How to Preen Your Chicken
Scootaloo flopped down on the cloudbase outside Rainbow Dash's house with an oof. She let herself sink into the firm, yet soft and fluffy material, and stretched her aching wings out in the fading light. She'd spent the entire day with Rainbow Dash, and the two had done almost nothing but practice flying from the time she’d been picked up from the orphanage at nine, until just now when they had returned to Dash’s house at sunset. The older pegasus never mentioned the reason why she'd decided to spend the entire day with Scootaloo, but the filly had enjoyed every minute of it. Even the painful ones.
“You alright there, Squirt?” Dash asked as she lay down beside her.
They were outside Dash’s front door and the cloudbase had turned a warm, orange color in the dying sunlight that almost matched Scootaloo’s own fur. She rolled over onto her back and looked over at her idol, mentor, and honorary big sister, whose face was buried in a wing as she straightened a few of the blue feathers that were out of place.
“My wings...” Scootaloo said, gingerly extending one. “I didn’t know they could hurt this much.”
Glancing at her from behind a wing, Dash said, “That’s part of learning to fly, kiddo. Don’t worry, once you build up those flight muscles they won’t ache any more.”
“Yeah, but that’ll take, like, forever!” Scootaloo said as she threw two hooves in the air.
Dash pulled a broken feather from her wing and spit it out of her mouth. It drifted downwards in the still air until it alighted on the tip of Scootaloo’s nose. The filly sneezed and sent both the feather and her dark pink mane flying. When she opened her eyes the feather was gone.
“Sorry about that,” Dash said, one corner of her mouth upturned in a grin. “Look, Scoot. It’s just one of the things you’re going to have to accept if you want to fly. It hurts now, but it gets better. Keep it up and pretty soon you’ll be able to fly all day with no problems.”
“I know...” she sighed.
“Good. Now let me see your wings.” Dash reached out to grab one but Scootaloo squirmed away on her back.
“What for?!”
“To check your feathers!” Dash held out one of her own wings and shook it. “You’ve been using your wings all day and I’m betting they need to be preened.”
“Aww, but that takes forever too!”
“Hey!” Dash frowned at her. “What was the deal we made when I picked you up this morning?”
Scootaloo rolled her eyes. “That I would do everything you said without arguing, and in return we’d spend all day together.”
“And if you argued?”
“That I wouldn’t get my surprise,” she said. She had no idea what this surprise was, but if she had to guess it would probably be a Wonderbolts poster or something similar.
“That’s right, Squirt. So let me see those feathers.”
She rolled over and sat up before unfolding a trembling wing and holding it out for Dash to inspect.
“Whoa, you must be real tired, huh?” Dash asked as she took the shaking wing in a hoof.
Scootaloo nodded.
“Well, you did work pretty hard today,” Dash said, putting a hoof on her shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”
“Really?” Scootaloo practically glowed from the compliment.
Dash nodded and looked down at Scootaloo’s wing. Like the filly, it was still small, and Dash couldn’t wait until Scootaloo hit her next growth spurt when her wings would finally grow to their full size and make flying easier for her. With one hoof holding the wing, she ran the other over the surface. Instead of being smooth like it should have been, dozens of feathers stuck out, marring the surface like orange weeds popping up in a well trimmed yard.
“Your feathers are a mess! When was the last time you preened them?”
“Uhh...”
“Yeah, I thought so.” Dash frowned and gestured to the out of place feathers. “You really need to be preening every day. Otherwise all these feathers sticking up will drag you down when you fly.”
Scootaloo shrugged. “So? Why does it matter if I can’t even fly yet?”
“Because it helps get you into a routine. And when it’s part of a routine, you do it every day without even realizing it. Besides, it’s good for your wings even if you’re not flying. Understand?”
“Yeah...”
“Good. Now start preening!”
Scootaloo brought her right wing around to her face and found a feather sticking out. She grabbed it with her teeth and twisted it, trying to get it back under the feather next to it. It was difficult. Each time she got it into place she’d pull back only to find that her nose had pushed another one out. After a few failed attempts she growled in irritation.
“What are you doing?” Dash was watching her with a raised eyebrow.
“Huh? I’m preening like you said!”
“Has anyone ever taught you how to preen?”
“No. None of the adults at the orphanage are pegasi. Why?”
“Because you’re being way too rough on your feathers. No wonder it takes you forever to preen. Each time you fix one feather you mess up half the other ones around it.”
“Well what am I supposed to do?” she asked, scratching an ear with her hoof.
“C’mere,” Dash said. “I’ll show you.”
A wing wrapped around her and pulled her backwards until her back was snug against Dash’s chest. She watched over her shoulder as Dash lowered her head and gently took an out-of-place orange feather between her teeth. Twisting her head ever so slightly, Dash teased it back into place until it slid behind the one next to it, leaving behind a smooth, unblemished surface.
“Just like that,” Dash said. “You see?”
“Uh, can you do a few more?”
Dash laughed and tussled her mane. “Sure, Squirt.”
Scootaloo folded both forelegs over the wing in front of her and leaned forward as Dash went to work once more. The feeling of being preened by somepony other than herself felt surprisingly good. There was a soft pressure each time Dash’s nose touched her as the older pegasus eased the ruffled feathers back into place, and with each exhalation Dash’s warm breath blew through the maze of feathers, the heat radiating out and soaking in before finally fading away as her nose moved on to the next spot. Snug between a warm body and a wing, her eyelids began to droop as the day's strenuous activities began to take their toll on the filly.
“You okay?” she heard a voice ask.
“Huh?” she blinked a few times to wake up and then turned to see Rainbow Dash grinning down at her.
“You’re falling asleep.”
“Oh. Yeah, just-” Her mouth opened wide as a sudden yawn escaped her. “Just tired... and it feels good.”
“What, being preened?”
“Mmmhmm... didn’t know it would feel this good.”
“Heh. Don’t you ever tell anypony this, but whenever I had a bad day as a filly my mom would always sweep me up in her wing after dinner and preen me. I could sit there with my head resting on her wing all night as she worked.” Suddenly a thought popped into her head. “You ever had anypony do this before, Squirt?”
“Nope.”
Dash’s eyes softened. The number of things that the filly had missed out on by not having parents continued to surprise her.
“Well in that case, you just sit there and enjoy it,” she said before bending her head down and fixing another feather.
“Okay...” Scootaloo answered, halfway asleep. A few seconds later a jab of pain hit her. “Ow!”
“Sorry,” Dash held up a broken feather. “Had to get this sucker out. I don’t see any other broken ones though, so it shouldn’t hurt anymore.”
She lifted her head and blew it into the air. It hovered in place and then, right as Dash lowered her head to continue, floated down to stick in her mane where the orange stripe met the yellow. It went unnoticed by Dash however, and her face kept darting in and twisting as she continued to preen the filly.
As she worked, Dash’s thoughts returned to what she’d said earlier about her mother. Those preening nights were some of the best she remembered from her childhood. She let the memories play in her mind as she worked. Like Scootaloo, it had always taken her a long time to preen, and she never understood how her mother could sit there for what seemed like hours and preen someone other than herself. Although she had to admit that being on the other end of the preening session was somehow pleasant, like it was just... right. Despite the work, she enjoyed it. The thought lingered in her mind for a feather or two until...
She stopped in the middle of fixing a feather and looked at the filly in her wing. That warm little body pressed between her wing and her chest, so much smaller than herself and enjoying the feeling of somepony fixing her feathers every bit as much as Dash had. For a moment in her mind Scootaloo’s pink mane was a mess of colors, and Dash’s own wing was the same light pink as her mother’s.
Her mouth stretched into a small grin. She’d never have guessed that preening somepony else could be so fulfilling. Even though she was the one doing the work she was content, relaxed, even happy. With a grin still on her face she found the next feather and resumed her work.
The preening session lasted until the sun was disappearing over the horizon. When she was done, Dash gently lay Scootaloo down on the cloud and watched as, for the dozenth time in as many minutes, the filly's head fell before shooting right back up again as she fought to keep from nodding off.
Dash laughed at the sight and said, “You know, if you want to fall asleep go ahead.”
“What about my surprise?”
“It’s not going anywhere, trust me.”
“But I gotta walk home...” Scootaloo yawned and then continued, “and if I fall asleep now then I’ll be even more tired on the way back.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll make sure you wake up at home, okay?”
“Okay...” she yawned again and bunched up part of the cloud to make a pillow before laying her head on it. “Hey, Rainbow Dash...”
“Yeah?”
“You think they’ll let me have a cloud bed at home one day? This is so much better than my bed...” she poked at the cloud. “Even the lumps are comfortable.”
“Yeah, Squirt. I think they’ll let you have one.”
“Really...? That would be so awesome...” she said as she snuggled into the makeshift pillow.
Dash smiled to herself. For several minutes she lay there as the sun finished its slow descent, finally disappearing just before the little filly’s breathing changed and signaled that sleep had taken her.
There was a fluttering sound and Dash turned to see a light green pegasus land on edge of her cloud a little ways off from them. She stood and trotted over to him.
“Uh, can I help you?” she said in a low voice to avoid waking Scootaloo.
“Sorry to bother you, Ms. Dash,” the stallion whispered. “My wife wanted me to bring this by.”
He handed her a heavy folder with a stack of legal documents inside.
“I thought we were going to go through and sign everything tomorrow,” she said as she leafed through the stack.
“She knew how much tonight meant for you two so she sent me over to get your signature now. That way it would be official on her first night at home.” He looked over at Scootaloo and smiled. “She’d have come herself, but I’m the one with wings in the family and she didn’t want to walk all this way in the dark.”
“Well, thanks for coming out. It um, it really means a lot.” She didn’t have a quill with her so she turned towards the house and motioned for him to follow, saying, “Come on in.”
They started towards the front door. There was a warm feeling in Dash’s chest and she couldn't stop grinning at the thought of Scootaloo’s face in the morning...
“You break the surprise to her yet?” he nodded towards Scootaloo’s sleeping form as they walked inside.
“I was going to, but I guess I pushed her a little too hard today. She was so tired she couldn't keep her eyes open."
"You've been coming around the orphanage a lot recently. You think she suspects anything?"
"Going by her reactions today, she doesn't have a clue. We talked about doing this a while back and I was afraid it would spoil the surprise, but it looks like we're good."
Dash led him inside and put the folder down on the kitchen table before going over to the countertop nearby where a quill and inkpot sat. She had just bent down and picked the quill up when something fell from her mane to land next to the inkpot. She stared at it. It was an orange feather, broken about halfway up.
Setting the quill down, she picked up the broken feather and the inkpot and took them both to the table. Taking it up in her mouth she carefully began to sign her name in the empty signature blocks on each page. The feather’s shorter length made it more difficult than the quill, but she pressed on. By the time she was done the sunlight had faded entirely, and Scootaloo was just barely visible through the window as a dark bump on the cloud.
She handed the folder back to the stallion and thanked him. They walked back outside where he quietly trotted to the edge of the cloud before taking off and flying away. Dash returned to where Scootaloo was sleeping. She looked so happy and comfortable. Dash wasn’t sure how many times the filly had slept on a cloud, but she doubted it had been more than a time or two.
Scootaloo barely stirred as Dash gathered the sleeping pegasus in her forelegs. She fluttered into the house and down the hallway to the room right across from her bedroom. It used to be the guest bedroom. Now it was something else. Something far more than a simple bedroom, and its new occupant was far more than a simple guest.
Pushing the door open, Dash entered the newly redone room and hit the lights. Here and there a Wonderbolts poster was plastered on the once plain walls. Letters signed in silver ink shone from the bottom of one.
To Equestria’s Best Young Flyer,
Thanks for saving our flanks.
We owe you one.
-Spitfire
-Soarin
-Misty Fly
Several picture frames sat atop the two nightstands which had previously been bare except for a lamp on one and a clock on the other. One held a photograph of three fillies at the beach, each one with a smile forever frozen upon their face. Another showed a younger Scootaloo with a smile that reached wider than what should be possible as Rainbow Dash wrapped a foreleg around her and gave the camera a tight grin.
Dash hovered to the bed and slid Scootaloo between the sheets. A cloudbed. Just like she wanted. The filly mumbled something but didn’t wake as Dash lay down beside her and drew the covers over them both. As she did, light reflected into her eyes from the shimmering letters on the sign hanging across the ceiling.
Welcome Home, Scootaloo!
Leaning down, Dash touched her lips to Scootaloo’s head. She left them there for several long seconds before pulling back a little.
“I told you I’d make sure you woke up at home,” she whispered.
The last words the stallion had said before he left came to her.
“Congratulations, Rainbow Dash,” he’d said as he shook her hoof. “I know you’ll make a great mother.”
A mother. Not a friend. Not a big sister. A mother. She reached over to the picture of her and Scootaloo on the nightstand. The frame had been given to her by Pinkie Pie, and she caressed the bright pink letters that ran across the bottom.
Mother and Daughter
She sniffed and wiped at the damp trail that had appeared on her cheek
“Welcome home, Squirt,” she managed to choke out before kissing the filly’s pink mane again. “Welcome home.”