//------------------------------// // 39. Lessons in Flight - Part Four // Story: Letters From a Little Princess Monster // by Georg //------------------------------// Letters From a Little Princess Monster Lessons in Flight - Part Four The wind in Ponyville was always a constant difficulty for the weather team, swirling out of the Everfree Forest in complicated patterns that any normal pegasus could never tame. Mostly they just left the little gusts and bursts alone to shake the shutters and rattle the windows of Ponyville residents, much as they had been shaken and rattled for the past century. If a pony were to stand very still and listen as the wind blew by, it was said that they could hear mysterious voices, although every pony heard something different. The elderly ponies in the retirement home swore they could hear the laughter and songs of their youth, still echoing around the streets of the small town even years after their youth had been spent. Mature ponies were constantly looking around as the voice of a small child in the middle of some act of mischief would trickle to more adult and responsible ears. And the youngest ears of all could hear the sounds of opportunity in the summer air, from the door to the ice cream freezer being left open to the splashing of friends in the Ponyville pond. On this dark and gusty night, the wind spoke in a considerably more hostile fashion. It swirled through the empty streets, shaking limbs and twigs free from trees, and rattling the shutters of the largest and biggest house in Ponyville, located on the tallest hill in town. It moaned through the ornate stonework, scraped dry branches across the roof tiles, and made the huge building groan and creak in tiny unpredictable ways from the moment the sun had gone down and the wind out of the Everfree picked up. Other ponies in the small town wondered just what kind of storm was brewing in the chaotic and unpredictable forest, but they were unaware of the paralyzing fear that each gust of air brought to one small resident. With every muffled bang and thud, a small earth pony filly trembled in her huge four-poster bed. Every so often she would slip out from under the covers to peer out the open window into the dark night, despite the wind gusting through the window, around her room, and knocking her possessions off the overcrowded makeup table and various shelves in her bedroom. The wind sounded furious to her, bitter and sharp despite the sweltering heat of summer that left her soft pink coat slick with cold sweat and made her shiver every time she traveled to the open window. Stuffed beneath her bed was a rather battered scooter, which the little filly checked during every circuit of her nervous pacing around the room. Every time she looked towards it, there was an air of mixed dread and anticipation, as if she hoped that it would just vanish into thin air as if it were some figment of her imagination. But every time, the scooter was still there. It was a concrete reminder that her fears and worries were not unfounded, and that they would remain long after the sun had risen and normal nightmares would have fled. Tomorrow would not bring a day with Scootaloo buzzing down the streets of Ponyville at an unsafe speed. Tomorrow would not be another day to taunt the flightless chicken about her blank flank. Tomorrow would be a day when other ponies would start looking for the missing filly. They would ask questions. They would want to know where she went and why. And eventually they would find the rotting corpse at the bottom of Ghastly Gorge that Diamond Tiara kept envisioning in her mind. The endless loop of thought echoed constantly through her mind even as her tired body continued to move from the hidden scooter to the covers and back to the window again, hoping that there would be some sort of sign that she was wrong, and muttering almost silently to herself as she continued to pace. “She can’t have actually done it. I’m just over-reacting. She probably just got to the edge of town and chickened out like she does every time. Pull yourself together, Diamond. She’ll come slinking back into town in the dark and hide her face from all of her little show-off friends for days. Just because she threw her scooter in the trash, doesn’t mean she really jumped off Ghastly Gorge. She’ll snap out of it. She always does. There’s no reason to think Scootaloo is—” Diamond Tiara had just turned from checking on the battered scooter for the uncounted time when a pale moonlit figure of a small pegasus filly surrounded by a ghastly dark glow floated into the bedroom window. The apparition was quiet, almost motionless while poised on the windowsill, with her mane blowing in the gusty wind and her tiny orange wings extended to their limit on both sides. The figure took one step forward and descended to the floor of Diamond Tiara’s bedroom with a buzz of tiny wings as Diamond staggered backwards and gasped in a terrified squeak, “—dead?” “Hello, Diamond Tiara,” said Scootaloo in a grumbling monotone as she glared at the moonlit floor of the opulent bedroom. “I didn’t mean it!” gasped Diamond Tiara in a panicked squeak. “Don’t haunt me! I pulled your scooter out of the trash! Here! Take it! Take it away!” She scrambled for the bed, yanking the battered scooter out in a panic that made the awkward handle hit her in the nose when she grabbed and then tripped over it. Diamond landed in the middle of the hardwood floor and shoved at the scooter with a whimper, curling up into a ball afterwards and whining, “Please, just take it and go away! Don’t haunt me!” The accusatory silence weighed around Diamond Tiara like a sodden blanket. Even the wind abruptly died, leaving her in a pool of stagnant air and sweat as she held her eyes closed and hoped that the vengeful ghost would make her death quick. “Scared,” said another voice, higher pitched and younger sounding. “Not good.” “She deserves it!” snapped Scootaloo. “She said all those nasty things about me! She deserves to feel like I did!” “Will hurting her make you feel better?” The clicking of small hooves across her hardwood floor grew closer and the cold form of a small pegasus moved up besides Diamond Tiara, making her almost jump out of her skin when the clammy wing draped over her back. “Don’t be frightened,” whispered the voice in a slow but deliberate fashion. “We’re not dead.” “Why are you taking her side?” snapped Scootaloo. “Because she’s scared.” said the small voice. “Scared is bad. When I was scared, you helped me. When Luna was scared, we helped her. She says these things because she’s scared.” “Maybe if we blasted her with the Elements of Harmony,” grumbled Scootaloo, although with decreasing spite. “Now say you’re sorry,” said the small voice. There was a brief strangled snort from Scootaloo. “You hate her, don’t you?” “Yes.” From where Diamond Tiara was huddling against the floor, she could hear Scootaloo’s breathing slow until it was almost inaudible. “No,” she added in almost a whisper. “I hate what she does.” “Do you like it?” asked the voice in Diamond Tiara’s ear. “When you call my friends names. When you scoff at them. Does making them feel bad make you feel good?” Unable to keep her eyes closed any more, Diamond Tiara opened them and looked into the compassionate violet eyes of the tiny little fake alicorn that had been following the three little losers ever since Diamond had returned from summer camp. Shame boiled through her red cheeks as she realized what a fool she had been made to appear in one of those pitiful blank-flanks’ schemes. “You?” she gasped, looking between Twilight and the sulking little flightless pegasus. “What are you doing in my bedroom? Get out! Get out before I call my daddy and have you thrown out.” Feeling a surge of anger at having been taken in by their infantile little blame game, she shoved the battered scooter across the floor and added, “And take your stupid busted scooter too, you little freaks!” “See!” declared Scootaloo. “She’s not sorry at all. Why should I forgive her for what she did?” “Because you have to,” whispered Twilight, still keeping her eyes locked onto Diamond Tiara in a steady gaze that was more than a little creepy. “You can’t hate her. It will eat you out from inside. Make you like her.” “I’m nothing like that little chicken,” snapped Diamond Tiara. “I’m rich and beautiful, and everypony at school adores me.” “You’re a spoiled brat,” snapped Scootaloo. “Everypony only says they like you because of your money.” The little flightless pegasus hesitated with her jaw hanging open and a look of enlightenment spreading across her face like the rising sun. “Oh. Now I see.” “See what, you pathetic loser?” “You want ponies to like you for who you are,” said Scootaloo, looking a little dazed and speaking quickly as if the words would vanish into vapor if she delayed even a second, “but you’re afraid that if you were poor, they all would hate you. All you are is money, and without it, you’re nothing. My friends and I don’t care about how much money you have, and you think that if we’re made unlikeable, that somehow makes you more likeable.” She paused for a long while as Diamond Tiara spluttered, eventually adding, “That’s pathetic.” “You’re pathetic, you little weirdos and your little club!” spat Diamond Tiara, unconsciously backing up a step due to the unceasing stare from Scootaloo’s freaky little friend. “I’ll bet you didn’t even leave town. You probably chickened out before—” “I jumped,” said Scootaloo through gritted teeth. “You made me so angry that I couldn’t think straight, and it almost got me killed, but you know what? You don’t care. All you care about is yourself.” She inhaled deeply and took a step forward. “I’m not afraid any more. My friends are there for me. I’m going to fly. And you’re not worth it.” “I’m not worth it?” “No, you’re not. Twilight is right. I need to forgive you for being such a… you.” “What!” The little freaky alicorn stepped up next to her flightless friend and tried to put a wing over her, but after a few moments of fruitless attempts, Scootaloo extended her wing so their feathers would mesh together. There was something dangerous in the little alicorn’s violet eyes, something far older than her apparent age as she spoke in a rough whisper, with the words deliberately pronounced one at a time. “I forgive you too, Diamond Tiara. I want to be mad at you, but that’s not going to help either of us. You seemed to be somepony to admire. Confident, even though you were scared on the inside. Not now. Not after doing this to my friend. I forgive you, but you still did a bad thing. You need to admit it. Keep from doing it again. Think of others instead of just yourself. Tell them what you’re afraid of so it won’t control you.” Diamond Tiara huffed into a rage. “How dare you! I didn’t do anything wrong! And I’m not afraid of anything! Get out of my—” The shadows beside the window shimmered and a dark adult pony with both wings and a horn stepped into Diamond Tiara’s bedroom. Her mane flowed with miniscule specks of light in the darkness, and her blue-green eyes held Diamond Tiara’s gaze in a frozen exchange of heart-hammering shock. “Would that I had heard the same words, so many years ago.” Princess Luna continued to stride forward until she could place her own huge dark wing over the two little ponies, and looked down at Diamond Tiara with a cool, controlled gaze. “Once, when I was younger and so much more foolish, I too wished for the love and adoration of others to the exclusion of all else. I could not see or appreciate that which I had been given, but only that which I could not have, and it drove me to drastic actions far beyond what your mind can comprehend. My sister forgave me for my crimes, not once, but a thousand fold, and I shall never fall prey to that insidious desire again. Forgiveness is a gift which can only be given, not earned, and although I too am wroth at the anguish which thou has inflicted upon my friend, I too shall forgive you. Take our gift, Diamond Tiara, and treasure it far more than gold, for it shall be a lesson to you beyond all others that you shall learn throughout your life.” “B-but I didn’t do anything wrong,” whined Diamond Tiara, trying to cringe backwards but finding her hind hooves seeming frozen on the oak floorboards. “Did,” said Twilight. “I’m writing your mother and father. They need to know.” “Daddy?” Diamond Tiara lunged from her crouched huddle and ran as fast as she could, out the bedroom door, down the hallways and up the stairs until she reached her father’s room. The doorknob almost chipped a tooth as she burst into the room, scrambled across the floor and flung herself into the immense soft featherbed where Filthy Rich awoke with the sudden impact. * * * The despondent little filly was incomprehensible for the longest time as she cried and wailed about horrible monsters in her room, clinging tightly to his leg and sobbing while they returned to her empty bedroom, and refusing to let go, much as she had done many years ago while he had been raising her. Even a trip to the kitchen for a calming glass of warm milk could not restore his little angel’s cheerful mood, and he resigned himself to another night of having an anxious little wriggling pony in his cold empty bed. Whatever the nightmare was that had disturbed his precious gem must have been more powerful than any of the other dreams that he had comforted her through, because for over an hour, she did nothing but cling to his leg and shiver under the covers. Finally, she nuzzled up to his neck with a cold face still damp from tears and asked in a near whisper, “Daddy?” “Yes, Diamond?” The trembling increased as he could feel her open her mouth and then closed it several times without speaking. With a deep breath to gather her confidence, she blurted out, “You love me for who I am, right Daddy?” “Of course, honey. You’re my perfect little filly.” In the dim light of the moon from the open window, Filthy Rich patted his daughter on the hoof while watching her carefully, concerned that his answer only seemed to make Diamond more stressed. After a long period of starts and stops, Diamond Tiara swallowed and whispered, “Does Mommy love me?” His gentle patting of her hoof slowed as it was Filthy Rich’s turn to take a deep breath and swallow the lump that seemed to be strangling him. A faint noise from the breeze outside drew his eye to the open window with the curtains billowing gently into his bedroom. It sounded like a distant sob of loss, so much like Diamond Tiara’s mother that he could not breathe for a long moment, listening in vain for the noise to repeat. Memories that even eight years of time had been unable to dim flowed through his mind, and for just the smallest moment, he could see Filligree’s beautiful face echoed in the face of their child. Then the moment was gone, and all he had remaining was the only piece of their time together that he had been able to hold onto, this single perfect gem in the tarnished setting of those memories. He remained looking out the window at the distant moon and stars, wishing with all of his heart that he did not have to say the words that came next. “I’m sure she does, Diamond.”