Scootaloo’s Mother
Fanfic by Englishwitch
Chapter 8
The door opened and a dark brown stallion with a red mane looked down at Scootaloo. “Hello. Are you selling filly scout cookies?”
Scootaloo’s mouth hung open, her eyes were as wide as an owls. A stallion lived here. This was the right house. Could her mother be married? Was this her husband? Could this be Scootaloo’s father? The last thought was quickly dismissed. She still had the piece of paperwork with her mothers name and address on it, which clearly stated the name of her biological father was unknown.
Creeped out by her silence and staring the stallion took a step back before trying to speak to the filly again. “Can I help you?”
Scootaloo snapped out of her daze. “Umm....is...uh...that is....well.....uh.....”
The stallion frowned. “Spit it out kid.”
“ISROSEWINGHOME” She yelled so loudly the stallions wings flared up in fright.
He stared down at her. How could such a tiny filly have such a huge voice. Slowly he brought his wings down again. “You wanna run that by me again in Equestrian?”
A nervous blush rose on Scootaloo’s face. “Sorry....is...well is, Rosewing home.”
“There’s no one here named Rosewing.” The stallion replied flatly.
The large pupils in Scootaloo’s wide eyes shrank to pinpricks. Her heart, her stomach, most of her major organs, sank. If the stallion had bucked her in the face it wouldn’t have felt as bad.
“are you sure?” her voice was quiet, flat and emotionless.
The guy rolled his eyes. “I know who lives in my house. Me. Just me.”
Scootaloo’s whole body started to tremble. She wouldn’t cry, not in front of this stranger. “But...” her voice was cracking. She tilted her head down, hiding her eyes. If she were to cry at least he wouldn’t see. “this is the address I have for her.”
The stallion just shook his head. “Look kid I told you, there’s no pony here named-” he stopped. Scootaloo dared to raise her head. Stopping could be good.
The stallion was silent for a few seconds. “Rosewing. I think....yeah...she’s the mare who owned the place before me. She hasn’t lived here for about five years.”
Scootaloo sat down hard as her legs collapsed from under her. Current/last known address. It was written there on the paperwork she was carrying. Last known. She was too late to find her mother by five years.
The stallion seemed oblivious. “Lucky mare, moved out to the Alto-stratus Estates. Great neighbourhood, lots of fancy apartment.”
Scootaloo jumped up, right into the stallions face. “You know where she is? WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SO?!”
He leapt back from her, wings flared. “Bucking crazy filly. NO, I don’t know her address. The day I moved in her stuff was still being moved out. The movers had Alto-stratus Estates labelled on every box. I don’t know which building or which apartment she’s in.” He stepped forward just far enough to reach the door. “Now get off my property before I call the cops.”
“WAIT!” Scootaloo thrust a hoof out just in time to stop the door closing. She wouldn’t have thought a cloud door closing on her hoof would hurt, she was wrong. “Do you know where the Alto-stratus estates are?”
The stallion opened a door and threw a mess of paper into her face. Scootaloo staggered back and he slammed the door to a close.
Scootaloo fought against the paper for a few more seconds before she finally to untangle herself from the mess. She glared at the door, then down to the scrap paper that the stallion had thrown at her. It was a street map of Cloudsdale. Her anger evaporated and she even managed to grin. There on the cloud floor she unfolded the huge mass of paper and started to find her bearings.
...***...
Even though Cloudsdale was occupied by pegasus ponies who could fly anywhere they wished, the city still had a healthy population of taxis. Just as every earth pony didn’t want to walk everywhere, every pegasus didn’t want to fly everywhere. Sometimes the journey was too far, or they couldn’t fly because of injury, or carrying too many heavy goods, or they were parents with a young foal who couldn’t fly.
One such cab was gliding on the outskirts of the Alto-stratus estates, the carriage, pulled by a single pegasus pony and was carrying a young mare and her baby daughter.
Unseen by any pony, a small orange filly let go of the axle and dropped to the cloud floor. As soon as she landed Scootaloo had to sit down and gather her strength. She was exhausted.
From Cumulus Villa the Alto-stratus estates were on the other side of town. Too far to walk and she had no money for a cab. Scootaloo had taken a desperate option of cab hopping.
Unseen she would hide underneath any chariot that was heading into the right direction. She would cling onto the axle for as long as possible, then jump off and hop onto another cab.
It was slow, it was frustrating, it was exhausting but it had worked in the end. Scoots had hopped almost two dozen taxis. She had taken three wrong turns, ending up miles off course and had been caught twice. Only luck had aided in her escape.
It was late afternoon and she wished the day would end. She was exhausted in mind and body, she was filthy and her legs were sore from clinging onto the bottom of carriages too many times for too long.
Scootaloo sighed and flexed her wings gently, feeling the stiffness in her body as the already tired muscles were forced to move again. Despite everything she felt good. She had been through so much but she was here finally.
She looked up at the estates.
“Oh come on...” She sighed. “That’s just not fair.”
The Alto-stratus estate was huge. Six towering cloud buildings, apartment blocks, each at least a hundred floors high and, judging by the number of windows, at least ten apartments on each floor. Why did pegasus ponies have to build things so big?
The apartment buildings were evenly spaced apart, with plenty of light and flying room between each building. They were arranged in a C shape around a large playing area for fillies and colts in the centre of the estate. Despite being huge they were not imposing and the ground level, the play area especially received enough light to stop it being dark and dreary. That was the handy thing about making a city out of clouds, there would always be enough light.
Scootaloo’s mathematical skills weren’t the top in her class but even she could see there were thousands of apartments. There were six thousand in all and if she knew that it would have broken her heart.
So many set backs. So many problems and she had overcome them all. Many by the skin of her teeth. Now she was here, the last hurdle. The eleventh hour. The last furlong. The home stretch and all those other clichés adults like to spout on about. She was defeated not by red tape, interfering adults or not being able to find the answer she was looking for. She was defeated by numbers. Pure and simple numbers. Thousands of apartments for one single mare.
“No.” She gritted her teeth and tried, really tried, to find some good thought in all of this. She had come a long way, yes. She’d had many set backs, that was true. She tried to think of all the things she had achieved. She hadn’t known any details about who her biological mother and she had found them. She didn’t know where her mother was and she had found an address. She had narrowed the search from all of Equestria, to Cloudsdale. She had narrowed the search further from the entire city of millions of ponies to one area. Then one other area. She had the problem of getting there and she had jumped that hurdle too. She couldn’t be stopped at this last point, she just couldn’t.
Yet, when she looked up and counted the buildings, the number of floors and tried to work out the number of apartments, this last hurdle did seem like it was just too big. What was she going to do? Knock on every door until she found a mare named Rosewing?
“Hi Scootaloo.”
She snapped out of her funk, her eyes wide and shocked. Her head darted in all directions until she finally glanced upwards. She leapt out of the way as a huge grey plot crashed onto the cloud ground where Scootaloo had been sitting a second before.
Scootaloo stared at the grey mare with light blonde hair. A heavy satchel was strapped to her middle. She smiled at Scootaloo, only one of her eyes was focussed on the filly, the other was looking off in some random direction.
“Miss Derpy what are you doing here?” Derpy was the mail mare of Ponyville. Scootaloo was good friends with her daughter, Dinky.
Derpy tapped the satchel strapped to her. “Got some important mail to deliver and pick up. Why are you here?”
Scootaloo stared. She never would have thought that Derpy would fly all the way to Cloudsdale just to deliver mail, the journey was so long. Surely the pony express could pass it along to other mail carriers?
“I....I’m...” She sighed. “I’m trying to find somepony who lives here, named Rosewing.”
“Apartment 56D, Blizzard Tower, Alto-stratus Estate.” Derpy muttered absent mindedly.
“Only the problem is I don’t know where sh...” Scootaloo stopped mid-sentence. Her head turned slowly, ever so slowly toward Derpy.
She blinked, opened her mouth but no sound came out. She blinked again and opened her mouth once more. “What?”
“Rosewing. Apartment 56D, Blizzard Tower, Alto-stratus estate.”
Scootaloo had heard it twice now but she still couldn’t take the fact in. “You...you know where Rosewing lives.”
With perfect cheeriness and everlasting patience Derpy repeated, “Rosewing. Apartment 56D, Blizzard Tower, Alto-stratus estate.”
“How in the hay do you know that?”
Derpy seemed almost confused by the question. “I’m a mail mare. I gotta know where everypony lives.”
Scootaloo was dumbfounded by the words. Surely Derpy didn’t know every address in Equestria? The wall-eyed mare would have to be a genius to have memorised all that.
Scootaloo shook off the thoughts, her brain clicking back to the important information she’d heard; Rosewing’s address!
She threw herself forward and hugged the mare tightly. “Thank you. Thank you Miss Derpy. Thank you. You don’t know how much this means to me.”
She broke from the hug and ran toward the estate, skidding to a halt after a couple of paces. She turned back to Derpy. “I have to go now. Thank you again.”
“Bye Scootaloo.” Derpy waved a hoof as the filly ran towards the huge cloud towers.