainbow chuckled.
Gabe returned his focus to his foreleg, shifting it to point at her and waving it in a circle. The bandage there quickly became loose and he pulled the rest of it away in one big heap, holding his naked foreleg up.
"Ah, much easier," he said as he turned his head away, apparently missing the face that his caretaker made.
The sewn-up gash on the kid's leg radiated an angry red color. Little bits of his stitches stuck out of his flesh here and there, poking up in a way that made Rainbow deeply uncomfortable. The fur at its edges that had not escaped the razor wasn't green anymore and a mostly clear but, yellow-tinted liquid seeped out through the cracks in the crusty-brown scabs that ran the length of the wound.
"Uh, kid, are you sure you're fine? That cut doesn't look so hot."
"Huh?" Gabe turned back to look at Rainbow with a quizzical look, a tube of ointment held between his pearly whites. He glanced down at his foreleg and spat the tube out onto the floor. "What do you mean?"
Rainbow grimaced. "Just look at it! There's that stuff coming out from it. Doesn't that mean it's infected?"
"Infected? Oh, no, not at all." The colt shook his head."I mean, maybe, like, a little? But believe me, if it were really infected, you could tell from the smell alone. And, y’know, there'd be real pus. The green-and-yellow stuff. No, it just looks nasty because it's healing right, and I'm pretty sure that paste is an antibiotic. It's probably all good, so don't worry."
Gabe inspected a droplet of blood that welled up from a crack between two scabs and muttered very quietly to himself. "Hmm. I wonder what my blood type is." Then, he looked back up at her and gestured to the neat pile of bandages sitting beside him. "Can you grab one of the smaller rolls?"
Rainbow scooped up one of the clean white bandages. "How do you know about blood types? Did you learn it in school?"
The colt didn't respond right away, as he had removed the cap from the tube of ointment and placed the tube back in his mouth. Rainbow watched, a little impressed, as the colt carefully squeezed some of the medicine onto his wound. Then he spat out the tube again and spread it over the whole cut with the tip of his hoof.
"I've dealt with a lot of stuff like this in my day, believe it or not. Unpleasant times."
No kidding.
"It wasn't all bad, though. Folks just tended to get... scraped up along the way. Some worse than others. And we weren't always lucky enough to have, um, doctors nearby." Rainbow got the feeling that 'unpleasant' was a grave understatement as Gabe continued. "Okay. I'm gonna need you to hold the edge of the bandage right here..."
The colt walked her through the process of rebandaging the wound, replacing the splint, and then wrapping it all up tightly. After they finished and he tested out the range of movement in his leg, a bit of pride surged through Rainbow's chest. She'd never changed bandages like that before.
"And now for the hard one," Gabe said, reminding Dash of the ugly wound on the colt's side. "Hmm, not lookin' forward to this."
Rainbow stuck her tongue out. "Me neither, kid."
They removed the outer wrappings easily enough, but things got rougher once they reached the final layer. Rainbow tried not to focus on the way the cloth peeled away from his shaved skin, trailing thin strands of Celestia-knew-what and prompting the colt to produce the softest hiss. The wound underneath looked so unpleasant that Rainbow had real trouble keeping her breakfast down.
Through it all, the colt looked calm as ever, continuing to give Rainbow level-headed instruction as she smeared the wound with ointment and re-wrapped the colt's torso up like it was Nightmare Night and he'd chosen to dress up as a very incomplete mummy.
She pinned in the trailing edge of the bandage and produced a relieved sigh. "Finally. That was gross as heck."
The little green colt gave a good-natured chuckle. "Hey, at least you're not the one who's gonna have to walk around with a brutal scar."
"Yeah." Rainbow still couldn't shake the thought that had lodged in her head. How did he keep such an impossible calm? "Hey, doesn't this hurt?"
The colt shrugged, beginning to paw at the bandages on his wing. "Sure. Why?"
"I mean, doesn't this hurt, like, a lot? This isn't like, y'know, dressing up a hoof-cut." Rainbow had seen other foals in tears over things like papercuts and bee stings.
The colt thought about that for a second, cocking his head to the side and chewing on his lip.
"Yeah, I mean, it hurts just about as much as you'd expect, but it's not so bad once you get used to it. I think why, uh, ponies freak out when they get hurt is just because it's surprising, yeah? It's pretty shocking to get injured." He twisted his head around to look at his freshly-bandaged side. "But once you get over the shock it's just annoying. And from there it's a matter of doing your best to not think about it."
“Wow,” Rainbow felt a little dumbstruck.
Gabriel chuckled. "Y’know, isn't so bad that I can't ignore it now, but if I'd have been awake when I got it, I probably would have been screaming my head off."
It felt indescribably absurd to watch such a little colt talk about getting horribly injured and maimed so calmly. How many times had he seen this happen to become so jaded by it? How many times had he been hurt to learn to ignore pain on the scale of getting your side torn out?
What did this to him?
Rainbow felt so simultaneously heartbroken for him and angry at the ones responsible that the emotions just clashed in her head, rolling around and tousling and mixing into a blob of sorrow and disgusted exhaustion. She shook her head a bit and refocused when she noticed Gabe struggling to undo his wing splint. "Here, let me give you a hoof."
It turned out that, at least when it came to wings, Rainbow was much more knowledgeable than Gabe. Apparently, nopony had ever bothered to teach him about them. She carefully inspected the limb, preened out the bad feathers, and after a while of moving it this way and that and asking Gabe if it hurt (she told him not to play it down, just to make sure,) Rainbow announced, somewhat surprised, that his wing had healed and the splint could go in the trash.
This kid is healing fast, she thought to herself as she dropped the used wing-splint in the bathroom wastebasket with the rest of the old bandages. It lay there, discarded, its job complete, and Rainbow furrowed her brow. I can't wait 'till it all goes in here. It would be a relief to see that colt trotting around looking normal and not like a walking bandage roll.
To think that there were people in this world willing to do such terrible things to a foal. Whoever did this had better hope I never get my hooves on 'em. Then she took a deep breath and let her twisted-up muzzle relax.
"Hey, Gabe," Rainbow said over her shoulder.
"Hmm?"
She turned around. "I, uh, I want you to know that you don't have to worry about getting... hurt like this anymore. I'll make sure you stay safe."
The little foal got a weird look in his eyes and opened his mouth to speak, then after a moment closed it again. A moment passed. "Thanks, Rainbow."
Sandy Hills' ears twitched at the sound of an opening door and she raised her head to see Rainbow Dash and little Gabriel shuffle into the room. She greeted the duo with a wide grin. "Gabriel, Rainbow Dash! So good to see you two! I'm glad you found the room alright."
"Heya, Sandy." Rainbow remained in the doorway, shuffling her hooves.
What’s going on with her? Sandy thought. She looks... nervous? Uncomfortable? Odd.
"Hi, Miss Hills," Gabriel said, walking into the room and examining its decor.
Sandy had worked hard to make the foal therapy room as comfortable as possible. The walls were painted with a mural of blue skies and rolling green hills punctuated by images of frolicking colts and fillies.
The only furniture in the room was a table made to be just the right height for foals, surrounded by a set of well-loved sitting pillows. Beat-up donation toys cluttered the room's corners; some foals talked best while playing.
Gabriel ignored them, making his way to the table and prodding one of the cushions with a curious hoof before plopping his rear down on it. "Alright, Rainbow I'm all set," he called over his shoulder.
"Great, I'll see you this afternoon. Be good for Sandy, okay?"
"I will."
Rainbow gave them both a big wave, which Sandy returned, and vanished back out the door. Gabe turned back to face her, looking expectant, so the counselor retrieved her clipboard from her saddlebags, which she had set in a pile nearby, and began their session.
"I'm glad to see you walking around so well, Gabriel. I noticed your wing is free."
The aforementioned limb flopped on his back at its mention. "Yeah, Rainbow said it was good so we didn't splint it again. Feels great."
"How's your pain. Not too bad?" He shook his head. "Ah, fantastic." She cleared her throat, wishing she'd had the foresight to bring a glass of water in here. "So, tell me! How has your time with Rainbow Dash been so far? What have you two been up to?"
"Oh, she's been good," he said, "she showed me her house, which is made of frickin' clouds! I've never seen anything like it. Then she took me into, uh, Ponyville and we bought some stuff. She was real nice the whole time, explaining everything to me and buying me food. We bought hot dogs from a stand and they were amazing, I, uh, just wish I could have helped her pay."
Sandy decided to address the paying comment second. "Hot dogs? Do you mean hay dogs?"
He made a confused face. "Same thing, right?"
The counselor shook her head. "I've never heard them called 'hot dogs.'"
"Huh. Well, you get the idea."
"Gabriel, what do you mean when you say that you wanted to help pay for the hay dogs?"
He shrugged his little green shoulders and brushed some of his tousled mane out of his eyes. "I just mean that, uh, I'd rather not be a burden. Pulling my weight and all, y'know?"
His words made the pegasus mare put down her clipboard. "Oh, honey, you're not a burden to us, I promise."
She could tell from the look he gave her that he didn't believe her for a heartbeat. "Maybe, maybe not. Doesn't change the fact that she still has to pay to keep me fed and a roof over my head. I don't like that."
"Oh, don't worry, Gabriel. Because she agreed to it, the ministry will give Rainbow the money to take care of you. She shouldn’t need to pay out-of-pocket, not a single bit."
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Wow, you guys really do that?" When she nodded, he chuckled a little. "This place is so different from home..."
"Well, how'd the rest of you two's day go?"
"Ah, it wasn't much more than that. We ate the hay dogs at the park and talked a little bit. She really is sweet, that mare."
Celestia, it was so strange to hear the foal talk about Rainbow like she was a friendly coworker and not his temporary foster parent. Then again, she thought, there are worse ways for a foal to think of their caretakers. "What do you mean, Gabriel?"
He waved his hoof in the air. "Oh, I mean that she's so concerned about me, even though she tries to hide it and be cool all the time. When we were shopping she offered to buy me some toys... or something."
Sandy Hills smiled a big, happy smile and clapped her hooves. "Oh, that's wonderful!" Not something I would have expected from the ever-cool Miss Rainbow Dash, either. "Which did you pick out?"
"Oh, I didn't get any." She blinked and her smile disappeared, to which he responded: "Yeah, Rainbow gave me the same look. Don't worry, I made sure she knew that it wasn't because of her, just that, y'know..." he scrunched up his muzzle. "I don't even know what I'd do with a toy. Not really about to play with one."
"Why not?"
He looked her in the eye. "Miss Hills, I haven't really wanted to play with toys in years. I guess I grew out of 'em, like, um, anypony else."
Sandy hummed, trying her best to keep her expression positive. "It's okay to play with toys at your age, Gabriel. I'd say most every foal your age does so. There's absolutely no shame in it."
He huffed but didn't deny what she said. "Anyway, I can tell Rainbow's really concerned about me, especially when I tell her about anytime I've been through something tough. She's just..."
A moment passed while he hesitated, scratching at the surface of the worn wooden table with the tip of his hoof. "She's lookin' out for me, and I can appreciate that."
The foal obviously put a great deal of effort into putting up the appearances of an adult. It was going to take time and hard work to convince the little foal that it was okay to act his age here. She shuddered to think of what experiences he had been through that had so thoroughly convinced him that he absolutely had to behave in such a way.
"I'm glad that you and Rainbow are getting along so well,” she replied, “Not every foal takes to their foster parents so well, especially if they're this temporary."
"Huh. Weird," he said. She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow in a silent question. He blinked and then rushed to explain. "I mean that, uh, I didn't really think about the fact that she's my foster mother. Odd thought. But yeah, she's cool, even if she tried maybe a little too hard yesterday."
"What do you mean?" A spark of worry leapt up in her heart and she rushed to suppress it. This is an Element of Harmony we're talking about. I'm sure it's fine.
"Oh, it's just that, on the way back to her, uh, floaty cloud home she stopped to show me what it was like to walk on a normal cloud. It was pretty cool, but then she got too excited and tried to show me a trick."
Uh-oh, Sandy thought.
"She hit one of the clouds going real fast, and it made lightning, and it caught me off-guard." He looked back to the table, scratching at it again with one hoof and brushing light green mane out of his eyes with the other. "She had to fly down and catch me after I jumped off."
That made Sandy's heart leap up into her throat, and a rush of anger leapt up with it. How dare she? Didn't she know she was dealing with a traumatized foal? "Now, Gabriel," she began, not quite able to keep her voice venom-free, "If you want me to speak with Miss Dash–"
"No, no, it's not what you think," Gabriel waved his hooves, his big brown eyes glinting with something that seemed close to concern, "she didn't know I’d do that. If I’d had any idea what she was trying to do I would have told her that loud noises like that are a pretty bad idea. She was really sorry afterward. I think it's still bothering her, even though I told her it was ok. She's apologized, like, forty times. Really. I barely got her to stop."
Sandy paused, holding her righteous anger back. "...are you sure, Gabriel? If Rainbow Dash tries anything like this again–"
"It's fine, I promise. I just wasn't expecting it."
The counselor thought for a minute. "If you say so, Gabriel. If she does something like that again, though, I want you to tell me as soon as you can, okay?" It'd be unfortunate if Dash wasn't able to foster because of her ego... The tan mare reminded herself to send the letters she had written out to the potential families. "Now, Gabriel, I know you've been through a lot, so I want to remind you that if you feel uncomfortable answering any of my questions, just tell me, okay? I need to find out a little more about your background, so I know how I can help you best, alright?"
He nodded. "Alright."
"Thank you for letting me help. Now, can you tell me a little bit more about why loud noises are a bad idea?"
The colt chewed on his lip a little.
Sandy smiled and waited patiently for him to think out his answer.
"They're reminders. Of hard times." And that was apparently all he had to say about that.
"Well, can you be a little more specific about the kind of noises that scare you? Is it any loud noise?"
"Just loud, sharp ones," the colt specified, "like lightning cracking or dropping a heavy book on a flat floor. Also, uh, thunder. Thunder especially, even though, um… it’s not sharp. I guess."
Sandy noted that down with a quick flourish of her pencil. "Thank you, Gabriel. I won't ask you about those noises anymore, but I will remind you that you're welcome to tell me about them at any time, as long as you're comfortable."
He blinked at her. A little bit of his light green mane fell over his eyes.
She cleared her throat. "Gabriel, I'd like to know a little bit about your background. This can be a hard topic, so just know that–"
"I'll let you know if I'm uncomfortable answering."
Good. Foals could sometimes be hard to convince to do things like admitting when they weren't comfortable talking. Depending on the foal, it could take multiple sessions to get them to be able to tell her that they didn't want to speak on a subject instead of awkwardly dancing around it or just clamming up entirely.
It was great that Gabriel said he was willing to tell her, but whether or not he actually would do so posed to be an entirely different matter.
"Okay, Gabriel. I'm going to ask you about your past." She looked at him, and he gave her a nod. "You said you're from Westfield, correct?"
The colt nodded. "Yep."
"Were you born there?"
"Yeah."
To his knowledge, which may be unreliable. The colt had said he had grown up in Westfield, but that could be anything from a town to the trafficking circle's base of operations. "And your parents, um..." she peeked at her notes, squinting and trying to remember how he had pronounced those odd names.
"Amelia and David."
"Right." She noted down phonetics this time. "Can you tell me about them?" Gabriel had said they weren't ponies, leading Sandy Hills to theorize that, whoever these people were, they were not his real parents, and the same could likely be said for his sister.
The fact that he shared their strange naming conventions implied a renaming as well. However, that didn't mean that they hadn't treated him kindly; he did refer to them as family, after all.
Then again, foals' recollections weren't known for being especially reliable.
This really is all up in the air.
"I remember 'em pretty well," Gabriel began. "My ma was super sweet, if a little doting. Because I’m the youngest, she would always be making sure I was safe and stuff like that." He paused for a while, swallowed, and continued, still not meeting her eye. "She had a kind soul."
Caretaker, Sandy thought, maybe one of many made to look after the stolen foals. Perhaps uncharacteristically kind?
"My father definitely wasn't so sweet,” he said with a sad little chuckle, “but he cared about us. Just had a hard time showin' it."
As she wrote, Sandy jotted a note on the margins to ask if he had any more siblings. These foals, for all she knew, were still being abused somewhere. If—no, when she had enough information, she would take it to the police.
"He was stern and traditional. He liked being thought of as tough, and it was true. He made anyone dumb enough to pick up a fight with the family regret it, but I think he was a softie inside because when folks really needed it, he wouldn't hesitate to cut 'em a break off work and pay the cost."
This was interesting. Gabriel sounded like he was describing a guard, perhaps hired muscle, but one with a caring heart. If that was really the case, what was he doing foal-trafficking?
Sandy finished her note and looked up at him. He still seemed alright, perhaps a tad uncomfortable. If that gets any worse, I may have to stop asking questions regardless of what he says. Some part of her thoughts seemed to show on her face, though, because he spoke up a moment later.
"They were good people, Miss Hills. They did their best, and they didn't deserve what happened to them."
"What happened, Gabriel?"
He scratched the table. "I'm not going to talk about that, but... well, when I say they're not around..."
She had no trouble putting two and two together. "They've passed on."
He solemnly nodded, still looking down.
The counselor wondered what they had done to deserve such a punishment. Maybe they’d given in to their conscience and helped some of the foals escape... if that were the case, then the group Gabriel had gotten away from was highly dangerous.
His injuries certainly supported that theory.
"Were they always your parents, Gabriel?"
He gave her a little bit of a weird look. "Yeah, of course."
Taken too young to remember? The monsters. Sandy wondered if his real parents, his pony parents were somewhere out there, still mourning the loss of their colt. Maybe, one day, they would find out enough to track them down... but it wouldn't do to give the colt false hope, so she kept the thought to herself and moved on.
"What can you tell me about, um, Raych-ell?"
"Rachel," Gabriel corrected, "she's... she was my older sister. My only sibling." That one, unfortunately, did not need explaining. "After our parents were, uh, out of the picture, she took care of me."
Another guard, perhaps, or an older child that had been subject to the same kind of renaming as Gabriel? Sandy continued to jot notes as he continued.
"She was tough as nails, like our dad, and didn't fu–, erm, mess around, but she was angry a lot of the time. Things were pretty rough for us, and she hated it.” His voice became low and quiet. “She took care of me for a long time, and she always stuck up for me."
An ache Sandy hadn’t felt in a long time gripped her heart. She reminds me of Gentle Breeze...
"Eventually, she had to go. I—" The foal folded his forelegs on the table and rested his head on them with a sigh. "I miss her."
Sandy's heart wrenched in her chest. "Oh, Gabriel..." She set down her clipboard and walked around the little table to wrap him in a hug. He didn't lean into her, but she silently gave thanks that he didn't push her away.
After a moment, she backed off, though the pegasus mare chose to sit beside him now instead of across from him.
"It's okay," he said. "I know that she's in a better place."
A silence passed as Sandy Hills considered how to proceed. Their time was drawing to a close, so she decided to begin to tackle one of the colt's bigger issues. "Your family... they didn't look like you and me, did they?"
A tired chuckle escaped from the little green foal beside her. "No, they did not. They weren't ponies." Griffons, most likely, despite the names not starting with ‘G.’ She supposed that included his strangely-named sister, too. Perhaps it wasn't only pony children being trafficked...
Sandy shifted to another question, one she asked the few foals raised by other species that she had counseled. "Can I ask you how you feel about your body, Gabriel?"
He looked at his forelegs, one bandaged and splinted, one free. Perhaps unconsciously, he flapped his wings a little. "It's not particularly comfortable. Different than, um, I guess what I'm used to."
What he's used to? What? Sandy wasn’t quite sure how to address that, but it went in her notes anyway.
"It's strange, but I can get used to it... I think. It’s a lot. This has all been just... a lot." He rubbed his chin. “I’m exhausted, but what else can I do? Just… stop and give up? Freak the hell out?”
Sandy chuckled. “Well, I will admit, you have been calmer than I would have expected from a foal your age.”
Gabriel waggled his hoof in a so-so motion. “I wouldn’t exactly say calm, more like… at capacity. It’s kind of all I can do to take things one step at a time. New place, new, um, ponies, and it’s been real strange just being a little kid, but I gotta make the best of the things that come my way. It’s what I’ve always done."
Sandy quickly jotted down every enlightening yet confusing detail. I want to continue talking about all that but we need to go soon. I suppose I’ll just be casual instead, and that stuff will have to wait for another time.
"Well, to be honest, I kind of envy you,” the counselor said. “I wish I could be a foal again. Then I wouldn't have to worry about adult stuff all the time."
That brought a more legitimate snicker out of him. "Yup," he grinned, looking at her, "don’t gotta worry about getting laid off or your house getting repossessed or any of that shit."
He spoke like he’d worried about those things before. Sandy hesitated, unsure of how to respond, but a glance at the clock saved her hide. "Well, speaking of things that foals do, it's time to go for your test at the schoolhouse! Pretty soon you'll be going to school with the rest of the foals in Ponyville, what do you think about that? Are you excited?"
"That's great, but uh, wasn't this kind of a short session?"
She gave him a sheepish smile. "It was a bit tough to schedule, honestly, because I forgot I had to do grown-up-pony things this morning. In the future, I'll be sure to plan ahead." She glanced at the clock and jumped in her seat. "Oh! School's about to get out!"
“Huh?” Gabe blinked and glanced at the clock. “Isn’t it too early? It’s barely past noon.”
“The teacher ends classes early on Fridays.” Sandy quickly stood and trotted to her saddlebags, scooping her pencil and notes into them and throwing them across her back. Then she made for the door. "Come on, if we hurry, we can just make it!" As she pushed the door open, she heard a grumble from over her shoulder.
"I can't believe I'm late for school again."
Sandy couldn't help but smile.
Getting out of school early on a Friday was possibly the best feeling in the whole world. The air smelled fresh, the sky was clear and blue, and, best of all, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were off being demonic brats somewhere else. As far as Sweetie Belle was concerned, all was right in Equestria.
"Rrrgh, darn it." Scootaloo, apparently, didn't agree. "That quiz was too freakin' hard! Like what the hay! The school year just started!"
"I thought it was fine," Sweetie watched the other foals walking down the path leading away from the schoolhouse and towards Ponyville. The two currently sat on the school's front porch, waiting for Apple Bloom to finish talking with Miss Cheerilee. She could hear bits of their muffled conversation through the door. "What'd you have trouble on?"
"The one about the melons," grumbled the orange pegasus filly, "I mean, who the heck buys that many melons? It's insane! She really should rewrite the test. And another thing was how..."
Sweetie tuned Scootaloo out for the most part as she complained about the quiz. This was far from the first time it had happened, and the unicorn filly knew that she just needed to get the frustration off her chest, so she let her eyes wander.
As she looked out at the town, one ear tilted towards her ranting friend, she noticed a pair of ponies trotting (or in the second's case, more like stumbling) towards the schoolhouse, and one of them looked awfully familiar. She tapped the pegasus filly on the shoulder. "Hey, Scoots, do you recognize them?"
"Huh?" Scootaloo's eyes followed her pointed hoof. "Oh, um, isn't she that one ministry mare? Whats-her-name Hill?" Then she squinted, looking closer. "I don't know that colt with the messy mane, though. Dang, he looks kinda beat up. Are those bandages?"
Now that they were closer, Sweetie could make out that yes, the colt was indeed wrapped up in clean, off-white bandages. They almost completely encased his middle, with his dark green wings sticking out like two sore hooves, and almost covered one of his forelegs.
"Oh, yeah.” Sweetie tapped her chin with a hoof. “I think that mare came into the boutique last week. She talked with Rarity forever. Why's that colt walkin' so weird?"
"I dunno," shrugged Scootaloo. "Broken leg?"
"Look," Sweetie said, "he doesn't have a cutie mark." Her eyebrows raised.
By now they were at the short path leading up to the schoolhouse. The two fillies watched them walk up. The colt had a little trouble with the slope but after a bungled try he managed. How can somepony be so bad at walking? Sweetie thought. I mean, yeah, he has a wrapped-up leg, but still...
The brown pegasus mare gave the two a cheery smile. "Hi, girls!" she said in a warm, welcoming voice. "How are you today?" The colt, meanwhile, gave them a completely neutral stare.
"Um, we're alright, I guess," Scootaloo said. When she didn't continue, Sweetie Belle realized that it was up to her to pick up the conversational slack. She gave the mare a smile and her friend an elbow-jab.
"What she means to say is that we're doing good, how are you?" Sweetie ignored Scootaloo's indignant 'Hey!'
"We're well, thank you for asking!" the friendly mare said. "My name is Sandy Hills." She glanced down at the colt, but when he continued to stare at the fillies, she continued. "This is my friend Gabriel." He blinked and raised up his hoof in a little wave.
Weird name for a weird colt, Sweetie Belle thought.
Sandy Hills continued to smile at them. "We're here to see Miss Cheerilee. Is she here right now?"
"Yeah, she's just inside, but she's talkin' to our friend right now. She should be out any–" Apple Bloom cut Scootaloo off herself when she pushed open the schoolhouse door.
"Hey gals! Hope Ah didn't take too long, 'cause–" The yellow filly stopped short when she saw the newcomers. "Oh! Were ya tryin' to see Miss Cheerilee? Did I keep ya waiting?"
Sandy Hills shook her head. "No, there’s no trouble at all. We just got here!"
With Apple Bloom finished, absolutely no reason to stay at school remained. The weekend called their names and offered cutie marks to crusade for, but Sweetie Belle found herself curious about the colt, and while Scootaloo began to repeat her complaints anew to Apple Bloom, she watched the newcomers greet Miss Cheerilee and enter the school.
As the strange green colt walked through the door, one of his eyes flicked to hers in a split-second sidelong glance. Something in that look sent a little spark up her spine.
"Sweetie! You comin'?" And then it dropped from her mind. The little filly turned tail, hurrying to catch up with her friends.
"Well... he certainly finished the test." With Cheerilee's opening words, Sandy Hills knew that this conversation was going to be an interesting one.
The examination had taken Gabriel fairly long to complete. He’d had trouble holding with his pencil, giving up mouth-writing after a fruitless half-hour and electing to hold it in the crook of his fetlock in what appeared to be the most uncomfortable way of scribbling down answers possible.
On top of that, the colt refused to let Cheerilee help him, insisting that he could do it himself. In his defense, though, it wasn't exactly a short assessment.
Once he’d finished, Gabriel had asked to wait outside and enjoy the afternoon while Cheerliee went over the exam. He and Sandy had watched the weather team as they wrangled a hoofful of clouds and flown them off towards the growing storm past the edge of town. Sandy had even pointed out Rainbow Dash as she swooped and dove, pushing chunks of white fluff this way and that. It seemed to please the colt.
Now Sandy stood back in the schoolhouse, having left Gabriel outside to enjoy the day. Sunbeams poured through the tall windows and laid their golden selves across the whole room, filled with dancing motes of dust. The slightly musty air felt warm enough to lie down right there on the wooden floor and have a nice long midday nap.
Sandy pushed away the sleepy thought and looked at Cheerilee expectantly. "What do you mean?"
"Well, I suppose we'll start with the writing portion." The pink-maned mare set the relevant sheet of paper on her desk. It was covered with the most jagged, unclean writing Sandy had seen in a long while, and she raised her eyebrow.
“His mouth–, erm, hoofwriting leaves something to be determined.”
Cheerilee chuckled a little at her understatement. "Yes, but once you get past that, you can see that he has excellent grammar and near-perfect spelling. I only found a few errors here and there. It's completely unlike a foal of his age." Sandy's confused look only continued to deepen.
"What's more, he was tasked to write a fairy tale, and he produced possibly the most disturbing version of Hoofzel and Grazel that I have ever seen. In his version, the two foals have very strange names and don't escape the witch at all, they–" she stopped, looking a little green. "I'll, ah, spare you the details. Of course, he scored mid-to-high marks in reading, but that's not completely out of the ball-park for a foal his age."
Maybe he wrote a griffon retelling or something, Sandy thought. "And the rest of the test?"
"All over the place." Cheerilee brushed a hoof through her mane, frazzling it a little. "I've never seen anything like it, honestly. He did well on some parts of the science portions, physics and chemistry specifically, and scored rock-bottom on the thaumaturgical and natural science questions. How can he know the scientific method perfectly but not know that the sun revolves around the planet?!"
"What? I didn't think anypony has taught heliocentrism for centuries, even outside of Equestria."
"To my knowledge, they don't," Cheerilee frowned. "Moving on, his history scores are nearly as low as they can go. I can tell that he was guessing on almost every question, and for the written responses he put down multiple dates that are several hundred years in the future." Celestia, this just got stranger and stranger.
"The same goes for his geography and civics, although I should mention that he answered a few questions about Equestria right, but his knowledge of the larger world seems sparse, to put it generously."
The counselor hummed into her hoof. "He's going to have a heck of a lot of catching up to do."
"Well, in everything but math," Cheerilee said with a chuckle, making Sandy's ears perk.
"Huh?"
"It's incredible. He got every question right perfectly. No muss-ups, no missed carrys, even though he used some kinds of notation I've never seen before. I watched him breeze through the arithmetic and geometry sections. He only slowed down when he got to the algebra, and even then, I could tell it gave him almost no trouble at all. There are even a few very simple trigonometry and calculus problems at the end of the portion just in case, and he got those perfect, too. He's at upper secondary school levels, maybe higher."
Sandy raised her eyebrows. "Wow, that's... unexpected."
That made the teacher laugh. "That's one way to put it. Altogether, I'm really not sure where to place him. Again, he's all over the place." Cheerilee shuffled the papers on her desk. "I'd probably say that he'd do best in a year or two behind his peers, but it wouldn't be out of the question to push him forward if he performs well.”
Sandy hummed. “The school year did just start, so he'd be at pace with the other foals as far as new material is concerned, right?”
Cheerilee nodded. “You know him better than I do, though. What do you think?"
Well, Gabriel needed to be able to fit in if he was going to develop proper social skills—Sandy doubted that was even possible, given how oddly he tended to act—and putting him with a bunch of smaller foals wouldn't do much to help that, but it wouldn't be as detrimental as the teasing the colt would likely receive from other ponies his age.
On the other hoof, if he were put in with his peers, he'd have to work hard to catch up in the areas he was behind. It was certainly a pickle.
After a minute or two of thinking, Sandy spoke up. "Well, I think that it's important for him to be around other foals his age if he is going to have a chance at making friends. It’s paramount, considering his situation."
"I'll give him plenty of help,” Cheerilee smiled, “but he'll still have to work harder than the other foals. Is he capable of that?"
Sandy looked out the cracked window to where the colt was sunning himself on the schoolhouse's verdant green lawn. He looked perfectly content, eyes closed and almost asleep, but the pegasus mare noticed that one ear was cocked and pointed directly at them.
How long had he been listening to them speak?
"Well, to be perfectly honest, Cheerilee," the counselor said, still looking out the window, "I'm not quite sure what exactly that colt is capable of just yet."