Ghost Lights
Chapter 21
Two weeks later on the morning of day sixty seven, I woke up that morning and discovered that, as usual, Azure had risen before me. I went outside to find her finishing eating breakfast. I looked up at the sky. It was cloudy like every day here is, and judging by the motion of those clouds it looked like there were only slight winds coming in off the sea, making for nice easy flying conditions. It was just what I was hoping to see.
When Azure noticed me, she swallowed down her last couple bites of grass quickly. It was a flight training day, and our usual routine was to start as soon as I was up and moving. We'd sort of fallen into it by then to the point that it didn't need a lot of discussion. As she normally did, Azure cast her spell to transform herself into a pegasus and begin preparing for the lessons.
I didn't intend to proceed from there like we previously had, though. Having reached the point at which I felt like she was starting to be trustworthy with the basic skills on her own, I had something new planned.
"Today's going to be a little different," I told Azure, while we were getting ready. "You're probably getting tired of just flying back and forth over the beach, right?"
"I guess," Azure said, with a shrug. "I don't really care, though. I just want to keep learning. Where I do it doesn't bother me."
"Well, it's kinda bothering me," I said. "Teaching like this and being stuck over one spot every other day means that I'm losing those days for flying recon over the general wider area, like I should be doing."
"I... I see." Azure seemed to deflate slightly. Her withers slumped and she stared at the ground. I could hear disappointment in her voice. "If it's interfering with doing your job, then I suppose we'll have to cut back, won't we?"
"That's not what I meant," I said. "I was thinking more along the lines of combining the two, actually. There's no reason flying a patrol can't also be part of teaching you."
"Really?" The outlook that Azure expressed in her body language did a rapid about-face. Her ears perked up and her face went from a little morose to a hopeful expression. "You mean you want me to come with you? Like, on real flights?"
"Sure. You'll be fine," I said. "You've put in a lot of hard work and made a lot of strides. I think this'll actually be a little bit easier by comparison. Most of it's just straight line flying and gliding at a reasonable pace, not nearly as high energy as the maneuvers and speed drills you've been doing, and besides, I think it'd be good for you at this point to start getting some experience with distance flying over different kinds of terrain instead of these short little bursts over the same spot over and over again."
"That sounds good," Azure agreed.
"You cast the spell to last six hours like you usually do, right?" I asked.
"Yes I did." Azure nodded.
"Then we'll limit ourselves to about three hours out and three hours back," I said. "I wouldn't want to start you on anything much longer than that yet, anyway."
"I was gonna ask. Some days you're out for twelve hours at a time," Azure said. "I can cast the spell to last that long, but I still don't think my body would like that much flying all at once, yet."
"It's fine, we can also use this to build up for endurance while you keep getting the hang of things," I said. "For today, let's head south and maybe check out the coastline. Just try to stay next to me and don't worry about how fast you fly. I'm not all that concerned about covering a huge amount of distance. You ready?"
"Alright!" Azure affirmed enthusiastically.
I took off and Azure followed me into the air. I kept the pace slow and steady, letting Azure stay at my side where I could watch her. I kept the altitude a little lower than I usually would, staying down where the air was thick and easy to breathe and fly in. Azure was learning well and had no trouble going for a few hours nonstop without my assistance or intervention in anything.
Most importantly, her smile radiated plainly to see that she was enjoying every moment of our flight. I was reminded by it that this was still something new and magical to her, an experience to revel in. Seeing that made me happy. It rekindled and brought back some of that feeling from my own early days in the air. I understand now in a way I never could before why teaching can be rewarding. Feeling that pride in your student and reliving that thrill of the first time when it shines in their eyes is hard to beat.
At about noon, Azure and I landed in a field of grass near the coast to take a break and eat lunch. At this point we were as far out as I planned to go for the day. We grazed for a while, then walked over toward the edge of the land which was a sheer drop of rocky cliffs that fell away about a hundred feet into the ocean. Large jagged rocks stuck up out of the water, crusted with shells and lined in patches with green hairlike seaweed. The tide wasn't very high at the time and the low water exposed some of the sealife that would have otherwise been submerged.
I sat down by the edge of the land and took in the sight and sound of the ocean. Azure sat next to me. The water and the sea life was captivating enough to watch quietly for a while. A little crab with a dark colored body and brighter orange legs and claws wandered up and down the rocks, picking at unseen particles of something it apparently enjoyed eating. Barnacles stuck out their mesh of filters to catch plankton when the waves washed over them, then pulled them in and shut themselves tight when the water receded. We must have let ten or fifteen minutes go by just sitting there.
"You know, I've been thinking about what you asked me a couple weeks ago," Azure finally said, shifting a little bit where she sat. "About why I wanted to learn to fly."
"You said you thought it might make you happy," I recalled.
"Yeah," Azure said quietly and nodded, looking forward at the rocks.
We both watched them for a little while longer, sitting side by side in silence once again. The waves rolled in and out, rushing up at the rocks to break over them, flooding in with rhythmic primal force and then retreating in a ceaseless motion that never ended.
"So is it?" I asked.
"I don't know yet," Azure responded softly. "It's only been a month. I guess I'm still trying to feel inside myself. Still waiting to see what happens as I get better at it. I think so, though. I mean... I like it so far."
We watched the little crab clamber around, disturbing a small sea anemone that suddenly retracted its tentacles in response. It slowly started to relax and let them out again, though, after the crab scuttled off.
"It's a different kind of feeling. It's exciting," Azure continued. "And it's been a long time since I felt this way, actually."
"Oh? How long?" I asked.
"I don't really know." Azure shrugged. "Just... a long time. Maybe not since the first time I flew. Or was taken flying, I should say."
"When was that?"
"It was when I was a little filly," Azure said. "It was not too long after you left guard duty for your second tour here at the Seawall. A few months, so I must have been about eight, I think. Do you remember that night you wrote about from way back in those journal excerpts you sent Princess Twilight? The one where you caught me out in the palace hallways late at night, so you put me back to bed and I asked you what a fillyfooler was?"
"Heh, yeah." I nodded.
"You let me ride on your back while you took me back to my room," Azure said. "It was the first time I'd touched the wings of a pegasus. I was curious about them after that. I guess I wanted to know more, so I went to Captain Dash and I asked about her wings. I just wanted to see them and try to understand how they worked. Well, you know her. She was more than happy to show them off. Then I asked what it was like to use them to fly. She said it's not really something you can just explain, but she could show me, if I wanted."
What happened from there wasn't a difficult conclusion to arrive at. "So she took you flying," I said.
"Yep." Azure nodded. "I didn't think Princess Twilight would let me. Too dangerous and all. But... I guess it didn't matter, since the princess never knew. Captain Dash and I sort of figured that it could be our little secret, so she took me out one night at about sunset. I've never told anypony else. It was like, our special thing, just us. I rode on her back and she flew me up to a cloud way up there in the sky and we watched the sun finish setting and the moon and the stars come up. I thought it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. Nothing else I'd seen was ever like that."
"Not even magic?"
"Not after that." Azure shook her head. "By comparison, magic was always just sort of dull, you know? Maybe that's just because it was expected from me, though. It was the daily grind. Kinda destroys the novelty."
"Having Princess Twilight as a teacher seems like it would make things interesting, at least, though," I said.
"Yeah. She was a great teacher, but, ummm..." Azure trailed off. Her glance scanned side to side on the sea rocks, studying their details with a renewed apparent interest. I could sense her hesitation, something awkward she wasn't sure about. "I... I don't..."
"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," I said, trying to release her from feeling uneasy.
"It's just, she's not really there a lot of the time, you know?" Azure continued anyway. "She made the decisions about raising me, and she's the closest thing I have to a mother, but... she's a princess first. She doesn't get much of a choice about it."
"No, I guess not," I agreed. "I know she's sort of auxiliary to Celestia and Luna, but there's still a lot of functions that go through her. Sure keeps her busy."
"You can say that again," Azure nodded. "It's always a bad time, too. Like when... well, this is sort of a weird story. When I was thirteen, I had my first heat. You know how that goes the first time. Stuff starts happening in some sensitive places and no matter how many times you've been told it's coming, you kinda freak out because it's never done that before. I was pretty anxious about it and I just wanted Princess Twilight to show me what to do and tell me everything would be alright, but she was busy at her court all day with some diplomatic emergency. I don't remember what it was. I just remember that I couldn't even so much as get in the same room as her. Even if I could have, she wouldn't have been able to spare any time anyway."
"That's rough," I said.
"Yeah. At the time it was awful," Azure said. "So I wasn't sure what to do other than go to Rainbow Dash for help. Back then at that age she kind of intimidated me sometimes. I thought, you know, she's the captain of the guard, and a tough soldier like her doesn't want to hear about a personal problem like this. I thought I was just about going to die from embarrassment when I walked into her office and told her what was happening. She was really nice about it, though. She dropped everything to make sure I knew how to handle it and that I was alright. We hung out for most of the day and she gave me 'the talk'... stuff like how this meant I could get pregnant now, how to protect myself and use a condom, those kinds of things. All the sexual health stuff your mom is supposed to tell you about when the time comes, you know?"
I just nodded quietly.
"And at the end of the day when things were finally settled at court, Rainbow Dash went with me to see Twilight in private. I'll never forget it, because Captain Dash and I walked in together and she had this big smile like there was something to celebrate. The first words out of her mouth were, 'Hey Twilight, guess who just became a mare today!'" Azure laughed at the memory. "It took Twilight a few seconds to realize what Dash meant, but when she did the look on her face was priceless."
"I'll bet." I smirked. I could just see it in my mind: a grinning Rainbow Dash, a flabbergasted princess, and a shrinking, shy, thirteen year old Azure Sky, still half-grown and scrawny the way she was at that age.
"That's how those kinds of things always seemed to end up working out," Azure said. "It was always Captain Dash who was around and who had the time. She was cool, she let me do stuff that Twilight wouldn't sometimes. She's kind of like this awesome father I never had. I know it seems weird to say that about a mare, but at the same time it feels like it sort of makes sense, with her being Princess Twilight's partner and everything. They might as well be married, practically speaking, so I guess I sort of see her as being pretty much like family in a strange kind of way."
"I can understand it." I nodded. "Family's not always about who you were born to. It's about who's there with you when it matters."
"Yep," Azure agreed. "I was born a unicorn, but it feels like it's always been pegasi who really took me in. Even right before we came out here, it was Captain Dash who took me out to that farewell party. You saw. You were there. You're one of the pegasi who's been around for me, too."
"Well, I always liked you," I said. "You were a pretty cool kid. You also wrote me back after I sent those journal excerpts to the princess. That meant a lot to me."
"Haha, yeah, I did." Azure nodded. "I wanted you to come back to the palace again because I thought you were the greatest guard ever, after how you helped Twilight and Rainbow Dash get together... and because of the way you weren't afraid of the dark hallways at night. It sounds silly now but to a little kid those kinds of things matter. I felt better with you there protecting us. Also, I liked how you gave me an honest answer when I asked what a fillyfooler was, since you were just a guard and you didn't have to. You could have just told me to shut up and go to sleep."
I almost laughed at the thought. I don't think I could ever see myself saying that. Only then did it really occur to me how gruff the guards could probably seem sometimes to a little filly, patrolling around the palace in their armor - especially maybe the ones like me, who didn't usually talk much.
"Nah, I couldn't do that," I said. "It was too important. I felt responsible. I wanted what was best for you so I knew it had to be an honest answer."
"I hope this is alright, and not too weird of me to say, or anything..." Azure began, "but I sort of felt like you were a part of that family too. You're like a cool big sister, looking out for me."
"I was an only child growing up," I said. "So I don't know much about having siblings. But... if that's the way it is, I think that you're a pretty great little sister to have. I don't think I could have asked for better."
"Really?" Azure asked, smiling a little bit.
"Yeah, really," I answered her.
Azure reached out with her forelegs and embraced me. I hesitated involuntarily for a fraction of a second. It just surprised me, physical contact and affection isn't a frequently occurring thing in my life and I'm not so used to it that it ever seems to come easily. That doesn't lessen its importance, though. On the contrary, that makes a gesture like a hug particularly special and meaningful to me. It's only really enjoyable if it's somepony I know and like enough to feel that comfortable with.
This one, though... this one felt truly great. With family it always does. I reached out and returned her hug gladly.
Azure leaned her head against me and we just held each other for a little while against the backdrop of the sound of the ocean waves rushing in and out against the rocks. "Thanks for teaching me to fly," she said quietly. "I feel like it's helping me understand more about some of the ponies I care about. It's like I can see things through their eyes for the first time ever. I really enjoy it, too. Things haven't been this good in a while. I know the answer to that question now. Yes. It is making me happy."
That's when my uncertainties about instructing her in flight finally disappeared. I knew then that for whatever hazards there were, it was the right decision, one of the best ones I've ever made.