Near and Far

by TheMareWhoSaysNi

The Very Beginning

THREE YEARS EARLIER

Soarin stepped into the huge room where the ceremony would happen. Rows and rows of chairs unwound in front of his eyes and right at the back, a huge stage stood, covered with a white carpet, with mikes and chairs as well. A banner was stretched from one wall to another wall that said welcome to students for this new year at Crystal Prep. The only chairs that were empty happened to be at the front, a few inches away from the stage. He sighed and went there with a nonchalant gait.

It was the first hour of his very first day and already, he was feeling weary. All the students were heckling and superficial friendship started to bloom. How he hated this messy hubbub. He had always hated noise. He had always hated those who got together for stupid or vain reasons. He never had real friends. Loneliness was his best companion.

Everybody told him High School would be a turning point in his life yet he could already sense that nothing was going to change. Sitting down, he looked at the stage in front of him... Yes, nothing really changed and everything would definitely bore him. Even baseball, which until then had always been his only space of entertainment, was starting to have him growing weary.

The ceremony started with its flow of introducing speeches each one more pompous than the last. Soarin was resolutely bored but since he was at the front row, he forced himself to listen, out of sheer respect of the traditions, though his desire to yawn wasn't easy to hold back.

Suddenly, someone from the same row but sitting on the other side of the aisle, didn't bother to show boredom. No one paid attention, or at least, no one had the guts to intervene and chose instead to act as if nothing happened but Soarin, aroused by curiosity, tilted his head on the side.

And he saw her... Yes, her... She made a chewing-gum bubble that plopped in the middle of the speeches when it popped, shamelessly, her knees pinned together but her calves open, her Oxford shoes covered with mud and one of her socks higher on her legs than the other one... She also had rainbow hair that she hadn't bother to curl, hanging down her shoulders. There was sometime exotic about her face and she had a pretty milky skin.

Unnoticed, Soarin cracked a smile. Such bad manners in front of everyone, what impudence! And this impudence had something exciting.

At the end of the ceremony, he wanted to see her again but it seemed like she had run away, as fast as the wind, like an irreverent illusion. But Soarin knew her image would forever be printed in his mind.

***

And the first person he noticed as he stepped into what was going to be his classroom for four years, hands in his pockets, it was her. She was rumpled at the back of the room, pretending to be asleep, while the other girls around were going from desk to desk in order to speak to those they judged worthy of company. It was weird, this compulsion of people for being penned by categories...

But she seemed to be indifferent to this whole performance. Her long rainbow hair covered her face almost entierly yet he knew it was her. First, because he never knew anyone else with rainbow hair before, but also because from under the table, he could see she hadn't fixed the problem of her socks.

He didn't approached her, though. He wasn't the type of boy to come up to girls. He sat behind his desk, throwing his bag on the floor, his hands quickly back in the pockets of his uniform's jacket. He stared at the blackboard while the noise around him kept on going. And despite it all, the only thing he was able to perceive was that, behind him, she was moving. A girl had approached her and spoken to her. A question about her hair. She didn't answer. The girl went back where she came from, next to the other girls she got acquainted with.

Soarin feared for his turn to come. There had to be a moment when someone would try to talk to him.

"Sorry..." a hoarse feminine voice said to him.

He looked up unenthusiastically. In front of him stood a girl with hair like burning fire, a slightly tanned face lit up by stunning turquoise eyes. She looked pretty and mischievous, yet not in the right way.

"Yes?"

"My friends and I think you're really handsome. I really like your hair. Has anyone told you you looked a little like James Dean?"

"He's dead," he replied, raising an eyebrow.

But the girl didn't comment and resumed her strange introducing speech as if nothing had been said at all.

"If you want to, you could sit with my friends and I during lunch. Oh, I'm Sunset Shimmer, by the way."

Soarin opened his mouth. He was about to politely decline, the way he always did when invited by persons he didn't know. But a sardonic chuckle rose from the back of the classroom. Sunset Shimmer turned around, frowning as if she were deeply hurt in that way some of the girls acted in order to be complimented as cute. And Soarin realized "she" was the one who laughed.

"What's so funny?" Sunset Shimmer asked, her two fists on her hips.

"Nothing... But the way you're approaching people is so lame!"

"Hey, who do you think you are?"

"Just an amused observer. Forget about it, Sunset Shimmer..."

She didn't look into her eyes, nor in her direction at any moment. There was a book opened on her desk and she had started to write something down while talking to her. Such contempt... It really fit the character. Soarin himself shared her opinions but would never have dared saying it. Though he didn't know anything about her, he felt close to her.

In front of her partner of conversation's complete loss of interest, Sunset Shimmer drew her attention back on Soarin.

"What do you think?"

"Sorry, Sunset Shimmer but I'd rather eating alone."

Sunset Shimmer pouted and he thought that once again, she was caricaturing the cute girl from movies. She looked down, turned around and met her bunch of brand new friends, girls she had just met and still ignored whether they were soulmate material.

During this first true hour of class, during the roll, he finally got to know her name. She was Rainbow Dash.

Comments

[Midday Giggle]

YOU DID IT!

I'm SO glad this is back, Ni! Thumbs up for making up your mind to continue, this is already quite amazing!

(Dash please fix your socks lmao)