//------------------------------//
// Chapter One 
// Story: Storms on the Horizon [Rewrite] 
// by Windflight 
//------------------------------//

He had always liked the sound quills made. It held some distant, subconscious appeal, a thin corridor of associated memories back to his younger days. The scratching of quill-tip on parchment, the slight suck-in of saliva, the plip when quill was dipped back into inkwell; there was so much to hear from just one little utensil. Rumble could tell if a quill was being manipulated with magic or not just by listening. 

Now though, sitting quietly at the back of the classroom, head on hoof and eyes almost closed, all the signs of an afternoon nap, mind wandering, he didn’t listen. His conscious thoughts were far away, lightly skimming over grass and cloud, spread thin and unaware. The doors that opened so fully when he wanted them to were now almost closed, letting hardly a trickle of information in. Bird twitters – sun warms – whisperers whisper – Scritch-scritch of writing – breathing foals – RUM-

“-ble,” Cheerilee half-whispers. Rumble jolts a bit anyway. He hears her like silence after thunder, wary and menacing – the longer the quiet, the brighter the lightning. 

He attempts to speak. “Whahgiz,” he manages to (not) say. He doesn’t think he has spoken much all day. He starts by clearing his throat, and ends by coughing. “S-cough-orry,” he says through a wheeze. Did a parasprite fall down his throat? “Sorry.” Cough. Heads were turning; eyes flung from sheets and scribbled nothings to the back of the class. A comment was made and summarily shushed. Cheerilee stared the offenders down. Test conditions were restored. Rumble observed; a fuss could be made of such minor things, and under a less firm hold the class might have erupted. 

Cheerilee shook her head and smiled. Rumble started to wish she would go back to her desk. “Uhm … yes. Miss?”

“I know your home situation is a bit complicated, but could you read this letter with your family?” Cheerilee indicated to a scroll on the desk that Rumble hadn’t noticed. It had an impressive seal, a winged trident and infinity symbol in royal blue. He had seen it before. Hmm.

“Y-yeah. Umm, I can do that. When ... for?” Rumble trailed on for a moment. So incredibly mortifying to ask questions whose answers should have been said. 

“Just a few weeks. Don’t worry too much,” Cheerilee said, an assuring smile on her kindly face. Infuriating. Did other foals care so much about dates? Rumble knew that most ponies in general didn’t seem to. He dropped it, though.

“Cool.” Boiling, breathing fire eating his veins. He needed to fly. His hoof shook as he smoothed his mane back. 

“And here are your test results back.” The teacher pushed another slip of parchment towards Rumble. He swept it closer with his wingtip and tried not to look while she was there. “Are you okay to sit here for the rest of the lesson?” He relaxed, maybe even stopped shaking. He couldn’t tell. Either way, balance was restored. Teachers were teachers and the letter would probably say when a reply needed to be sent in. “I could give you some work if you want to, if you don’t mind doing it by yourself; the rest of the class won’t be finished for a while.”

Lightning. Bright and sharp and right in front of his eyes. He was glad for the silence now. “Could I – well, I, uh, am I allowed to maybe … leave? School, I mean. A little?” Rumble was very eloquent – a telepathic wordsmith.

Cheerilee glanced at the clock hanging on the wall, and frowned. “I can’t let you go before the end of the day – unless you have a note?” Rumble shook his head, and slumped back into his chair. Cheerilee hesitated for a moment before heading back to her desks to mark the other foals’ tests. 

Rumble itched to open the letter; he wanted to hear the seal crack and for all it’s contents to sit before him. He wanted to know what was inside. But he knew it wouldn’t be right for him to read the letter right in front of Cheerilee, and so tucked the creamy scroll in his saddlebag on the floor, where the deep blue seal couldn’t stare at him. Instead, he distracted himself with his test results. It was History, his best subject, and although Rumble wasn’t surprised at the good outcome he still allowed himself half a smile. Only half. 

Something moved to his right and Rumble was suddenly aware that he had a prying neighbour. He turned his head sharply – he had finished his test, so the fear of being accused of cheating didn’t apply – to see Featherweight glancing out of the corner of his eye at Rumble’s corrected test. Rumble doubted he was just in awe of Rumble’s terrible mouth-writing, and quickly shoved the sheet to the other side of his desk, his only other neighbour the wall. For good measure he stared directly out the window, resting his head on his hoof and blocking Featherweight’s view. 

Now that the pose was forced on him Rumble found it uncomfortable, and waited impatiently for the little bell to chime the end of the school day. Insane as it was, Rumble was embarrassed to have caught Featherweight cheating, which is why he didn’t tell Miss Cheerilee. Maybe Featherweight hadn’t been cheating, he thought nervously. Maybe he was only glancing Rumble’s way for a moment, an involuntary reaction to some motion on Rumble’s part. Rumble began to wonder if it was his own fault; in hindsight it seemed he had been gloating, putting Featherweight in a position where it could hardly even be considered cheating to look at Rumble’s test. This line of thinking wasn’t new, but that quirk of his personality to doubt and dither infuriated him to no end. Even now he still felt a gnawing anxiety about when a response to that scroll needed to be in. Justifying the truth to himself – that Featherweight had been looking at his test on purpose, that the letter would certainly have the date for a response detailed within – didn’t help to calm him down, only to incense him further about his own shortcomings. It was a vicious cycle with which he had too much experience. 

The sharp clang of the bell ruptured Rumble’s train of thought, and he quickly slung his already-packed saddlebag onto his back, intent on leaving. Most of the class still had their test with them, though all but a few were only checking for mistakes and passed their completed test to the front without any fuss.

Rumble looked back for a moment at the doorway after mumbling a ‘good afternoon’ to Miss Cheerilee, and saw that Featherweight still hadn’t given in his test. The Pegasus colt scribbled crazily, his quill darting back and forth like a frightened fruit bat. Rumble felt a dart of guilt wash over him, and tried to shake it off with a quick burst of flight out the door, his wings buzzing. It wasn’t his fault if Featherweight didn’t know the answers, or hadn’t bothered to study, and he determined to think about something else. 

He succeeded partially, though as is the nature of that particular demand Rumble kept circling around the thought for a while. When he finally calmed down he stopped his hummingbird imitation and landed on a low cloud. Flying calmed him down, usually. Clouds did too, for that matter; he understood clouds, and they were pretty beautiful anyway. 

Rumble pushed the edges of the small cloud closer to the centre to solidify it a bit more, and then slipped his saddlebag onto it. He stretched out, letting his front hooves dangle off the cloud and watching his classmates and the younger school-foals leave the Schoolhouse. From high above, Rumble could almost see the invisible lines connecting groups of friends: Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders from his own class, Snips and Snails in the year below him, and younger foals he only knew by face. Twist walked alongside Apple Bloom when the other two Crusaders started heading towards town. Shady Daze, second-in-command at the Foal Free Press, was apparently absent. 

Rumble didn’t really hang out with any of them, and although he knew a lot of them were friendly he couldn’t seem to break into many conversations or implicate himself in games. He was in his last year at the Ponyville Schoolhouse, so it didn’t really matter that much in the long run; the Ponyville Secondary School wasn’t in the books for Rumble. In a few months, if all went well he’d be in a school where no foals knew him, and in the chaos of new foals and new groups forming, he would fly in next to another foal and make a lifelong friend, or maybe two... 

... of course it wouldn’t turn out that way, but Rumble had accepted a long time ago that friendship would never come easily to him.  By now he knew how to take solace in being alone and able to think and dream of whatever he wanted. He remembered friends in Cloudsdale, and sometimes thought about contacting them, but he knew ultimately that they would probably hardly remember him. It had been four years since Rumble and Thunderlane left Cloudsdale, and even before that Rumble had been isolated from his friends for some time. He suspected that he idealised them as well, and when Rumble thought back enough he recalled that he’d never been good friends with anypony even then, only a tagalong foal who everypony tolerated because he didn’t cause much trouble.

His cloud started drifting into a larger cloud, and Rumble shrugged his saddlebag back on before lifting off. He felt a bit better now – thinking about his bleak social life tended to mellow him out – and decided it was time to head off. He suddenly felt an intense desire to read the letter Cheerilee had given him, and decided to fly straight home instead of cloud-hopping like he usually did. It would be harder on his wings, but Rumble could handle it.

Below him, Rumble saw a skinny cream coat trudge down the Schoolhouse steps. Featherweight must have seen Rumble out of the corner of his eye, because he looked sharply upwards. Rumble swept his wings downward and charged through a thick cloud faster than was safe or necessary, and angled himself northward to where his house should be around this time of day. He still felt ridiculously at fault for the earlier incident, and smoothed back his mane with a shuddering sigh. He couldn’t wait to get home.