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// Sound of Thunder 
// Story: For the Love of Derpy Book 1: Smitten 
// by DrakoGlyph 
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	Dinner was a typical one, four of us comfortably sat at the table when Sunny Skies and Morning Dew decided to come over and join us. The table was its usual crowded, but we didn’t care. We were all friends here. I still had my letter; it was sitting there on the table. It looked like all the others at the table had either put their away, or read them. 
I looked curiously at it, and I was very anxious to know what was inside. Not being able to withstand the suspense, I put my rose petal sandwich down and pick up the letter. I open the seal and sit back and read it.

Hello, Little Colt,

I heard that you were wondering what ‘Love’ meant. And it’s a complicated word to talk about. 
There are many kinds of love, and many ways to express it. There’s the love your mother and I feel for you—a kind of bond that will keep us together no matter what happens. There’s the kind of love like we feel for your Uncle Thunder Bolt. Then, there’s the kind of love I think you’re really asking about. That, son, is what I call Romantic Love.
While I think you may be a little young yet to understand it, there comes a time in every pony’s life when they meet a special somepony. This pony will make them feel complete, they will make them happy in times of sadness, support them in all that they do, but most importantly of all, they will be there for you the rest of your life.
I’ll explain more when you come home, son. That’s not something somepony writes in a letter. But I’ll leave it to say that if you’re experiencing what I think you’re experiencing with your fillyfriend, I can certainly say that I think you’re in love.
Good job with the cutie mark, son! I told you that you’d get it one day! (There was a smiley pony drawn here) Have a great time at camp, and we’ll send you a package next week!

Love,
Mom and Dad

“What did your parents say, Sky Bolt?” Alto asked, giving me a look. I’m still trying to make sense of what was going on. What was this ‘Romantic Love’ dad was talking about? In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word Romantic before in my life! I turn to Alto, who was perhaps both the one I could trust the most and the one who would know the answer.
“What does ‘Romantic’ mean?” I ask, quietly.
“Well, uh…” she thought for a minute. Then she put a hoof to her chin. “You know, I don’t really know.” Alto shrugged and gave me a frown before looking at Derpy. She smiled at me, but I was so confused. What did ‘romantic’ mean?
North Breeze looked at me, he seemed to be contemplating the word. “Well, I know that it has a couple of meanings,” he said, “but I don’t know if I can explain any of them.”
“Romance,” Morning Dew said, “is a form of love between two ponies who are attracted to each other in something deeper than just friendship.” She returned to her sandwich.
“I don’t really know what that’s supposed to mean,” I say.
“I don’t care, Muffin,” Derpy said, scooting closer to me, “but I do know that I will love you forever.” She smiled wide at me and any doubt that I had was instantly erased. Her smile was contagious, I just couldn’t help myself.
“Hey, Muffin, you want to, I don’t know, maybe go out and watch the sun set?” Derpy asked. The others at the table all gave me looks that said, ‘Go get it!’ I knew that by Derpy’s side was the place I wanted to be, and there was this feeling deep inside me that told me I wanted to be there.
“Sure,” I say. We walk close, our extended wings bumping into each other, but we didn’t care. We were enjoying each other’s company. That was all we really needed. I closed my eyes to let the perfection of the moment in: I was standing on the top of a mountain with the friend I cared for most, and I had four more friends in the Mess Hall too. This was a great first week of Flight Camp.
The sky was a rosy red and golden yellow as the sun began to crawl down the sky, the few clouds in that region of the sky were stained pink. All I could think of though, was that there was nopony I knew that was a beautiful as the one sitting next to me. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to see for the rest of my life more than the smile of my best friend. I could miss the rest of the sunsets in my life, but if I had Derpy, I would be perfectly fine with that.
Just when I thought the night couldn’t have gotten any more perfect, there was a distant thunderstorm. The distance-softened sounds of thunder and the light show of the lightning were a perfect show to entertain us. We were watching it as the sun sank below the cloud layer. 
As the stars came out and the Mare on the Moon watched over us, we found ourselves lost in each others eyes. Derpy’s right eye had drifted off, but I was looking into the other as she was looking into mine.
“You have the prettiest eyes,” Derpy said. “I love how they’re so green!”
“I love your eyes too, Derpy,” I say. Before I realize what I’m doing, my head leans forward into hers, and our lips meet again. This time, I am at least vaguely aware of what I’m doing. The feelings I find coursing through my body while our breaths were shared were so strange and unfamiliar, but so happy and warm. I wanted to spend every waking moment feeling this, that much I was certain. 
I closed my eyes, and that served to amplify the emotions surging through me, and I only find myself deeper and deeper into my conviction. Derpy was the only pony I wanted to be with. 
Then Lightning struck nearby, startling us out of our moment. When I look toward the source, I meet eyes with none other than the two ponies I didn’t want to see at all: Thunderstorm and Strata. At least the mean ponies stuck together.
“Hate to ruin your moment, but I just wanted to let you know,” Thunderstorm said, “that this is war now, Sky Bolt. You humiliated me and took away all my friends. Now I’m going to show you just what that’s like.”
“Why are you being so mean, Thunderstorm? Just because somepony can do something better than you? I mean, there are a lot of ponies who can do things better than me, and you don’t see me being mean to them,” Derpy said, coming to my defense.
“Stay out of this, Dunce. This is between Sky Bolt and me.”
“That’s enough,” I say with a bit more force than I intended to. I suddenly realized how close to Thunderstorm I was standing—my face was practically touching his. “I will not let you do anything to my friends.”
“When I’m done, they won’t want to be your friends anymore.”
“What do you mean?” Derpy asked, with just as much confusion about the topic as I had.
“You’ll see, Dunce.”
“Her name is Derpy Hooves! And she is not a dunce!” I found my right hoof poking into Thunderstorm’s chest as I said this. “I love her!”
“Let me tell you a thing or two about love,” Strata said, with a prance in her step. “You see, it’s a special connection between two ponies that doesn’t develop fully until you do.” She smiled condescendingly at us. “You see, there’s a change that fillies and colts go through that makes them much different. One that I’ve already gone through.”
“But what about Alto?” I don’t remember anything about this from Alto.
“Well, I got all the growth in the family,” she said. I noticed that she seemed taller than her sister, if by a few inches, and she seemed more… I didn’t really know what it was about her yet, but she seemed more adult than we were.
“I still love my Muffin!” Derpy proclaimed, cuddling me close with her foreleg. Our wings were beginning to settle because of the ruckus caused by these two interlopers. “And there is nothing you can say that will stop that!”
“Love is for mature ponies, not little fillies like you, Derpy,” Strata said. I could see the effect that Strata was having on her victim. Tears began welling up in the corners of Derpy’s eyes, and I grew angry that they had done this.
“Stop it! The both of you!” I nearly yell. “I’ve had enough of all you telling me what I don’t know! And yes, maybe I don’t know what love is, but I can tell you that I love Derpy!” I became acutely aware that my voice had reached a volume and projection such that everyone in the camp was staring at me. I didn’t care now. I was set into my notion that if love was what I thought it was, I was going to love Derpy every day for the rest of my life.
Thunderstorm looked around at the large crowd of eyes that was staring at this scene unfolding and produced a smile that I knew only too well. This was his mischievous face. This wasn’t going to end well for me. I knew that now.
“Well, then, Sky Bolt. If you love her so, then why don’t you prove it?” Thunderstorm gave a small chuckle.
“How do you expect me to prove it?” My wings were flared up in an aggressive stance, countering the passive stance, almost arrogant, that Thunderstorm held. “What exactly does one do to prove they love somepony?” My breath was ragged with the rage I was feeling. Thunderstorm had once been the one I had called my friend, but now he was my worst enemy. Worse than anypony I had ever met in my years of schooling. Worse than the ignorance of Mrs. Storm. He was the absolute worst pony I could think of. Perhaps even worse than Nightmare Moon from the bedtime stories that my parents told me when I was young.
The silence while Thunderstorm considered his criteria for proof was driving me insane. I wanted to know what was going through the mind of that pony. I wanted to know what could possibly have driven him to this sort of torture. With everyone’s eyes on me, I had to be careful what I did.
I never really knew pressure like this at home. It was the only real part that came with Flight Camp that I didn’t like. All these eyes, I couldn’t think straight. All I could wonder was what were they all thinking about me? Sure, Derpy was at my side, holding me close, her wings flared with her own frustrations and anger with the ponies before them.
The moments seemed to drag on forever while Thunderstorm thought. I could see my friends appear in the crowd: North Breeze next to Alto and Sunny Skies next to Morning Dew. They were all looking on with worried expressions. I supposed things were looking bad, but I didn’t see a single counselor. This place was ridiculous.
“I don’t know if you can prove you love a dunce,” Thunderstorm said to Strata. “What do you think?”
She gave a disapproving hmph at Derpy before turing her gaze to Thunderstorm. Her eyes held an expression that I normally only saw between my parents when they thought I wasn’t looking. I had got out of bed once to get a drink of water, and when I passed by their room, I saw them staring at each other with that look. I didn’t stay to find out what it meant—I was thirsty. Whatever it meant, I had figured it was only for adult ponies, and not for foals like us. It seemed almost out of place on her face. 
“I don’t think they can be loved,” Strata said, as she put her nose in the air. “If they don’t know the meaning of the word, how can they even do it?”
“Good point, Strata. How can they be loved?”
My breathing was deep and jagged. If they kept this up, I didn’t know what was going to happen. I felt that if I were a unicorn, I could set both of them on fire and that would be that. In my anger I couldn’t see what Thunderstorm needed most, but Derpy could.
She walked up to him, amidst all the stares and glares. She stood before both of them and simply gave them an innocent smile. When she held out a hoof, I thought she was crazy. “I think all you need is a good friend. Somepony who values you for exactly who you are.”
Again, time seemed to stretch on. And I watched Derpy stand there, I could only wonder what was going on in her head. I could only wonder what plan she had doing this to the one torment that had followed me all my life. The onlookers all held their breath in anticipation for what might happen next. I suppose some expected the best, that Thunderstorm and Strata would take her hand and become our friends. I secretly wished that too. I grew up with Thunderstorm. I knew more about him than most ponies here. Though he was a bit cruel to me, he was the only one I could even consider my friend back in elementary school. That, somehow despite all the torment, was what kept me going. I knew there were others in that crowd that expected the worst, that Thunderstorm would continue their assault. 
Slowly, though, the rest of our friends came walking up, until they surrounded the two. Putting aside all the anger that welled up from the years of teasing and the incessant bullying, I joined the ranks of my five friends. In another ring behind us, there were all of the others that were in Thunderstorm’s storm busting group.
“You just need a good friend to show you the way,” Derpy said, giving Thunderstorm and Strata a sympathetic look. My heart began beating harder in hopes that this would be the moment that everything changed. This would be the moment that we had cleansed the camp of the malice and maliciousness. The eyes of all the onlookers were all wondering what was going to happen.
With breaths held to the point of all of us risking passing out, Thunderstorm took in a large breath as though he was cleaning his lungs of all the negativity that had collected in all the years beforehand. With one more look at Derpy, he slapped away her hoof.
The whole camp was taken aback with one large gasp, as Thunderstorm spoke with a voice that echoed like the sound of thunder.
“You are something special. You are the worst of the failures in this circle. It took you forever to find your cutie mark, and you don’t even know what it means! This is priceless!”
He turned on Sunny Skies. “You. I can’t even begin to describe you. You’re a disgrace to weather ponies! You were the first of us to turn over cloud busting and raincloud kicking to these idiots! Your name is SUNNY SKIES! You should excel at cloud busting!”
He spun around to face Morning Dew, who was already cowering a bit from his gaze. “You’re a useless pony if I ever saw one! You almost never talk and you don’t even acknowledge your own name sometimes!”
“You,” he said, turning to North Breeze, “are a traitor. You betrayed your friends to go hang out with someone you think you’re in love with! How pathetic!
“And you,” he turned to Alto. “You’re a scaredy-pony that will never be respected among the Pegasus ranks! Musician? What kind of profession is that for a Pegasus?”
“I will never be friends with a dunce like you!” Thunderstorm said, rather violently to Derpy. “You and all your stupid friends! You will never amount to anything! Each of you are as useless as the last! You can’t see straight! No pony will ever truly love you because you can’t do anything! What in the hay is seven bubbles for a cutie mark?”
My anger returned even stronger than before. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from this colt. He could insult me all he wanted. But when he insulted my friends, that was too much for me. I finally understood what ponies meant when they said ‘boiling over.’ I felt that if you put a tea kettle on my back, I would cause it to boil at once with all the blood and heat that was rushing to my skin. I couldn’t bear to hear anymore out of the storm-gray pony before me.
“Please, Muffin,” Derpy said. Her voice was quivering, as though she was ready to cry. “I don’t know if I can do this without you… don’t get yourself thrown out!”
The expression worn by each of my other friends carried the similar message. The thing was, I wasn’t going to let Thunderstorm do that to my friends anymore. I felt an energy resonate in me, and it felt so familiar. It took me a minute to understand what was going on inside me, then I remembered. This was how I felt when I was standing up to Mrs. Storm about how she was ignoring all the things that the other foals were doing to me and Derpy.
This. This right here was what my Cutie Mark was all about. I was a Guardian Pegasus. I was here to protect all of the ponies of Equestria from danger, both physical and emotional. I knew that this was what I was meant to do all my life, even if I didn’t realize it before when I first got my cutie mark.
I took and heavily landed a hoof across his snout.