Derpy came running after me.
“Don’t let them get to you,” she said, holding the cloud muffin with her wing and wrapping the other around me. “I’ve been teased my entire life for my eyes, and…” she looked around to make sure that nopony else was around, “my cutie mark.”
I sniffle. “What does it even mean?” I couldn’t even resist asking.
“When I was a young filly, I was always bumping around and breaking things.” She sighed. “I never did well in school, and, well, I kinda flunked out.”
“What? But you seem so smart!”
“I do?” She genuinely seemed surprised. “I’m not,” she admitted, shaking her head, “I’m just good with ponies, that’s all.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t know a lot when it comes to math, or science. Hay, I don’t know anything about math or science. I have a hard time reading,” she said as she blinked rapidly to try and reset her eyes, only to have her right eye drift apart again. “My parents didn’t know what I was good at.”
“Then how does that make bubbles?”
“My parents took me to the forest one day. It was a great day: there was nothing I could break, there was nothing I had to study or read… My mom brought some soap with us and this magic wand thing. It was amazing. It had this hole in the end that she dipped in the soap, then she waved it in the air and made these really cool things she called bubbles.
“She handed me the wand and I started copying her. I dipped the wand into the soap, then I waved it in the air… It wasn’t until the following day I noticed my cutie mark.”
“Well, at least you have a cutie mark.”
“Don’t worry, Bolt,” she said with a smile. “You don’t mind if I call you that, do you?”
“Of course not,” I say. It was a nickname from a friend. My parents usually called me sweetie and big colt. Thunderstorm and all the foals back at school called me Blank Flank. I appreciated the gesture Derpy made. She was certainly my friend. I gave her a wet smile and opened my arms for a hug. She gladly accepted.
“Sky Bolt!” Mrs. Storm called. “Where have you gone?”
“I’m right here, Mrs. Storm!” I say. She came over and put a hoof to my chin.
“What happened? All I saw was you running off.”
“It’s fine now,” I say. Derpy had already cheered me up, and there was nothing to be accomplished if I told Mrs. Storm about the bullies. She didn’t do anything about it when she did notice it herself.
We returned to cloud crafting, with all of the bullies giving looks. I knew that my actions would have repercussions, but for now, I was happy. This was my favorite activity growing up—dad always brought home clouds to play with. He would always smile and help me make whatever I wanted.
I remembered the one time when I was trying to make a model of a bird for my mom. It was the week before her birthday. I got so frustrated with it that I nearly threw it out the window, giving up all hope, but my father intervened. He came in, showed me how to use my hooves to make fine detail. That bird was still sitting on the mantle when we left for Flight Camp.
Derpy and I played around, making all sorts of things, but she didn’t cherish anything as much as that cloud muffin I first made. In fact, it was still held beneath her wing. We made a little hummingbird, a dragon, and I hid a little bit of cloud in my mane for a special project I wanted to do later.
Soon, it started getting dark as Celestia’s sun started setting. Derpy and I went to dinner: hay fries, apples, and, of course, Muffins. The apples were the best tasting apples I had ever had. They must have come from the same fields that my mom kept talking about near Ponyville.
I would always wonder where mom got these delicious fruits, vegetables, and flowers. She kept telling me that, though she had traveled all around Equestria when she was younger, she never found a better looking and tasting crop of anything than the Earth Ponies who lived in Ponyville. They seemed to really know what they were doing down there.
She even talked once about Zap Apples. I had never heard of them before or since that one time. She brought home this jar of rainbow-colored jam. I never tasted anything like it in my life, and I had been craving it ever since. She told me that the Zap Apples had a mind of their own, and only were good for so long. She tried explaining all this stuff about Timberwoves and some story she was told. I was too busy eating Zap Apple Jam to really remember it.
Derpy had just finished her muffin, and I my apple, when I decided I should get to know my friend better. We knew each other all of two days, but I didn’t really know anything more about her than she was a lot like me in school, and she liked muffins. That was about the extent of how I knew her.
“So, Derpy, what was it like for you growing up? I mean, it was quite an adventure for me.” I try to put a positive spin on it, but she sees right through my faux smile.
“An adventure?”
“Yeah,” I say before recounting about how Thunderstorm was the only pony I could even count as a friend; I recall about how all the teachers, doctors, and everyone considered me anti-social. I tried to tell her about what it was like in orchestra in Canterlot, but she only gave me a smile and put a hoof to my mouth.
“That’s great, Bolt, but I don’t want you reliving the bad parts of your life.” She lowered her hoof. “I know I spent a lot of time wondering what I did wrong. I still do sometimes,” she said, more to herself than to me, “but my point is that we can’t change the past. We can only look forward to the future.”
This sentiment puts a smile on my face and gives me the chance to catch my breath. “I just wish I knew what my special talent was.”
“That’s easy, silly! It’s cloud crafting!” She smiled. “What more could you ask for from a destiny than something you really, really like to do all the time!” She was still holding the cloud muffin under her wing.
“I like it, I really do,” I say, nostalgically, “but my dad does it. I know all about the harder parts of it. I can’t possible build a house or something more complex than a little thing.” The smile on Derpy’s face tells a different story.
“You can do anything, Bolt, anything you ever set your mind to.”
“I can’t do the mathy stuff, or the sciencey stuff. It’s all too hard and gives me a headache.”
“Well, stick to the small stuff, then,” she grinned, “I bet there are ponies all over Equestria who would love something as special as my Muffin!” She held it out and gave it a hug before tucking it back under her wing and wrapping that hug around me.
“You’re my best friend, Derpy,” I say.
“And you’re my best friend, Muff—,” she says, before interrupting herself, “I mean Bolt.”
We went our separate ways so we could go to bed. Like every night, I waved at her from my window, and she waved at me from hers. I saw her put the cloud muffin on the windowsill, and she disappeared into the darkness.
“I see someone’s got a special somepony,” Thunderstorm said in a mocking tone.
“We’re just friends,” I defend. “I’m not old enough to have a special somepony. That’s adult stuff.”
“Whatever you say, Blank Flank.” I could hear him roll over and pull the covers tightly over his head.
It crossed my mind that she tried calling me ‘Muffin’ earlier. Was that a mistake? Or had she seriously meant to call me Muffin? And what did that really mean? Then my thoughts turned to that awkward moment we had before I had gone into the infirmary. What was that? I wrote a letter before I turned out the light. In it, I was going to ask my parents what that was, and what it was supposed to mean.
Immediately after breakfast, the group of us went up to try cloud busting. This was something I loved to do. My mom would sometimes take me up to the upper clouds and let me bust a few when she had some time. She almost always seemed busy with something or another. I don’t remember what she said she did on Family Appreciation Day. It was something complex that she almost always came home tired about.
There was once she never even came home for a night. She told dad that she was going to Canterlot. It was a long way away; that was all I knew. Dad seemed a bit annoyed, but he didn’t say anything. Mom was always on trips. I would have to write her tonight to ask what she did. It was on my mind the whole day.
Cloud busting was something I could actually do. I flew from cloud to cloud as fast as I could and broke them up with a single buck each. The other foals could only watch in amazement as I performed something I had done since I could fly. Which, now that I think about it, wasn’t that long ago.
I wasn’t particularly fast, though. I could clear clouds with accuracy; that was my advantage. Months and months of practice gave me my skill. Derpy followed behind and busted some clouds I missed with a little less proficiency.
When it was time for us all to break, the foals were all staring in amazement at me. Well, all except North Breeze, and some of the other bullies. I knew there was something coming, but I wasn’t prepared for what they would do. Mrs. Storm was preoccupied trying to get a particularly stubborn filly up to the clouds to stop. That was all the opportunity the bullies needed.
“Well, well, it looks like Belly Flop found something he was good at,” he snickered. “I mean, something other than running off crying like a little filly.” The look I got from Derpy told me not to respond at all, but it vexed me. How could I stand to take this?
“That, and landing so hard he hurts himself!”
“So what’s this? The wall-eyed dunce who couldn’t make it through elementary is coming to defend Belly Flop?” Derpy kept her silence. She knew how to take the brunt of a verbal assault through years of torment. I could see it on her face. But I, on the other hoof, had only really been teased for my Blank Flank, and I pawned it off on not knowing my special talent.
A pink-coated, white-maned filly I hadn’t seen before came fluttering up to the front of the pack and pranced around us. She seemed to smirk that kind of smirk that you get when you know something you’re just dying to tell someone, and you know that they’ll just hate you forever for it.
“You know, I saw them kissing yesterday.”
“Belly Flop and Derpy sitting in a tree,” they all began in chorus, “k-i-s-s-i-n-g.”
“What are they talking about,” I asked Derpy in a whisper.
“I don’t know,” she said, reeling her brains. “I think that’s what they call what we did.”
“I don’t even know what ‘kissing’ is!”
“I don’t either!”
“Oh, the two don’t know what’s going on!” shouted some foal behind us. “Should we let them in on the secret?”
“Oh, we should,” North Breeze said.
The filly came up to us and pressed our bodies together. I felt uncomfortable like this, but also it seemed like I wanted it. “It means you two are in love.”
“Love!?” both Derpy and I shout in exclamation. Both of our cheeks begin to grow bright red.
“That’s… that’s just silly, isn’t it… Derpy?” I say, looking at her.
“Uh… um…” she poked the cloud she was standing on with her hoof. She was blushing so red that it was hard to tell if her cheeks were the same color gray as the rest of her body.
“Derpy?” I knew little about love. To me, it was something that grown ponies did. It was something reserved for stallions and mares… not for colts and fillies. This, this, was ridiculous. I didn’t know anything about love. It was a word that mom and dad used with each other; it was a word they said to me to mention how much they care for me. But they never said it to their friends. They didn’t say it to our company. It was a personal thing. I—I—I was just dumbfounded.
And what made matters even more complicated was that Derpy wasn’t saying anything at all. She was staring at the ground and poking the cloud over and over with her hoof. There was nothing coming out of her mouth.
If there was ever a time when I wanted to hear something come out of anypony’s mouth, it was that moment. If she could just possibly explain what was going on, what they were talking about. What in the hay was kissing? Why was it such a thing to be poking fun at. What did love really mean? How could they think that Derpy and I loved each other? I was so confused my head started to hurt. This was what happened every time I tried to figure out something that my brain just simply didn’t want to. I look back and forth from Derpy to the crowd, but still no response.
“Derpy? What… what’s going on?”
She was older than me, I knew that much. I could tell from the fact that she was taller and a bit more well-built than my spidery figure. She had to know more about what was going on here than I did. Instead of explaining to me, her one friend, she kept silent. The other foals began laughing and poking fun at us. She turned and flew off. I went after her, hearing only “I knew they were in love!” She flew behind the Mess Hall, and she was crying. I was worried about her. She was my only friend, and I wondered: if she couldn’t trust me, how could she trust anyone.
“What’s wrong?” I try to portray concern through my confusion and some irritation.
“I don’t know! I’m having all these feelings inside when I’m around you. It’s just so… I don’t even really know what love means. I just… I just…” She broke down crying. I try to move over to her to give her a hug but she bats me away with a hoof.
“What?” I’m beginning to tear up too. The thought that she didn’t want to be around me just frightened me. Had I done something wrong? Had I just lost the only friend I ever had in the world? She simply sat behind the Mess, crying. There was nothing I could say or do to help her. I just collapsed on the ground and started crying too.
We were both there, crying. The tears dripped across my fur, soaking into it all the way down my snout and onto the dirt beneath my hooves. I wanted so badly to get a hug. I figured she needed a hug too, but when I went to retry giving her a hug, she batted away at me again.
It was a while before Mrs. Storm found us. The other foals were already at lunch. She came over and put her hooves on ours and caressed them in only a way a mother could. Perhaps she had enough experience from when Thunderstorm was in school. I didn’t understand why, he was always the one picking on me.
“Come on, dears, let’s go to lunch and you can tell me all about what happened.”
Derpy had stopped heaving from the heavy sobs, and was sitting there, motionless, silently. She didn’t respond to Mrs. Storm’s prompting to get up and go to lunch.
“Come on, you two. I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on.”
“That’s part of the problem,” I say, tears soaking my snout. “You never know what’s going on.” I let a little of the growing frustration show. “You’re always too busy to notice that all the other foals are picking on the two of us.” I stand to continue my rant. “You’re always too busy to realize when it’s happening right under your nose. I can’t believe you.”
“Well, dear,” she tried to say. I didn’t notice at the time, but Derpy had stopped crying and looked up at me.
“Don’t ‘Well, Dear,’ with me. You are trying to tell us that we’re supposed to be happy here? Well, I have news for you, not a single one of those foals in our group want us to be happy.” I was trying to speak for both Derpy and I. This was something I needed to get off my chest, and I didn’t care what Derpy was going to tell me afterword. I was tired of all this pain and torment the two of us were going through. “I will not stand to have anypony bullied in front of me again.” I felt a strange sensation in my body, like I was achieving something that I had been built for my entire life. I couldn’t explain why I felt this way, but I knew that I would stand by my resolve.
Bullying wasn’t going to stop me anymore. I wasn’t going to let ponies like North Breeze or Thunderstorm rule my life. And I certainly wasn’t going to let them rule Derpy’s life. She was my friend, and I was going to stand up for my friends. There was nothing that was going to stop me. Not fear, not anxiety. I was going to do this for all the fillies, colts, mares, and stallions who had to put up with all this incessant bother from ponies who always thought themselves superior.
“Calm down, Sky Bolt. I will see what I can do to help. Now, let’s just go to lunch.”
I turn and reach out a hoof to the gray Pegasus filly who I just now noticed was staring at my flank. I follow her gaze to find a cutie mark the shape of a shield with two blue-gray wings unfolding off of it. The smile that graces both of our mouths, even though it was tear-soaked and amidst such sadness, meant the world to me. She was still my friend. That was all that really mattered to me at this point. We walked into lunch, friendship renewed. She had my muffin, and all was right with the world again.