Skieflyer fluttered around her mother as she fixed breakfast in their Cloudsdale-home kitchen. “Mooom!” she whined, “Why can’t I train to be part of the Wonderbolts like you did when you were my age?”
Spitfire turned to her daughter. “Well, for one thing, I can just teach you myself here at home.”
Skieflyer rolled her cat-like eyes. “Mom, I know there’s something else,” she argued, “I mean, you don’t even let me go to school with the other foals my age!”
Spitfire sighed. “If you really want to know why you can’t go to school, ask your father when he comes home,” she said. Then, glancing out the window at the rising sun, said, “Which should be soon, considering that it’s dawn.”
Skieflyer’s father was a Thestral named Nightflash. He was a member of the Night Guard, so he wouldn’t get back home to his wife and daughter until dawn.
“Oh, alright,” Skieflyer reluctantly agreed.
• • •
“Daddy?” Skieflyer asked the moment her father entered. “How come I can’t go to school?”
Nightflash looked down at his daughter. “Because you are different than other foals your age,” he said simply.
Spitfire, in the doorway to the kitchen, did a mental face-hoof.
Skieflyer was getting annoyed. “Well, no duh, I’m different than the other foals, I mean you don’t see a Pegasus with fangs everyday, now do you?” She bared her teeth for emphasis
Nightflash smiled, showing his own fangs. “No, of course not,” he said with amusement. “But being different isn’t bad—“
“Then why can’t I go to school?!” Skieflyer demanded.
“You can’t go to school because the other foals would treat you harshly, just like they are mean to the poor fliers,” Spitfire said, not wanting the conversation to go on forever.
“But—”
“No ‘buts’,” Spitfire said “Now, I have a show that I have to practice for, so I’ll see you later.” She nuzzled Skieflyer affectionately before flying off into the sky.
• • •
Skieflyer was walking past her parents’ room on her way to bed and heard muffled conversation from behind the cloud door. She stopped and crept up to it and listened.
“I really wish she could go to school without the risk of being teased,” Spitfire was saying.
“I know,” replied Nightflash “And I’ve been thinking, what if we send her to Ponyville, you know, where my sister Shady Moon lives?”
Ponyville? Where is that? And I have an aunt that lives there? Skieflyer quickly snuck to her room when she heard the faint ‘foof’ of hooves on the cloud floor coming towards the door.
Nightflash came into her room to say good-night before he left for duty and tucked Skieflyer in.
“Good-night, Daddy,” she whispered.
“Good-night, sweetheart,” he replied as he left.