Momentum

by Petrichord

Chapter 1

Overall, it was a wonderful reunion: the food was great, the music was better and the meetup with everyone else was the best of them all.

Naturally, Sandbar celebrated the success of the reunion by pretending he had to go to the bathroom, sidling over to the local lake and idly staring up from the edge of the pond at the evening sky.

The party should have been winding down by now. Even if his other classmates decided to stay for a few more days, everyone would still likely be packing it up and heading off to sleep. With luck, they’d have decided that he needed to catch up on sleep, or that he had a stomach bug, or something else convenient and excusable. It wasn’t hard to come up with reasons, really, but it was much more courteous to make up reasons for the absent party.

Equestria practically ran on courtesy. Etiquette was effectively its currency. Deference was its national motto. Most of the students at Twilight’s friendship academy learned at least that much during their classes, and it’d be ridiculous for classmates to to forget absolutely everything they learned in front of each other. It wasn’t too much to hope they’d remember a smattering of decorum, right?

Sandbar leaned back against the grassbank. Staring at the stars was, frankly, really boring. Trying to daydream was way less effective than just letting it happen, but he’d already tried that enough that it had gotten boring. It would have been nice to remember to bring headphones, but of course he’d been courteous and polite enough to not bring over the equipment that lead to the universally-recognized symbol of “I’m not listening to you, go away.”

If he wasn’t banking so heavily on courtesy, he’d almost be annoyed at it.

But he could curb annoyance for the moment. Smiling and nodding wouldn’t be too hard to do for however long he needed to do it for, and then he’d get some actual time alone to do, uh…

Whatever. Stuff. Didn’t matter all that much, he’d figure something —

“Yo! Sandy!”

Oh, for crying out loud.

“Heya, Smolder.” Sandbar turned his head a fraction of an inch; enough to acknowledge that the dragon was there, but not enough to seem excited about it. “How’re you doing?”

“Bad. Because you ditched, and now I feel like an idiot for having to make sure you’re okay.” Completely ignoring his carefully crafted body language, Smolder stomped across the grass, covering an unreasonable amount of distance in an unreasonable amount of time. “What the heck are you doing over here?”

“Oh, y’know...just kind of thinking. A little overwhelmed by everything.” Sandbar tilted his head back up to the sky. “Trying to calm down a little.”

“Bull.”

“What do you mean ‘bull’?”

“I mean that it’s easy to tell when a pony’s actually smiling and when they’re just pretending to smile. So, yeah, bull.”

Smolder sat down on the ground next to him, and Sandbar made the mistake of looking right at her. A small twinge, like the pluck of a violin string, reverberated faintly from inside his ribcage; for a second, Sandbar imagined what might really make him smile.

“It’s never really pretending to smile, when you think about it.”

“Wrong. You wanna use verbal ballet on other dragons to make them think how you want? Go ahead. But you’re full of bull, and you know it.”

Sandbar sighed, not daring to look her in the eye. “Fine. You got me. Now what?”

“What do you mean ‘now what?’ I’m not your therapist, Sandy.” Smolder folded her arms on top of her knees and rested her head on her makeshift bridge. “But you’ve got something to say, and even if you’d prefer not saying it and letting yourself be miserable for the rest of your life, I don’t. So you’re gonna tell me, or I’m gonna drag you back by your fluffy frill and make you socialize until you can’t stand it anymore.”

“It’s called a mane.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’re mean, you know that?” Sandbar smiled, despite himself. “Like, the meanest.”

“Not a tenth as mean as you are dippy.” Smolder turned her head, and Sandbar didn’t need the sunlight to tell she was smiling back. “So?”

“It’s gonna sound weird.”

“And that’s different from how you normally sound?”

“Fine.” Sandbar stretched, forehooves reaching out for the sky. “I need something to do.”

Silence.

“Wait.” Smolder paused. “This is because you’re bored?”

“I mean the sort of thing that I can talk about when this sort of thing happens.” Sandbar huffed. “For actual conversations. I need to have done something worth talking about, ergo I need something to do. I know that talking about nothing for hours is something that Equestria does, but it looks a lot easier than it is, trust me.”

“So, uh.” Smolder scratched her head. “Do something, then?”

“Like what?”

“Am I your hatchlingsitter or something? Do you seriously need me to think for you?”

“Well,” Sandbar replied as he turned back to Smolder again. “What have you been doing? Something to think about wouldn’t hurt.”

“You really wanna go down that rabbit hole? You couldn’t do what I do, trust me.”

“Is it impossible?”

Smolder smirked. “Yeah.”

“Physically impossible?”

Smolder’s smirk widened. “Yeah.”

“The sort of physically impossible thing only dragons can do?”

The smirk on her face froze. “Uh.”

“Yes or no.”

“...No.” The smirk vanished. “See, at least I can be up front about what things are really like.”

“So could I theoretically do it with enough training?”

“I don’t know. Could you?” Smolder groused. “Why are you being a butt about this?”

“I dunno. Maybe I’m just trying to rattle your chains. Maybe I’m genuinely interested. Maybe this could actually be the different something I’m looking for.”

“Or maybe you’re just being dippy.” Smolder stretched, then leaned back onto the grass, wriggling a little as she made herself comfortable.

“Maybe you’re just being mean.” Sandbar held out a hoof. Smolder turned her head and, after a half second pause, returned the trans-species hoof bump.

“Maybe I am.” Smolder confirmed.

“So?”

Smolder sat up. “I’m getting on the Ponyville - Manehattan at 10:30. Use your charm and your “Friendship Academy Graduate” cred or whatever to convince the conductor to let you on with me. We’ll take it from there.”

Sandbar frowned. “That doesn’t exactly sound legal.”

“Yeah, but smiling vacantly all the time almost certainly is legal. Your call, Sandy. Keep doing that forever, or live a little.” Smolder stretched, then held out her claw. “And come on back to the party, okay? I’m not the only one who wanted to see you.”

Sandbar took her claw and let her pull him upright. Brushing his bangs out of his eyes, Sandbar flicked his tail and stared at her for a second.

“What?” Smolder asked.

“You wanted to see me?”

Smolder snorted, spun around and marched back towards the party. “You’re such a dip, Sandy.”

“And you’re mean,” Sandbar replied as he followed her.

Neither could suppress their grins.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

This looks like it'll be an interesting ride. Though wings rather trivialize parkour. I suppose Smolder has some way of addressing that. Looking forward to seeing where you go with this.

[star1wars3]

some actual time along

Time alone?

[Petrichord]

9288351
Good catch. Thanks!