Lightning's Bolt
Introduction
Broken Dreams
The cheerful laughter of foals filled the orphanage as Lightning Dust strolled through the halls. Younger foals ran about her hooves, playing some silly game. She saw the older kids down the hall, colts teasing the fillies in the usual childish manner. It was all fun around here. She closed her eyes, listened to the pleasant sounds of happy foals and relaxed.
This was home. This was where she grew up, where she gained her first fans, where she became an adult.
“Lightning!”
She turned about, thrilled to see her cousin Gulfstream. The red-maned, red-coated colt wasn’t an orphan, but he was always visiting and playing with his favorite hero. He leapt into her hooves, the two sharing a moment of laughter after the force of the hit sent her sprawling.
“You of all ponies should know better than to play so rough,” a kind but lecturing voice declared.
Lightning looked up to see Peace Spring, the orphanage's first Headmaster. At her side was her partner Mountain Mantra, a bald but bushy-eyebrowed stallion. His muscles and sheer size were as intimidating as always.
“Excuse us for having a little fun.” Lightning winked at Gulfstream as they stood.
“I’m afraid fun is not on the agenda today,” Mountain Mantra said in his usual solemn fashion with a face as expressionless as ever.
“No?” Lightning looked about at all the playing foals. “You could have fooled me.”
Peace's typically gentle smile turning wicked.
“But we did. Remember?”
Lightning tilted her head at the unicorn, opened her mouth to respond—
The world went dark. The laughter was gone, and the silence that engulfed the world felt oppressive. Lightning shifted as a strange intensity seemed to fill the air. She turned to reassure Gulfstream, but he was gone.
Everypony was gone. She was all alone.
“Lightning…”
She turned and let out a horrified shout. There, illuminated by a light with no source, was Mountain. He sat with his back against a stone wall, body mangled and bleeding. His head hung low, his lips didn’t move, but the voice in her head clearly belonged to him.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
She ran to shake him by the shoulders, but he didn’t respond. A tense horror began to creep through her mind as she lifted his head and tried to slap him awake.
“Come on, you old fart! You’re stronger than that.”
Mountain’s voice echoed in her mind. “You have a responsibility, now.”
Tears welled up in Lightning’s eyes as she took a slow step back. “I’m sorry. I... I should have known…”
“But how could you?” She looked up in alarm to find Peace Spring smiling down at her like a doting mother. “How could you have known what we were up to?”
Lightning blinked through her tears and rubbed her eyes. “We?”
Laughter struck her ears. Not the pleasant laughter of children, no. This was something quieter, a mocking hiss of a laugh.
Lightning’s heart leapt in her throat as she turned to see dozens of blue, slitted eyes peering at her from the darkness around Mountain’s corpse. Lightning knew what they were, and she was appropriately terrified. She backed away, watching them watch her.
She passed through an open door and into an orphanage full of flames. The air fled her lungs as she watched her home of nearly eighteen years burn. The foals… She had to save the foals!
“Peace!”
When she looked into the dark, fire-free room, she saw Peace standing before the dozens of eyes. Her old headmaster smiled, closed her eyes...and when they opened they were blue and slitted and mocking. Lightning jerked back from the sight, revulsion and fear mixing in her brain to create something wholly terrible.
“What’s the matter, Lightning? Are we not family?”
A beam crashed between them, flames licking the air and forcing Lightning back. She bolted, running through the burning hallways and scouring the rooms. There was only one thing on her mind.
“Gulfie! Where are you?!”
Mind frantic, she opened her wings and flew through the halls. “Gulfstream!”
The fire boxed her in. Everywhere she tried to fly, she was met with a wall of flames. With no other way to go and her heart pounding in her head, she fled downstairs.
She was in a large room, the walls glowing hot and the ceiling made of smoke. She came to a stop, hovering just above the floor at the sight of the great boulder in the middle of the space.
There, lying on his back, was her cousin.
Lightning cried out and flew to him. She lifted him up, but dropped him with a whimper as his head lolled back into an unnatural position. “G-Gulfie…” She gazed down, observing his slit throat and his peaceful expression.
She broke down. With no concern for the flames and smoke, she clutched him close and wept. Her colt. Her precious little cousin colt!
“Lightning?”
She looked up to find a lone unicorn filly standing opposite the stone, her tiny face peering with wide, dark blue eyes.
“Keen? You… You’re okay…?”
The filly ducked, as if afraid of Lightning’s words. “I’m scared.”
Knowing she had to save at least one foal, Lightning set her poor cousin aside and reached for her. “It’s okay, Keen. I’m gonna get us out, I promise.”
Keen dropped a little lower, her pearly mane barely visible over the stone. “B-but, what about the monsters?”
“I’ll protect you,” Lightning urged, hearing the familiar laughter in her ears. She glanced back and saw eyes peering through the flames. “Keen, come on. We have to go!”
She felt the filly climb into her hooves and, breathing a sigh of relief, opened her wings… but then she looked at Keen and found herself staring into blue, slitted eyes.
Lightning let out a scream and dropped the filly. Taht simultaneous hit of revulsion and terror threatened to overwhelm her senses. “K-Keen! You…”
Keen stood on tall legs and looked up at her would-be savior, those unnatural eyes as innocent and gentle as ever. “What’s the matter, Lightning?”
She stepped forward.
Lightning retreated.
“No.” The pegasus shook her head frantically, not bothering to wipe away the tears. “No, no, no! I saved you! You… You’re not a changeling…”
“What’s wrong?” Keen approached with pleading eyes. “Lightning, save me.”
“Keep away!”
Lightning fell back, covering her ears as that terrible hissing laughter began to fill her mind. They were closing in with the flames and the smoke made her eyes burn.
Keen kept coming, tears running down her cheeks as she pleaded for help Lightning couldn’t provide.
“Lightning, I don’t wanna be a monster. Please. Please, don’t run away from me!”
Lightning dropped to her knees, surrounded by mocking laughter and fire. Those eyes were everywhere, but the only eyes she cared about were the ones gazing up at her, the ones begging her to do something she couldn’t.
She stared her failure in the face and trembled at the horror which she had wrought.
Lightning jerked awake, a barely-contained scream on her lips. She looked up to find herself lying in a cool, dark forest near a well-worn path. She stared up at the full moon through leaves turning red from the coming fall and thanked Celestia, Luna and anypony else that it had only been a dream.
A soft wind blew. The chill it produced made her aware of the tears on her cheeks. She rubbed them dry, struggling to get over her torrential emotions.
Then she heard the whimpering. She looked down to find a tiny ball of white mane tucked beneath her wing.
Keen Arrow. Her charge and her fear. The sound was coming from the filly. Every now and again a leg would kick out from that thick, unusually long mane. Or tail. Sometimes it was hard to tell when she curled up into a ball like that.
She could still see those blue eyes staring up at her, imploring. They made Lightning shiver. Even so, she leaned her muzzle into the hairball until she felt solid pony beneath and, scrunching up her nose at the tickling hair, nuzzled the filly. Keen didn’t wake up, so she tried again with a little more force.
She heard a gasp and raised her head as the tiny pony shifted beneath her wing. A small, alice-blue face peered out from between strands of mane.
Normal blue eyes. Lightning couldn’t possibly express how happy she was to see them.
“Hey, kiddo,” she whispered as the filly raised her head to look around with wide eyes. “Bad dreams?”
Keen heaved a tiny sigh and nodded, her ears tucked.
“Don’t worry.” Lightning pulled her a little closer with her wing. “There aren’t any monsters out here.”
Keen didn’t look up. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“But…” The filly snuggled close, her eyes on the woods opposite the road. “How do you know? They look like ponies.”
Lightning considered the question. She wasn’t used to providing comfort. What was she supposed to say? Things that helped her wouldn’t work, for Keen was nothing like her. How was she supposed to reassure a filly who was scared of her own shadow?
Keen dropped her chin to the grass, eyes shifting. “I guess there are no ponies out here… Right?”
Lightning looked down at her and smiled. “Yeah. We’re still a day out of Ponyville. Nopony out this far. So don’t you worry, Keen; even if they look like ponies, they aren’t here.”
Keen raised her head again to stare at Lightning. Though it was a soft expression, still Lightning could resist fidgeting.
“You have bad dreams, too.”
Lightning blushed and glanced away. “You know about that, huh?”
“I hear you crying at night.”
Lightning felt as if she’d been stabbed in the heart. It hurt about as badly as that muscle just below her lower left rib sometimes did. “D-Don’t you worry about me, Keen. I’ll be alright.”
She could feel Keen shifting at her side. She didn’t know what the filly was up to, but she was more focused on trying to fight back tears.
Keen’s soft voice arose through the darkness. “I guess we both have broken dreams.”
Lightning smiled at the thought despite her misery. She let her head drop to the grass. “Yeah, I guess so.”
A silence, lingering and uncomfortable, passed between them. Lightning had the strange sensation that this situation was just a bit out of her league. She didn’t know how she was to proceed. She’d never thought about having a family before. Doubts, hesitancy and fear had been dogging her all week.
Now they were almost to Ponyville, their new home. That scared her too. Lightning had spent the past year a drifter; this would be the first time she’d really settled down since leaving the orphanage. She wasn’t certain she wanted to... but she couldn’t travel all over Equestria with Keen on her back, and she wouldn’t dare put the timid filly back in an orphanage. Not after what happened…
“Lightning?”
She blinked; she’d thought Keen had fallen back to sleep. “Yeah?”
“If we live together, will our dreams get fixed?”
She shifted her head to look at the filly. Keen was pressed tightly under her wing, eyes aimed low. She seemed so fragile.
Lightning felt like crying, but she didn’t. She wanted to be as encouraging as she could, so instead she lowered her head so their cheeks were touching. “You bet, Keen. You’ll see. We’ll both be better before you know it.”
Keen didn’t smile, but she accepted the motion anyway, rubbing her cheek against Lightning’s tenderly. The filly sighed and closed her eyes, and for a little while Lightning watched her. She was so tiny. To think she’d been through so much at her age. She deserved something better, and Lightning wanted to give it to her.
She just didn’t know how.
Her eyes closed. When they did, she saw those pleading, slender eyes and was unable to repress a shudder.