Concorde was discharged from hospital he next morning, having been through another lengthy, angry lecture courtesy of his mother. Every time he had an accident that landed him in hospital, she’d gone on and on about how he’d given her a heart attack and how he shouldn’t keep putting himself in danger.
He just let her blow off steam, mainly because she wouldn’t accept his reasoning for doing it in the first place.
His jaw was mostly healed thanks to the unicorn doctors, though he knew it would be a while before it was completely healed. Fusing bones together with magic was a delicate art and even the best couldn't fully repair the bone in one go, so they always fused the bones together in a state where they could take the strain of everyday life and finish healing on their own. Because of this, his jaw was still a bit delicate and the doctors had added that if he wasn't careful his jaw could lock open, which sounded more like a challenge to him.
He trotted up the old, cobble stone street at the top of the cliffs that surrounded the harbour town of Whitbay, giving him the perfect view of the entire town as well as a clear view of the old Chaos age abbey that dominated the far side of the town. It may not be the biggest place in Equestria, but it could rival Manehatton for activity. The town’s harbour mostly saw ponies from Sleipnir and beyond to the East, Griffons from the north and the occasional Zebra from the south, visiting Equestria for trade and/or adventure.
The first thing that would strike them, especially the Zebras, was the weather. Whitbay was almost always overcast, mainly as the army of Weather Controllers that worked there were less concerned about rain and more concerned about the wind. Keeping the wind going just right to bring ships in and out of the harbour, but also to avoid knocking the various air ships and powered gliders that dotted the skies out of the air was extremely difficult, making Whitbay’s weather controllers likely the highest paid in Equestria.
Concorde had experienced a slip up from the Weather Controllers before when he’d been knocked out of one of his dad’s gliders as a colt. Though he was able to land himself, which was impressive considering it was his first attempt at flying. The accident also gave him his cutie mark, a red circle with a red dart flying through, leaving a trail in its wake.
The Aviation and shipping businesses in Whitbay were booming, but very little of its produce stayed in the town. Concorde’s father’s company Bristol Cayley Aviation built gliders for the rich, famous and powerful further in land, mostly in Canterlot, and that had netted his family a lot of money.
Concorde opened the gate to the garden of his family’s manor house, a two story building that stood out on top of the cliff as one of the town’s main land marks. The front garden alone was big enough for a 5 a side hoofball game while the back garden could stage a full size hoofball game with enough space for a reasonable crowd.
The house itself shared the same old fashion architecture as most of Whitbay with a tall, pointed roof and balconies running around most of the first floor. Most of the east wing of the building was Bristol’s workshop which had been heavily renovated and expanded to make space for up to 4 gliders. The central part of the house contained the entrance hall, dining room and kitchen while the west wing contained the lounge, bedrooms and Concorde’s unofficial entrance. He jumped up and flew to the first floor balcony nearest him, opened the door and entered his bedroom.
His bedroom was as untidy as ever with various old text books and models of gliders and racing Pegasi dotted around the floor. The walls were covered in posters from different Cloud Grand Prix events as well as action shots of some of the best Cloud Racers ever. The only tidy thing in his room was the white and red racing overalls that were sat neatly folded on his bed, which he assumed his mother had put there before he got back. A thought crossed his mind and he went over to the full length dress mirror that sat in the corner of his room next to the desk, which currently had his old school uniform thrown across it for no other reason other than the fact it just happened to land there.
After pulling the uniform off the mirror he studied his reflection. Most mares would describe his face as handsome though Concorde always felt it was more pointy, making it perfectly aerodynamic. So far as he could see there were no external marks to show he’d broken his jaw, especially now the fur over where the doctors had operated had been magically grown back. Satisfied, he threw his old uniform back over the mirror and turned his attention to the desk.
It was covered in sheets of paper with race results, championship standings and forthcoming meetings from Windy Valley Raceway. The latest results sat at the top of the pile which Concorde quickly read, the only outstanding information being that Wolke had won while he hadn’t finished though Wolke’s warning was noted at the bottom.
He cast the sheet aside and had a look at the current championship standings. Wolke now led the championship by fifteen points, one third place finish ahead of Concorde. Everypony else in the standings was so far down on points that something outlandish had to happen like himself and Wolke not turning up for the remaining 2 meetings for them to have a chance of even catching up.
With that in mind Concorde took a quick look at the time table for when the next meeting was. It was exactly a month away, coinciding with the Running of the Leaves so some ponies may not turn up, but that hardly bothered Concorde. What did was the rumour that some important pony was apparently going to make an appearance at that meeting, possibly a potential sponsor.
Concorde had wanted to meet a decent sponsor for a while so he could move further up the Cloud Racing ladder and into the Equestria Cloud Racing Championship. He’d dreamed of doing since he went to his first Cloud GP as a colt and he had tried talking various businesses in the town into sponsoring him, but they either didn’t have the money or interest to do so (though if he was a hoofball player, he suspected the latter would jump at the chance).
Concorde leaned back in his chair and gazed at the pictures sat on his desk. One was a unique picture he had taken at the Maneaco Grand Prix shortly after he’d learnt to fly. It showed four of the best Cloud Racers ever, Velocidade, Spoed, Käsittely and Aperto, sat on one of the cloud barriers with the back drop of the Maneaco harbour.
He suspected such a picture would be worth a lot to somepony, but for him it was his inspiration. One day, he was going to sit alongside these ponies as a fellow racer and the dream drove him forwards.
The second picture was of his parents, taken when they attended the Grand Galloping Gala together. Why exactly Concorde had been invited was a mystery he had yet to solve, but he remembered the night mostly for when he and his father had gotten bored and snuck off to explore the castle. The picture was taken after they had been caught and the guard in the background was keeping an eye on Bristol.
His dad could have easily financed him several times over, but whenever Concorde brought the subject up his dad would start a speech about how he got to his own position through his own initiative and hard work and how he wanted Concorde to do the same. While the speech bored Concorde to tears, he at least saw his point.
“Concorde?” Came a voice from behind him.
Concorde decided to reminisce over the third picture, which was when he and Maffett had met comedian Bailey and turned the chair to face the pony who had just entered the room.
“Hi mum.” Concorde said.
His mother Paris was a Pegasus like him and sported the same brilliant white body, mostly hidden under the purple dress she was wearing. Her mane and tail were violet, though Concorde knew she dyed it regularly.
“I would much prefer you not to enter the house through your window.” She said, walking in with a large novelty mug of tea for her son. Despite living in Whitbay for most of her life she still had her Maneaco accent. Concorde figured she insisted they holidayed down there in the summer so she could top her accent back up. “And are you ever going to clean this room?” She added, glancing around.
“Well, Princess Luna may go mad and reverse the moon’s orbit so it crashes into the sun, so you never know.” Concorde grinned “Thanks.” He added, taking the mug of tea off her.
“Let me have a look at you.” She carried on, grabbing Concorde’s head so she could see if there was any lasting damage for herself and nearly caused him to throw the mug across the desk as he protested.
“Hey! Mum, I’m fi-AGH! Don’t jab it!”
“There is another dent there now. How do you expect to find a good mare if your face looks like the Neighscar Lines?”
“I’m sure I’ll find somepony who digs that sort of geograPHY! Stop that!” Concorde exclaimed, pulling his head out of her grasp. Paris just looked at him thoughtfully.
“Concorde, dear, I don’t want you to keep doing this.”
“Do we need to go through this again? Me ears are still ringing from yesterday.”
“I am serious, Concorde. I do not want to see you either seriously injure or kill yourself.”
“Mum that’s the biggest crash I’ve had and I’m sat here talking to you within a couple days.”
His mother simply glared at him, standing up on her hind legs, putting her forehooves on her hips and starting her usual post-crash speech again.
“You are not going back to that place, Concorde.”
Concorde rolled his eyes and muttered ‘dear Celestia, here we go again’ to himself.
“I will not have my only son throw away his life like that. You have a lot to make up for after those poor results you received from school.”
“Straight Cs mum, that’s not quite poor.” Concorde automatically said. Why exactly he’d bother protesting he’d long forgotten.
“It is not good enough! I want you to find a real job and stop working on a mere farm and attempting to kill yourself on weekends. Oh, before I forget there was a letter from Octavia for you this morning.” She finished, giving him a letter. Concorde quickly inspected the back, wondering if his mother had opened it or not. After a moment, Concorde looked up at her.
“Anything else?” He asked. She shook her head.
“No, only that. Are you considering going to visit her in Canterlot?” She asked, almost hopeful.
“That’s private, mother. And if I was you’d have probably found out by now.”
“Very well.” She said, heading for the door. “I will be down stairs if you need me.”
“Righto!” He called after her as she shut the door behind her.
‘Everytime’ Concorde thought to himself, taking a hearty gulp from the mug and letting off a satisfied sigh. It may be stereotypical of Yorkshire region of Equestria, but he really did enjoy a good mug of sweet tea.
He put the mug down and opened the letter. Contrary to his mother’s suspicions, Concorde wasn’t Octavia’s pen pal because he fancied her. Simply put, out of all the ‘eligible, high class’ mares his mother had introduced to him during various parties she held or dragged him to, Octavia was the only one he ever got on with. They were both annoyed by their respective mothers dragging them to ‘fancy’ parties and introducing them to as many eligible partners as possible and while that was probably the only thing they had in common, besides the fact they could play instruments, it had still led them to start gloating and trading light hearted insults both in pony and through the mail.
Her latest letter went on in length about how she’d been chosen to play music at the Grand Galloping Gala for the third year in a row, something he had to admit was pretty impressive especially for an Earth pony playing an instrument that was as big as she was.
Again however, he sensed that there was something she wasn’t telling him, almost as if there was something else in her life she wasn’t quite comfortable writing about yet. She wrote about new pieces of music she’d written that didn’t really fit the sombre, single minded, classical cello player he’d met and been exchanging letters with for several years and it suggested to him there was somepony in her life, finally. It was something he’d suspected for the last year and the only thought that crossed his mind was ‘Celestia, help the poor sod’.
Concorde threw the letter on the desk and quickly gulped down the rest of his mug of tea. He was off work for the rest of the day, so he figured he may as well go outside and enjoy himself for a bit.
He pushed himself away from the desk, lifted himself into the air with a couple beats of his wings which caused his desk to fall over backwards and flew out of the window.