Empath that he is, Prism couldn’t contain himself either and was moved to tears with Mom and I. Always a rainbow after the storm. I couldn’t help but laugh at how absurd it all was. This is what we’ve been fighting about, all these years? You wanted to see me fly?
You didn’t have to go.
There were so many other ways to see it happen. So many other options to take. So many other choices to make.
Damn it, Mom.
When things had settled back down, I agreed to go get us all dinner and left Prism with her to talk. Give her the situation in more detail, explain the fall to Mom so she knows what the other extreme is like. You took the nuclear option to get me into the sky, Dash took it to keep Haze there, and both ended up with broken families and heartache.
Still, while I was getting food, it made me wonder. If I’d tried to include Mom in my family, would things have ever gotten this far? Would she have spoken up sooner? Maybe even involved herself with us instead of living here, like this, all this time? I wanted answers before I’d share myself, but that’s just not the right way to go about this.
In all those stories about friendship and forgiveness, it starts with the individual. If I don’t take the first move to make a change, nothing will happen. I’ve known the princess for nearly two decades, and it took me this long to see what she stands for.
How would Haze put it? Ah, what blind fools are we? That sounds about right.
A bucket of fried tofu, mashed potatoes, cream gravy, corn, and sweet tea later, I went back to Mom’s house.
“Well, the thing is, we really don’t know what Haze’s mark is gonna be. Dad thinks he’ll get it soon, but, like, I didn’t get mine till I was thirteen either.”
Scanning his flank, Mom raised a brow. “Awful late for a cutiemark. What is that, anyways? Looks like… a tower of blocks? Or a rook, maybe.”
Happy to explain, Prism assented. “Yeah, it’s a fortified tower. It’s that big round part you see in old castles, with murder holes and a portcullis and all that. See, even when I was a foal, I used to make all these crazy structures out of blocks. Mom and Dad ended up buying several sets of them for me over the years, and they just got more complicated over time. I could recreate towers and some of the bigger, weirder buildings in Ponyville just with my blocks, down to the smallest detail; my latest project has been recreating Canterlot Castle with them.
“It was actually my submission of a Ponyville Castle model that got me my mark. It won, obviously, which finally put it in my head that this might actually be what I was meant to do. Kinda threw me for a loop since I’ve also won every flier contest I’ve been in by a long shot for my age group. We’ve even gone to Cloudsdale to participate and I’ve yet to get close to second. My parents say I’m not fair, but I’ll be honest.”
He hovered over to her to whisper in her ear. “My grades suck. Math is my best subject and I’m only passing with a B at my best. I’m bad at Equestrian, sciences are a coin flip if I need extra classes, and I read really, really slow. Cheesette has to help me a lot, and she’s a grade lower than I am. It’s embarrassing.”
Mom shook her head, patting Prism’s mane. “Oh, that’s nothing new for a Snow. We built half the things in Horeshoe Bay, but you’d never catch us teaching or in higher academia. You’ll have to go visit sometime during the winter and participate in the ice and snow building contests they hold every year around Hearth’s Warming. Try your hoof at chainsaw sculpting and maybe you’ll run into some worthy competition. Ponies of our sort always get real extremes as far as our heads go.
“Couldn’t convince me if ya tried to make sense of art pieces, but get me into a museum of ancient architecture and I could recreate it just as easy. I’m pretty handy with a chisel myself, as it happens. Sometimes, you can just see how things fit together. You twist this shape that way, that shape this way, a nail here, glue there, these support beams going this way and that to make the structure strong and stable. There’s beauty in just making things function the way they’re supposed to, making things that last and stand the test of time.”
“Yeah, yeah! You get it, you get it!” Sitting down next to her, he crossed his forelegs in triumph. “It’s like, this stuff just makes sense to me. You can’t look at a big glass-tiered building with those big gold letters at the bottom and think anything else but, ‘wow’ as you trace it going up and up and up, ya know? I mean, the logistics of getting all that glass up in the first place, and how it would bend and shake with the wind and where you support it on the inside to keep the exterior the right shape and size so it can still deal with all that or stand through an earthquake.”
Nodding along like she perfectly understood Prism’s barely coherent ravings about the Gold Mane hotel for the billionth time, Mom responded in kind. “Stallion has good taste. You know, one of your cousins designed that thing.”
Uh, no, I didn’t, but then again, I didn’t know Mom had a talent for this architecture stuff either. But maybe there’s more to that than I’d considered. Between Dash and I, we could build just about anything out of clouds. I was just always better at cloud mechanisms than structures. Pipes, fittings, casings for wire, setting up cloud-proof tech.
“Did they, really? Do they live here too?”
The cheer in Mom’s face flew right out the window. “Well…”
I figured that was a good time to interrupt. “I’m back!”
Relieved, Mom took up her usual tone. “Took ya long enough! Twelve years off the track and you’ve gotten slow, kid.” She motioned to Prism. “Go help the old stallion. I’ll set the table.”
Prism laughed at my expense but took most of the food off my back and to the table. With mismatching plates washed of dust and wiped down for use, Mom set the table then passed out the cups and silverware, none of which were two of the same shape. Everything she had here was some one-off utensil she bought at some point because she liked it enough to take it home. No wonder she was so happy to talk to Prism, the old hermit.
We sat, we prayed, we ate, and once the table was finally clear, it was time to get down to the bottom of this. “So,” I began, “why don’t we go all the way back here?”
Frowning, Mom raised a brow. “What do you mean, ‘all the way back,’ Soarin?”
She’s warmed up, yet it’s still like pulling teeth. “I mean, all the way back. I’ve looked up what kind of ponies the Snows are. Even if we did visit, they might accept Haze, but they wouldn’t take us in as family.”
Prism was bewildered. “Huh? Why?”
Resting her chin on her hoof, Mom sighed. “You mind if I smoke?”
Yes. “It’s your house, Mom.”
She ran her eyes over Prism, then, instead of getting up and finding a pack, she leaned back in her chair and crossed her forelegs over her stomach. “What he means, Prism, is that my family has… particular views on co-mingling with the other races.”
“I… don’t understand.”
She licked her lips. “Course you wouldn’t. You’ve had it good. You live in a different world. But think back to your history classes. Things weren’t always like this. When I was a filly, a city like Ponyville was unbelievable, even before technology.”
Seeing that it still wasn’t clicking for Prism, she tried another approach. “The snow is pure. We are of the earth, and we’ll stay that way. We’re earth ponies with earth pony traditions, and outsiders are not welcome. It’s always been like that. And sadly, my family was just one with this kind of mentality. Canterlot is for unicorns, the sky cities are for pegasi, and the lowlands are for earth ponies. We kept to ourselves because, when we didn’t, there was blood. Blood spilled over stupid conflicts, territory fought over, wars for a pure Equestria.
“Before the princesses came to power, in this land, the practice of slavery was still alive and well. Any creature who wasn’t a unicorn, pony or otherwise was subject to ownership. In the old world to the east, it took many centuries after the princesses came to power for them to abandon the concept, and still, you can find it in the world where more savage peoples still vie for power over each other to build rich, developed states like this which can afford to not have the practice.
“The records don’t exist in your history books, but the oral tradition is passed down in the Snow family about how there was once a king of shadows who came across as a slave, fought against the new tyrants as this land was being explored, and gave life to the princesses themselves. We were there to record it. We fought and died for him. And yet… we lost his ideals. He himself was of mixed race and a unicorn, back when that would’ve been a scandal. He gave us hope for a future where anypony could be raised to the heights he found, but eventually, in his efforts to free us, he was killed by the stallion who founded Canterlot, Dark Canter… his own father.”
Goddess among us, I’m going to have to talk with Discord later.
“But, with he and Dark Canter gone, the princesses set forth to bring about a green land and a free world, where everypony was sovereign over themselves. It was a nice idea, but it took a very long time before the people would forget their scars. For ponies like the Snows, they never did: no unicorns, no pegasi. Anypony who transgresses this decree is cast out, a Snow no longer.”
“Look,” Prism interrupted, “I’m not going to pretend I know half of those words, but I think I get what you’re saying. But, like, I just can’t understand it. Why does it matter what anypony is? Ponies come in every color, shape and size, so what’s the difference if some have this or that? My best friend is, like, barely even half a pony. He doesn’t walk or fly, he floats everywhere! I don’t care if he looks weird.”
My phone buzzed twice, and I checked it discreetly. Both were texts from Discord.
“I don’t know who is speaking old forbidden words, but I suggest you urge them to keep it to themselves. Heaven knows what Celestia will do if she hears about it. Nopony wants to revisit those wounds again, especially not me.
“I appreciate your boy’s idealism, but you certainly need to get him a dictionary or something. I’d always believed Fallacy was exaggerating about Prism’s vocabulary, but I see that isn’t the case.”
Mom bowed her head and continued. “Ponies aren’t perfect, Prism. We get hung up on things that shouldn’t matter, and when it comes to things that do, we fail to say what needs to be said.” She then motioned to herself and I. “As you can see for yourself.”
Dejected, Prism fell back in his chair. “So, what, we just go on being stupid about things like this?”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that one. “You wouldn’t be the first, nor the last, to wish that ponies would change over time. The unfortunate truth about progress is that it doesn’t affect the heart. So ponies are born, so ponies forget. Thus, the cycle continues.”
Prism crossed his forelegs and spat, “That’s just stupid.”
Carefully, Mom put a hoof on his shoulder. “You’re just young, boy. One day, you’ll be a stallion and you’ll understand. As for the rest of us, we make our mistakes and try to correct course as time goes on. Clearly, we don’t always succeed.”
Laying her hooves on the table, Mom sat up and continued the story: “With that in the air, we come to me. When I was a filly, I was enamored with heights. The tops of mountains, the falling snow, the clouds in the sky. I loved the Wonderbolts and watching pegasi in flight. My parents thought I was deranged and sent me underground for my troubles. The extensive caves below Horseshoe Bay were like another whole city built below the surface, and down there, a pony could carve and build as they pleased. There, I discovered my own talents and made a whole mess of things because that’s what we did. The Snows built and passed down techniques and histories of old below the earth. It was our calling; it’s how we survived the harshest winters the world could throw at us.
“And yet, I wanted to see the sky.
“A pegasus or a unicorn being brought into the Snows wasn’t completely unheard of, but those marriages always involved great sums of money or large boons to Horseshoe Bay. So long as the price was high enough, they were willing to ‘soil the blood,’ knowing full well that all traces of co-mingling had a habit of disappearing under the snow.
“As science would learn over time, the earth pony gene is the dominant of the three, but you aren’t always dealt that card. With something messy like genetics, it’s a little like having two decks of fifty-two cards, and being given twenty-six of those at random. You’ve got to have one of each type of gene, but sometimes, you’re only supplied that by one parent.
“When I finally decided to leave Horseshoe Bay, I had my parents’ blessing to leave and bring something new back to the bay. Everything returns to the shore it was born in due time, and Snows always came back to the bay before they died. Like everything in the bay, I was expected to follow the tradition; even I had expected to follow the tradition. Like my father said, I’d go out, have my fill of the world, and once that was done, I’d come home and continue to be a Snow, possibly with a stallion in toe. Only problem is…”
Mom’s eyes scanned me sorrowfully. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, when I finally found myself a stallion.”
I lowered my brows. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Her neck tightened, showing off those flabby veins. “It means, Soarin, that my relationship with Hang Glider was doomed from the start. It was like a car crash in slow motion, and I was too stupid to get out of the way.”
And here I thought this would be easy. “Oh, come on, you don’t mean that! I didn’t see everything that happened, but we had a normal, happy life before you left.”
“Shut up, you stupid brat.” She scratched at her scraggly mane in frustration. “What was an eight-year-old supposed to understand about a relationship between adults? You didn’t know a damn thing; that’s how it was supposed to be! It was all fake, it was all a lie, everything you saw was constructed for your eyes!”
I slammed a furious hoof on the table. “That’s not what Dad thought! You have no idea how devastated he was when you ran out! We spoke maybe three words to each other that whole year! You took the life out of the house with you! We lived like insects, eating to survive and carrying on just because we didn’t want to die! Goddess knows what he would’ve done if Sweet Wing wasn’t there for him, and you know what? I hated him after he remarried, for a long, long time. He was happy, but my life was ruined. If it weren’t for Dash, who knows where I would be?” Mirroring her, I scratched at my mane in frustration. “Damn it, Mom, what the hell happened?”
She looked longingly at her purse, specifically at the cigarette pack sticking out the top, but again, her eyes trailed over Prism and she refrained.
“I met Hang Glider while staying with some relatives in Trottingham. I’d been simply passing through, and he had moved away from home because he felt smothered by the life he lived. He was an excellent flier, maybe even up to Wonderbolt quality, but he couldn’t handle the pressure. Didn’t like eyes on him, wasn’t a performer. He just wanted a quiet life. Somewhere he could be to just take in the world on an easy breeze. He’d run away from home to become a weather pony there, and for the most part, he was content.”
Irritated, Mom ground her teeth together. “Course, he catches sight of me and thinks I’m somepony else. That was the first time I ever heard the name, ‘Sweet Wing.’”
I… don’t like the sound of that.
“My lack of wings tipped him off eventually, but that didn’t stop him from getting to know me. Goddess knows what he saw in me back when I was just some stupid little filly wanting to see the world, but he saw something he wanted, and he was a pegasus with strong wings and a kind of grace that only the best fliers have. I’d… always loved to watch him fly.”
Pain flooded Mom’s face and she let her head fall on a hoof, resting idly in the dining room chair. “It was sad and silly, but Hang Glider tried his damndest to get me in the air with him. It’d be a miracle if a pegasus was ever strong enough to take off with a full-grown earth pony on their backs, so we struggled with ideas for one of our very first dates. Eventually we settled on taking a ski lift to the top of a mountain, and from there, he strapped me into one of those parachute slings for two ponies. We took off at a run, and then, we sailed down the mountain on Hang’s wings.”
Lost in a dream, her eyes drifted. “I’ll never forget seeing that sky so blue, so vast, so wide! The wind lazily passing us by, the sunlight tingling against our hides; wispy clouds seen from above and below, all around. How long had I wished for a view like that.”
Mom rubbed at her snout, downcast, like she’d had to land. “To say the least, I’d fallen head over hooves for the stallion who took me flying. Stupid as it was, he’d made my dream come true, and from then on, I wanted to devote myself to him, just for that.”
Even Prism got offended by that one. “Oh please, how is that stupid, Granny? A dream is worth a lot, isn’t it? And, like, taking a pony flying, even gliding, like, isn’t an easy task for us! I don’t know what kind of shape you were in, but just being average weight would’ve tired out any normal pegasus in a few minutes of gliding, let alone all the way down a mountain!”
Mom waved him away. “Be quiet, boy. You know nothing, nothing at all; it was superficial! Sure, I was physically attracted to Hang, but there wasn’t anything more to it than that, and one simply doesn’t build a life upon vain desires! The adage goes, ‘young, dumb, and full of cum’ for a reason!”
I nearly choked on my tea. That wasn’t a word I ever wanted to hear out of my mother’s mouth.
“Mom, please.”
She clicked her annoyed tongue at me. “Stuff it, pearl clutcher. You begged me to talk, so I’m gonna talk, and you’re gonna sit there and listen, both of you.”
Ears fallen and resigned to my mother’s rough tongue, we both said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. A piece of advice for the youngest fool Snow in this room: if some hot piece of ass sticks to you, you’d better figure out why and fast, before something permanent happens. Hang and I hardly knew each other, but ponies back then were awful quick to go tying knots and getting knocked up. His parents were furious that he’d given up everything and gone and ruined his life on me, and mine were furious that I’d ‘co-mingled’ with ‘the lesser ponies.’
“Course, they might’ve taken me back, so long as all the fruit that came of this ill-conceived relationship fell as the Snow does, but then comes along mister trend-breaker. Halfway through the pregnancy, Hang and I had only been hitched for a few months by then, and not before we found out about your father, I begin to think something is awful strange about it all. My mother had always talked about how heavy foals were. Among other things they do to a mare’s body, weighing us down and bending our backs is a common problem in pregnant mares. But me? It just felt like I’d picked up a few extra pounds. It was Hearth’s Warming season after all; I usually did back then.
“Lo and behold, we go see a doctor and who’s in my belly but this little stallion right here?” Mom smacked my shoulder, possibly even affectionately. “I hadn’t entertained the possibility my foal would be a pegasus. I was a Snow. That didn’t happen to us. No co-mingling of any kind had ever given life to a non-earth pony Snow. It simply didn’t happen. It had never happened.
“There was hope before then, but only at that moment did I realize just how bad I’d fucked up. His parents didn’t want us, and mine certainly wouldn’t take us now, so we were stuck. Out on our own, my skills and talents were hardly of any use outside Horseshoe Bay, so Hang had to work every chance he got just to support us. Felt like my whole world had fallen apart. All because I wanted to fly.”
She let her head loll up and stared at the light hanging from the ceiling. “If earth ponies were meant to fly, we’d be born pegasi. To think otherwise is to tempt fate. Fly too close to the sun and, sure as Sunday, you’re struck right back down where you belong.
“But that was just my lamentations for the moment. Look, I’ll be honest. I was… envious of Soarin, before he was born.”
I had to rub at my temples. “What?”
Mom was so ashamed of the statement that she wouldn’t look me in the face. “I know, I know. But it was my dream, after all. I wanted to fly. I wished so often and so dearly that I’d been born a pegasus. And here you were, of my own blood, with the wings to carry you. It wasn’t fair.
“That’s just life, though: it never is fair. At the very least I got to watch you grow into your feathers, and if you were little more than a common pegasus, nothing would make my day better than to see you soar. And so goes your name.”
Aww, Mom.
Rolling her jaw around, Mom switched modes and rubbed her chin. “But where you were concerned, Hang and I had… different ideas.”
This is news to me. Dad never pushed me to do anything, especially after the divorce. Sure, he cared, and he still cares, but he was about as hooves-off as a father can be. Wherever the breeze took us, that’s where we’d go. Hang Glider Philosophy 101.
“You… did?”
She nodded. “Mm-hmm. Don’t know if he ever told you, but he’d lived that life. Raised a racer, went through academy and everything.”
How the hell did I never hear about this? “Uh, no, he didn’t. I guess, it didn’t seem like he particularly cared when I was awarded my position in the Bolts, but it’s not like he’s ever been against me flying. He always came to my shows and races when they were in town, at least.”
Mom huffed, rolling her eyes. “That’s Hang alright. We both had assholes for parents, that’s for sure. His were the crazy soccer moms you see these days. They certainly tried to push him off a cliff to get him to fly better since he had the talent they lacked, all just to see their own dreams come true. Like I said, he was in Trottingham back then because they had done just that, and he ran away from it all. But when I told him I wanted to see you fly, it was like he got war flashbacks about being in academy himself.
“All he wanted for you was to do what you wanted. If anything, he wanted his hooves out the pot to keep from stirring it at all. His parents were so damn heavy-hooved, the last thing he wanted to do was ruin you like they did him. As you may’ve noticed, I don’t exactly have the appendages to be teaching you how to fly; that much, he had to do, so we fought about it. A lot. So what were a young, stupid couple who hardly knew each other going to do when they got all hot and bothered in an argument over their newborn? Fuck the pain away, that’s what!”
Prism covered his eyes with his hooves, and I simply turned away. Dash and I were entirely guilty of the same argument solver; that’s how the one we lost was conceived. Not that it had stopped us from doing it again later. She’s just so cute when she’s angry. I… I wonder if Dad felt the same way…
“That got us a scare once, and from then on, Hang and I resolved to keep our hooves to ourselves and just try to raise Soarin without making an already bad situation worse by adding another kid to the mix. For Hang, I’d gotten my passions inflamed every now and again, but I couldn’t ever say if I truly loved the stallion. He filled the role of husband as well as any stallion could, and he conceded to my demand to get Soarin flying. Brought home the bread, kept a modest living and eventually rose to chief weather pony in Trottingham after a few years. Things had become comfortable.
“But then, I started to notice it.”
Mom shook her head and let her gaze drift over me.
“The Wonderbolts would come once every year to Trottingham, and I made sure that we saw them. My favorite pastime was watching pegasi fly, and nothing made me happier than seeing you and Hang practicing over the house or in the yard. When you were so little and had those big ol’ eyes, they’d get so wide watching the Wonderbolts fly. You’d come home, you’d imitate what you saw, and for the life of me, I thought you’d gotten it exactly right, just like the pros.”
“Yeah…” It was all coming back to me. Oh Goddess, what was the name of the Wonderbolt captain of that generation? Oh right. “That jackass Wind Rider was captain back then. If only I’d never met him, I still might look up to the guy.”
Prism frowned. “You mean that old guy Mom almost beat to death?”
“What!?” Mom practically shouted. “What happened here? Is… is Wind Rider really that bad? I always thought…”
“Oh, yeah.” I crossed my forelegs. “To make a long story short, Dash broke his long distance flying record a while back, and he thought he could frame her for some petty theft to get her name stricken off the record. She and one of her friends ended up sorting the mess out, and Wind Rider was banned from entering the grounds for a few years.”
She sighed. “Just goes to show, you should never meet your idols.”
“As my brother would say, ‘put not your faith in princes,’” Prism quoted.
“But, now that you mention it, I did already have a few of the Bolt’s routines down before I ever entered the academy. That was part of what got me their attention in the first place. It took the other guys ages to learn the screw turn; I picked up a lot just by watching.”
Mom nodded. “You had a talent for it. Your father was terrified of forcing you into the academy, but here you were, careening toward it yourself without any coercion at all. I tried my damnedest to get Hang to really teach you to fly and maybe take you back to Cloudsdale every once in a while just to get professionals to teach you, but I’ll be damned if he ever did anything of the sort.”
I shook my head. That was one of the things I fought with Dad about. “Nope. I worked summer jobs for years just to pay my entrance fees.”
“Stubborn old bastard. Anyways, that old flame burned anew, and with the fighting came what comes, and I got pregnant again.”
“But…”
Mom held a hoof up. “I was… horrified at the thought of bringing another pony into the world with Hang Glider. But at the same time, if after six years with you and just a little spark between us was enough to restart that old flame, I believed that maybe I really did love Hang. The stallion was always so damn ambivalent about things that I could never tell what he felt for me, but with rose-tinted glasses, I went into this new pregnancy thinking things might get better with another foal. We’d grown closer as it went on, and then… two months in…”
She sniffled and wiped at her eyes, unconsciously drifting to her stomach.
“There was no new foal.”
“Oh, Mom…”
Waving me away, she moved on. “Yeah, yeah. Prism told me about it. You might be able to empathize, but you just can’t understand how soul-crushing it really is. To be betrayed by your own body. It took me a long time to really understand what had happened, and still, all these years later, it tears me up inside to think of what could’ve been.
“But that’s neither here nor there. I… didn’t want to be touched again, after that. Not by Hang, certainly, but not even by you. I’d always felt like I didn’t belong in this picture with you and Hang, but losing the foal was what really cemented it for me.”
She moved her hair out of her face, tossing away the unhappy memory. “You know, earth ponies are supposed to be the best at carrying to term. That’s why the populations have always been so skewed our way. You’d think it was an even split between the three tribes, but in reality, it’s more like half a third and a fifth.
“Things had gotten rough after losing the foal, and those little moments of intimacy between Hang and I died with it. I didn’t have the heart to lose another one, didn’t have it in me to try. It felt like a bad omen, like my parents had been right all along. Snow falls to the ground: it doesn’t fly away.”
Tapping her lips, Mom found her sweet tea and sucked it down. She stared idly at the cup, some restaurant label from Trottingham printed on it. “The final straw came when I met the mare he’d thought I was the very first time we came into contact: Sweet Wing.”
She dropped the empty cup, letting it clatter to the table.
“After so many years, she came to visit us one day. Interested to catch up with her old friend, meet the wife and the kid. I hated her the moment I laid eyes on her. She was… everything I wished I’d been. A pegasus, first and foremost, but it went deeper than that: sleek and slender, kind and true to her name, bubbly and happy. She made Hang smile, she made you smile. She wasn’t the strongest flier in the world, but she was graceful and light. Airy and easy, mild and tender.”
With a forlorn look on her face, Mom sank into the kitchen chair. “Now that was a picture that made sense. A quiet but earnest father, a kind mare happy to be there, and a child with talent that only needed to be nurtured. With me in the picture, it couldn’t happen. But with her? It could.
“So I made myself cold and hard like the ice I grew up around and set to burning bridges. I did everything I could to be cruel to you and Hang, hoping he’d finally give up the ghost and push me out, but he just took it. I couldn’t keep it up more than a month. He never whined or complained. He never retaliated or made an effort to argue back. Maybe he blamed it all on the miscarriage and thought this was just some passing madness. Maybe he felt responsible for it somehow, and this was his punishment. It wasn’t working. I couldn’t keep doing that to him after spending all those years with him. He didn’t deserve this.
“And you.”
As if the memory of that day thirty-one years ago came right back to the fore, Mom’s face contorted in pain. “There was… no way to make you understand any of it. If I could simply make you hate me and forget me, you could go on and become that flier I saw in you. So what if Hang didn’t teach you himself? If you lived in the sky, there would be other ponies, better ponies than Hang, to teach you. Every ounce of anger, every inch of hate, all the pain and suffering of every year from the day I met him to the day I left him—I had to summon all of it to do anything to you. In the end, all it could measure up to was cruel words and a picture frame.”
She shrugged, a hoof held up in defeat. “Clearly, my plan worked, seeing as you’re here in my kitchen almost three decades later, blubbering like some little colt begging for his mother back.”
“Dude. Come on.”
Prism giggled and that got a smirk out of Mom, but the mirth passed as soon as it came. “But really, my plan worked. I ran right back home with my tail between my legs begging for forgiveness, decrying the mistake I’d made in co-mingling, and though they wouldn’t take me back, they helped set me up somewhere else. A distant cousin of mine, another Snow outcast who’d made my mistake with a unicorn to a much happier end, had moved out here to Ponyville and started this… bizarre shop that specialized in writing utensils and furniture.”
I pursed my lips. “Davenport? Quills and sofas?”
Mom raised a brow at me. “No, but yes. I worked for his father, Skift Ink, for a few years. Then, I got involved with the construction around Ponyville since it always seemed to be getting bigger, and I was good with my hooves. It paid well as the jobs got more and more extravagant. Some rich asshole who lived here decided to build some little side piece of his a whole storefront, and the damn thing was entirely round. Do you have any idea what a pain it is to get wood planks to bend?”
Prism furrowed his brow. “You worked on Miss Rarity’s first boutique?”
“What?”
“Uh, the mare who owns that store,” I explained. “We’re friends of hers.”
“Huh.” She eyed me again, this time with respect in her eyes. “Better connected than I thought.”
I don’t know how to tell her I’m going to spend a week at the castle here in a month with three of the most influential mares in the city. “You could say that.”
“Well.” Mom then reset her sitting position. “A couple years after that, I’d heard about the Wonderbolts making their first appearance in Ponyville. I’d taken to the bottle and cigarettes to find something to live for, since I really had no way of knowing what’d become of you and Hang after I left. Seeing the Bolts again would be a reminder of when things were better and maybe take the edge off for a little while.”
The wrinkled leather of Mom’s face cracked at the edges. “I recognized you immediately. The first trick I ever saw you perform was what opened the show and I thought… this was it. This is what I’d given it all up for. Everything I believed, everything I realized all those years ago about you and the talent you had; it was validated right then and there. My boy was a Wonderbolt.
“Soarin.”
With rose in her cheeks, incapable of fighting off the smile, Mom wiped at her eyes furiously. “But I couldn’t stay. We locked eyes for one instant, and I knew that all my validation was on thin ice. A fake peace, a construction for your eyes only. If only I could get away before you caught me, then maybe I could just disappear back into this little old town and live on, knowing that you’d done it.
“As if some forty-year-old mare could run away from a Wonderbolt in his prime.”
She sighed, disheartened and pained. “I… had misgivings in the ten years before I saw you again, wondering if there had been another way, wondering why Hang had pleaded so desperately if there was really nothing between us, wondering what had become of you. Seeing you fly validated me. Seeing you chase after me shook me right back to pieces.
“You’d become the flier I thought you could, but you were still just a boy. I’d scarred you, and like some abused little puppy, you came right back to me, begging for my love. In my presence, looking nearly like a stallion but still trembling like the son I’d raised while he was frightened, you threatened the worth of all my suffering alone. To accept you would be to admit that I’d been wrong to leave you, and that… that couldn’t happen. I wouldn’t be able to live on.
“So, I resorted to my old tactic. Maybe it would work this time. As if that’s ever happened to anypony. You came back every year; you asked the same questions like a broken record.”
“What’s a record?” Prism interrupted.
Oh Goddess, now I feel old. “Think, like, a really tiny memory card with an hour of music on it. It plays music by spinning. If it’s broken, it skips back to the same place it was supposed to leave off from, looping over and over.”
Mom frowned. “The hell is a memory card?”
I took a deep breath. “Mom, please finish the story.”
“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “In a way, I was impressed by your tenacity. ‘This was how he got into the Wonderbolts, I bet.’ Didn’t make your clockwork appearances any less irritating, but they were impressive all the same. You’d grown into a stallion, but you’re still just a boy. You’d ask questions I could never answer, and I didn’t feel I had the right to ask about your life because… I wasn’t a part of it anymore. You kept pushing, I kept pushing back, and after a while, I’d gotten used to it. I looked forward to the day when you’d come by again, asking stupid questions I wouldn’t answer, since, at least, I could see you again. We’re an awful lot a like, you and I.”
She threw a hoof out, as if showing off the words now hanging in the air. “So, there you go. I left so you could fly. Maybe I was wrong, maybe there was a better way, but it worked. If I have any regrets… I suppose it’s that I never explained this sooner.”
In an unheard-of tender gesture, Mom ran her hoof through Prism’s mane. “If it was in my power, I’d have never missed any of your flights either, Prism.”
But the boy grabbed the hoof, holding it tightly between his. “We’ve still got the last race of the school year coming up here in a week! You can come to that one!”
That’s what he takes from his mother: her openness, her cheerfulness. Can’t help but smile at a rainbow in the warm sunlight. It’s just not fair.
“I certainly will. Why don’t you give me the details?”
Should I let this happen? After all these years, after all the shit she put me through, am I really ready to just let her back in, just like that?
Does she deserve it? She’s been nothing but a torment to me. Ghosting me when I needed her most, haunting my dreams once I’d lost her, leaving an open wound on my heart after I found her again. I…
I sighed. “Come on, Mom, you’ve got a phone, don’t you? I’m the head coach for the colts; I know the where and the when off the top of my head.”
I am the head coach. If I can’t extend an olive branch to my own mother, how is Haze ever supposed to forgive his?
She held my gaze for a long moment. She got up, took her own device out of her purse, but wasn’t so forthwith with it. She stood still in front of me, holding it.
“Are you sure, Soarin? You really want to do this?”
I snatched the phone out of her hooves, not even bothering with the downtrodden, hopeless look on her face. “Don’t you give me that shit. I’m not a kid anymore. I made my decision eighteen years ago.”
Then I gave it back, fresh resolve in my heart. “You had better show up. If you get cold hooves, I’ll drag your ass by the tail down to the stadium to see him fly.”
She snorted. “Big talk for an old stallion who ain’t no Wonderbolt no more.”
“Even if I were just some average pegasus with no training and no experience, I’d still find a way to get it done. You ran away from me once. Hell will come before I let you do it again.”
Ease filled her as a breath left. She hesitated at first, but just as quick, she stepped in and threw a foreleg around my shoulders.
“Thanks, son.”