Reversed
I live my life, one day at a time. That’s the way I like it: no fussing over the stuff that hasn’t happened yet, or that already has. The hours in the sky never grow old, not while I’m there, and when I’m not there’s something even more awesome going on around. It’s because I got the best friends in the world – with them, the everyday turns into a party by itself. Literally.
The town’s not too bad, either: Ponyville might be smaller than Cloudsdale, but it packs twice the fun on a good day. My mom and dad might disagree though: they’d say I never saw the floating city on its wildest days, when they were young and hurricanes were twice as big. From the pictures I’ve seen, they’re not totally wrong. It doesn’t really matter, ‘cause I’m totally happy where I am.
99% of the time I am, at least.
It happens to everypony, I bet. You wake up and bam it hits you – that bored feeling. It ain’t cold, hot, sour or sweet. It just is, making everything taste lame. It’s like being sad, but for no reason. At those times, I just fly. Somewhere. Rain beats me, the sun dries me, grass cools me. Rarity calls it “me-time”, but I don’t know about that. It’s just time. Not much more to say about that, really.
When I said I only live a day at a time, never fussing about the stuff in the horizon, I lied. Kind of. I got this dream about being a Wonderbolt one day. Well, I say a dream but it’s a plan alright. A solid one. Just needs some time to come together. And a lot of flying, duh. I got both covered. One day, I’ll become the number one flyer in Equestria. Officially, I mean. My friends will be there, all of them, and we’ll have a party like, like… Like all of us had birthday at the same day and Pinkie had to clone herself again to make it all work. That kind of a party.
There’ll be rockets and lights and pizza and games and stuff. Princess Celestia will come to give me that suit with rainbows and lightnings all over it, and I’ll get it on mid-flight while diving for a double sonic rainboom that’ll blow all the windows in Ponyville. They’ll have to be covered with something, I guess. That’s how I’m gonna party when my plan comes true.
Even that won’t do, of course, not for that day. But it might. For a while.
***
Today, I got one of those feelings again. It sucks, but what can you do. Must be all those cupcakes we ate in Pinkie’s party last night. They were worth it, though. Nothing what a little flight in the woods couldn’t fix. A few clouds floated in the sky, but I wasn’t in the mood for them. Same went for pretty much everything else. There just wasn't enough mood to go around this morning.
Or so had I thought.
I was right outside the town when something struck my eye. It was a box, wooden by the first sight. Had it stood on the back-alley of Sugar Cube Corner, or on the marketplace, I wouldn’t have payed a second look at it. But this box stood in the middle of the woods, in the shadow of a birch. Dropped from a wagon, I thought while landing next to it. Might have something interesting inside. Boy was I right about that.
On a closer look, the box wasn’t made of wood. Morning dew from the grass had touched it, making it go soft in the corners. When I poked the thing with a hoof it left a dent. Some sort of paper, I figured. Then I saw something move inside it. By this time curiosity was panting over my shoulder, so I opened the rest of the lid.
A pair of dark eyes turned to me. A bit of drool dribbled down a round, pink, furless jaw. Four little limbs wavered about, two of them reaching into my general direction.
“Da,” the creature said. “Da.”
With extreme care, I closed the papery lid and flew away.
The rest of the day was pretty normal. I flew home, ate some normal food, went to the midday drill that was totally normal, met Pinkie on the town and did some seriously normal pranking. And all that time I kept on thinking about that little brown, papery box in the woods.
It was almost nightfall when I returned to it. Sure enough, everything looked the same as I landed next to the box. If somepony else had been here, they had made the same decision as me, unfortunately. I peered inside just to make sure, though.
The baby was still there, but thankfully asleep. The steadily rising and falling blue blanket was the surest sign of that. A closer look confirmed the obvious: the creature was a human. A little baby human, abandoned in the woods. How had it come here? Why? I didn’t care to know the answers, but somehow I felt the questions needed to be asked. Stuff like this should raise a few questions.
I looked around in the dimming forest, biting my lip. Nopony else really had come around, huh? Well that just figures. Maybe tomorrow’s a different tale? I thought. Or if I left this on the marketplace, somepony would have to pick it up. It was getting really late though. Cold, too. It might take awhile if I just left the baby lying somewhere, waiting to be rescued. To be reasonable, I should just dump it on somepony’s doorstep, ring the bell and speed away.
Fluttershy was bound to be home.
The baby coughed in its dream. Or sneezed, who knows. I looked down on it, sneering a bit. An unmistakable smell lingered in the air, heavy with a promise for some serious washing.
“How come I had to find you?” I said to the world in general.
The chilly wind sent a few leaves dancing around me. An owl hooted in the distance. It was clear that those were all the answers I was going to get for now.
Well, if somepony had to do it, might as well be me. I scooped the little box up and headed to the sky. It wasn't by chance that the first name that came to my mind was Fluttershy. This was her business if anything was, sheltering poor, lost animals and such. She’d be happy to see another mouth to feed. Or she would have been, had she been home.
I banged her front door a dozen times before I saw the note. “Visiting Cloudsdale. Will be back in two days.”
Figures, right? Well, I wasn’t about to fall short on options, or on friends. Pinkie’s house was next on my list – she actually had experience of foals. Humans couldn’t be that different, not at this age. She was home too, which crossed the only box on my requirements list.
“Uhh, where did you get this?” she asked while looking into the box.
“In the woods. Don’t know nothing more.”
“Shouldn’t we tell Twilight?” she said.
“She’s off in Canterlot, remember? Got that summit with the other princesses.” I pushed the box closer to her. “Will you take it already? I still got biz to do.”
She looked at me with her eyebrow raised. “Don’t you think it’s really weird to find a human baby alone in the woods at night? In a box?”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure I do, Pinkie. I also thinks it’s not my weird, but somepony else’s.” Another push. The baby was starting to thrash in its sleep.
To my surprise, Pinkie frowned. “You shouldn’t push him around like that.”
“And you shouldn’t keep him on your porch – it’s getting cold out here.”
She looked at me a moment longer, then at the baby. “Okey dokey. I’ll take him in for the night.” She looked at me again. “But you must promise to come here the first thing in the morning.”
I took a step back. “Why?”
“Because it’s you who found him. He is your responsibility.”
Pinkie was in a weird mood, I could tell. Funny, just yesterday she had been her usual self, dancing on the rooftops and so on. She had just taken a load off my shoulders though, so I didn’t feel like starting an argument then and there, although in retrospect I probably should have. A promise with Pinkie means a promise for lifetime, and the small print often has a life of its own.
“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “Good night.” I was about to take off when a weird thought crossed my mind. “And how do you know it’s a he? Did you check?”
Pinkie, carefully picking up the baby from the box, gave me a suspicious look. “You didn’t notice? Did you even look inside before bringing him here?”
“What?”
She showed me the baby. On the chest of the little jumpsuit, it read “Brian.”
***
Brian’s one night at Pinkie’s eventually stretched to last six months. At some point during that time, many stopped asking how in the world did he get here, or stare at Pinkie as she carried him in a carriage around the town. He fitted in. For sure it didn’t happen overnight, and as the word spread, Ponyville started receiving a lot more tourists eager to see a glimpse of the weird, furless monkey. Pinkie put a short end to that. In a week she had turned into a mother hen, spending more time with Brian than anypony else, even more than Fluttershy, who thought he was the cutest thing ever.
Twilight had the most trouble making room for Brian in her world. The day she returned from the alicorn meeting, she wouldn’t believe there was a human in town before she had seen him with her own eyes. Even then she demanded to study the baby herself. It was only when Brian had puked all over her mane that she believed he was the real deal. Right after a shower she returned to Canterlot to talk with Celestia and Luna. She was worried the mirror-portal thing was behind this, somehow. After four months she gave up on her studies, having found no explanation whatsoever for Brian’s appearance in our world. She says it still wakes her up at nights.
She should take a feather out of my wing: I got used to the little ape in a week, practically forgot him in two. Sure I kept on visiting him daily, but only because otherwise Pinkie would turn up behind my window at nights. She really held me to my word, and it didn’t help at all when I explained that “Yeah, whatever” doesn’t really count for a solemn oath. She really thought the little puke-machine was “my responsibility”, just because I happened to stumble on him first. The idea was a dud not just in theory but in practice too: like I said, Pinkie did all the real caretaking. I just played with him a couple hours a day. Tops.
At best of times, the hours with him were bearable. Humans are amazingly weak as children. Pinkie wouldn’t let me take him out to play except when she came along, and even then we could do hardly more than watch at his feeble attempts to move on his own. Walking on two legs was supposed to be a human thing, but for a long while he had real trouble to even stand. He really, really liked flying though, have to give him that. I couldn’t take him for a ride shorter than an hour or he’d turn into a living hurricane in the ground, crying and thumping his little fists like they were mallets. Only another round would calm him down then, that or letting him rip the hairs out of my mane, a habit which he had mastered at amazing speed.
I said Brian spent six months in Pinkie’s care. On the last night, when he was asleep and I was about to leave, she said:
“Tomorrow, Brian will move to your place.”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll – what?”
“You heard me,” she said, smiling brightly. “I’ve taken care of him long enough. It’s your turn.”
My mouth was agape along with my eyes. This had come totally out of the blue, which formed my first line of defense.
“Well,” she said, ponderously rubbing her chin. “I did mention this last week, and you nodded your head so I thought–”
“I wasn’t nodding, he was hanging from my mane!”
“Shh, not so loud,” she said, stepping outside with me. She closed the door quietly, wiped baking powder off her shoulder and sat down. For the first time in awhile, I noticed how dark the lines under her eyes were. “Look, Dashie… Brian is a blast to have around, but running the shop and helping with the twins is kind of wearing me thin. I can’t even remember the last time I was in a party.”
“Tuesday.”
“Oh, right,” she said. “Gosh, that was whacky. Anyway, six more months like this and you have to bury me to the ground instead of cotton candy.”
This was bad: she sounded like she was being serious, and I didn’t have an excuse ready. To be frank, I had seen the signs of this weeks ago, and I had planned coming up with something, but… I just never got around doing it. Day at a time lifestyle has its weaknesses, it turns out.
“I can’t just force him on you, of course,” she continued. “I’m sure Fluttershy could–”
“I’ll take him.”
Well, that certainly came from nowhere. To this day I’m not hundred percent certain why I said that. Maybe it just slipped past my guard: I was very tired at the time. Playing an hour worth of “Where’s the pony?” game has that kind of an effect on brain.
Pinkie gave me the trademark smile. “I knew you’d come to your senses!”
“Yeah. Right.”
“I’ll bring him in the morning,” she said, getting inside. On the door she turned to me. “And don’t you worry about a thing: I’ll write you thorough instructions on how to take care of him.”
“How can you know so much about human babies?”
She shrugged. “When it comes down to it, they’re just ponies with less fur and more hands.”
***
Round about a year after I had found Brian, we celebrated his first birthday. Nopony knew when his actual b-day was, but who cares? He sure didn’t.
It made me think how quick the time had passed. A year went by like on wheels, bringing so much along I don’t even know where to begin. It used to be so much simpler, living alone. Getting used to having Brian around 24/7 made sonic rainboom seem like a cakewalk. Pinkie’s instructions didn’t help much there. They came with a bucking index! Anyway, Brian and I got along fine without them. We had to, because I didn't have enough time to check every single thing from the manual.
I got a lot of help, of course. Pinkie visited the most, but the others weren’t a rare sight either. I don’t know which attracted them more: Brian himself or seeing how I’d manage with him. They never said it, but it was clear they had their doubts. Heck, even I thought I wouldn’t last a week. I mean, foals are cool and all, but babies are a different deal altogether, and this one wasn't even the same species.
To tell the truth, I’ve no idea how I’ve come this far with him. Guess I never had time to give up. There was always a scratched knee to fix (you’d think that’d be pretty hard to come by in a house made of clouds), more playing, eating, sleeping or another diaper to change. I had to delegate some of the weather coach’s duties to Thunderlane to keep up with all that. The one thing I haven’t skipped on are my personal flying drills. I Still got a dream to take care of.
There must be a good reason I didn’t thrown in the towel. I’m just not sure what that was. Pinkie’s presence probably played a part there, but it wasn’t the whole truth. No oath could've made me wade through all those used diapers and sleepless nights – none that started “Yeah, whatever,” at least. Maybe it was the look on his little round face when he fell asleep under my wing. Or when he’d laugh at my somersaults.
He’s a cool brat, once you get to know him.
***
On Brian’s fifth birthday, we went to the place where I had found him. It was near the end of the day, cool and damp. He rode me like usual, clinging tightly to my Wonderbolt uniform with his little gloves which Rarity had given him, along with other uniquely tailored clothing. My present was going to be very unique, too.
We landed on the exact spot where I had picked him up. The birch still marked it, and it looked just about the same as it had all those years ago. I didn’t feel I had changed that much, either. He had, that was certain.
He got off my back and looked at me in confusion. I had promised something special for him, which he kindly reminded me about.
“You’re getting older by the day, Brian. It’s time you learned something about yourself.”
“What, mommy?” he asked.
“What I’ve said about calling me that? I’m not your mom, not anymore than aunt Pinkie is, or any other of your aunts.”
He looked at his feet. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Now, do you see that tree there?”
He nodded, looking at the birch.
“That’s where I found you, five years ago.”
He kept on looking at the tree. I had talked about this with the other “aunts”, and while some of them had been doubtful (Twilight mostly), I knew he had to know the truth someday. Preferably before he’d be old enough to figure it out himself. Anyway, I was the head-aunt, so it was my decision.
He looked at me again. “Was I in the tree?”
“No, by it. In a box. Alone.”
He gave this a thought.
“Did I come from the tree?”
“The tree’s not important. I’m telling this to you because you need to know you’re not a pony. You’re a human.”
His face twisted in anger. “No! I’m a pony! Earth pony!”
We had talked about this before, but not seriously enough. Last week he had gotten to a fight with some foals who had said he wasn’t the earth pony he thought to be. I don’t know where he had gotten the idea in the first place.
“No you’re not, Brian.”
He shrieked and threw himself on the ground, pounding the grass with the little gloves. I watched it for awhile, let him get it out of his system. It took longer than usual, but eventually he settled to sniffing and rubbing his wet, red eyes.
I sat down and spread a wing over him. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a pony or not. Spike’s a dragon, and he is one my best friends. So are you.”
He fiddled with the tips of my primary feathers, a thing he liked to do a lot. I dried the last tears off his cheeks. He resisted, but not that hard.
“I wanna be a pony,” he muttered.
“I wanted to be a griffon once. Guess what happened?”
He looked me in the eyes.
“Nothing,” I said. “But still I wonder what it’d be like.” I smiled the way my dad does whenever he’s telling me something he knows I don’t like hearing. “It’s okay to want stuff. But you can’t have everything you want.”
His lip trembled, and his fingers squeezed my feathers. Odd, I thought. He wasn’t usually this sensitive.
“Why do you want to be a pony?”
“‘Cause you are,” he blurted. “And aunt Pinkie is, and aunt Fluttershy, and aunt Twilight, and everypony is a pony!”
“Yeah, that’s true. You know what else they are?”
He shook his head.
“Yeah you do. They're friends. I told you about friends, remember?”
He swallowed. His lip wasn’t trembling that much anymore. “They're the best.”
“And they’re the best because…?”
“They don’t care what you look, sound or smell like.”
He looked to the ground when he said that. I lifted his chin gently.
“That’s right. And for sure they don’t care if you’re a pony or not. They love you whatever you are.”
He hugged me tightly, and for long.
“Do humans get cutie marks, mommy?”
I sighed. Now was not the time to correct him, though.
“In a way. They’re called tattoos. You’ll get one when you’re old enough.”
***
Today was Brian’s first day at school. This month it was Fluttershy’s turn to take care of him, but he wanted me to take him there. He was very insistent about that, said Fluttershy when he appeared behind my door with him. Well, good thing that the Captain of Wonderbolts can take a bit time off with her own permission. Got nopony telling me otherwise. Nopony except Soarin, naturally, but he doesn't count because we share the same bed.
Brian stayed awfully quiet for the whole trip. I figured it was the excitement. He was a bit older than the rest of the first graders, but Twilight said it was okay – humans mature slower than ponies. It would do good to him, spending more time in his age group. Then, right as we had the school in our sight, he asked me if I could pick him up after the school.
“Sorry, champ. Got too much work. Fluttershy will be there.”
“I don’t want go to Fluttershy’s,” he said.
“Why not?”
“She’s got too many animals. Hair everywhere.”
“They got just the same right to be there as you, Brian. And Angel is getting old: losing all that fur is a big deal for him, too.”
“Why can’t she take me to your place? I can manage alone until you get back.”
The school was right below us now, drifting closer by the meter. I was listening only with half an ear while going over the day’s drills and such. That was my first mistake.
“I don’t know, Brian… Well, Soarin’s getting home earlier than me, so maybe–”
I felt the weight on by back shift weirdly. Then, just in the corner of my vision, I saw a glimpse of a colored shirt speeding past me.
Brian fell off.
My lips were still trying to finish the sentence as my body reacted. We were twenty, maybe fifteen meters from the roof of the school. I caught him a second away from hitting the weathervane.
My lungs readied themselves to shout at him, but the look on his face choked me. He was pale as milk, terrified beyond reason. We landed to the ground, where he clung to my neck, shaking like in fever.
“I… I lost… my grip,” he sobbed. “Lost my… grip…”
“It’s… it’s okay, Brian,” I tried. My throat still felt tight. I had never dropped him in my life. Never.
“Don’t be mad…”
“Mad?” I echoed. “Brian, no. It was an accident. Nothing to worry about now.”
He tore his face from my chest and looked at me with moist, red eyes. The shock still shined from them, but not alone. A speck of something strange glinted there. I don’t know why, but seeing that made me remember that he hadn’t lost his grip in his live, either. Not once.
“Is everything okay?”
I blinked and looked up. Cheerilee stood on the porch, watching us with a slightly worried smile.
“Yeah. Yeah, we’re cool. Just a little stumbling in the air, that’s all.” I looked at him again, dried some of the tears. “I have to go now. Will you be okay?”
He nodded. I took it meant yes. And that was my second mistake of the day.
“Okay. Fluttershy will pick you up. I’ll tell her to make that soup you love.”
Cheerilee walked to us. “I’m sure we’ll come along great.” She smoothed Brian’s hair. “I’ve already heard so much about you. It’ll be interesting to get to know you better.”
He studied his feet, wiping his eyes with a sleeve.
I left soon after that. Even the Captain of the number one flight team in Equestria has to stick to the schedule eventually. I had never thought my dream job could mean so much work, and I’m not talking about flying. Papers keep on piling faster than I can make planes out of them. No wonder Spitfire left the post to me with a grin.
It’s nothing I can’t take, of course. But the biggest downside isn’t what I have to do: it’s what I can’t do. I don’t see all my friends on a daily basis anymore. I’m not feeling lonely, though: Soarin takes care of that.
I can’t say the same about Brian. It’s hard for him to make friends, and I’m not sure why. We’ve done everything with the other aunts to make him feel home in Equestria, in Ponyville, and most of the time all seems to be fine. Then I catch him crying in his room, and he won’t say what it’s about.
I’m not sure if he knows himself.
***
Lately, Brian’s started taking long, lone walks outside. He’s particular about the part of being alone. I don’t know why, but it bothers me. He might set out at dawn and return at night, or not at all. Then he appears again from somewhere, eats and goes to bed. I’ve tried talking with him, with varying rates of success. Ever since he got out of primary school, he’s just been hanging around the house, barely even doing any chores.
Once, I followed him on one of his walks a few clouds away. I had to make some special arrangements at work and at home to take a day off like that, but I needed to know more what was going on inside his head. He headed to the countryside, just walking around, occasionally stopping to look at the scenery. Then, at evening, he headed back to Ponyville. It was when he wandered to the woods that I realized where he was going. It was to the birch, the spot where I had found him all those years ago. He sat there for a long while, longer than I could stand. The next morning I found him in his bed, where he slept until the noon like usual.
Honestly, I don’t know how to help him anymore. Soarin says maybe there’s nothing I can do. He’s wrong though: there’s always something to do. If there’s a will there’s a way. It could just be that it’s time for him to grow up, to become independent.
Tomorrow, I ask if he should find his own place to live, and a job to pay for it. This one is about to get kind of full in the future, anyway.
***
I swear to Celestia, I’m through with him. There’s a bottom to every barrel, and mine’s deeper than most, but it’s there all the same. Sixteen years. Sixteen bucking years I take care of him, and the reward is this? Buck it. I’m done with Brian.
It has been a week since our last argument, and he hasn’t shown his face since. At some point the whole town was searching for him, and I was just about to call reinforcements from Cloudsdale when the mail arrived. Soarin brought me the letter, with a face that told me immediately who it was from.
Brian has left. He didn’t say where, or for how long, or even why. He said he only knows that he can’t stay. There’s no place for him here, he feels, so he decided to take my word for it and become independent. Somehow.
Finally, he asked me not to look after him. Soarin’s jaw dropped when I said to agree with him. Brian is an adult now, at least in pony years. And it’s true: I told him he should leave. Maybe I didn’t exactly have this in mind, but it was his decision. There’s enough friend left in me to respect that. I only regret we couldn’t separate in peace.
Goodbye, Brian.
***
Today, I took some flowers to the place. To the Birch, I mean. It was Brian’s birthday, but that’s not really an explanation. It’s not like he’s dead or anything, not at least since I last heard about him. The only human in Equestria would have to turn invisible not to get noticed. I hear rumours about him every few months; where he’s been seen, what he is up to and so on. Not that I care all that much. It’s his life.
The flowers were a moment’s thought. Just something I picked on the way. Mostly I wanted to show the place to Cloud Bud. He had been asking about Brian, who he was and why we kept on hearing about him every now and then. I wasn’t about to keep a thing like that a secret from my own foal. Not that there would be any secret to begin with.
I explained to Bud everything he wanted to know, and a little bit extra on top, just to make sure he wouldn’t get anything wrong. Complete openness, that’s my parenting philosophy. I got nothing to hide, no regrets. I did what I could, but the world doesn't always care about that. Sometimes, it just doesn't care at all. That’s what friends are for.
“Did he come from that tree?” Bud asked, looking at the birch.
“Could be he did. We never figured out how he got here, exactly. In the end, it doesn’t matter where we come from. Only where we go does.”
“Where did he go?”
“Around,” I said after a while. “He went for a walk and never stopped. Kept on travelling around, doing whatever work he could. By now he must’ve walked across Equestria a couple of times.”
He flew to the tree, without any extra jumps even. He’s learning so fast.
“Will he come back someday?”
I walked next to him. “I don’t think so, Buddy. He’s got his own road to travel.”
I looked down on him, rubbed his mane with a hoof. It was darker than mine: navy blue with a hint of midnight. A gift from his dad, no doubt. His fur wasn’t plain snow though, but azure like mine. Or at least like mine used to be, when I was younger.
My eyes trailed to the tree. That, too, looked a lot older. Leaves were already abandoning the lower branches, and the bark had grown more gnarly. Looking closer, you could see strange patterns, like carvings, running in the wood. Almost like writing, if you let the imagination trick you.
“On the other hoof,” I continued. “It’s a weird world out there.” I looked at Bud again. “Wanna race back home?”
He did. As we left the scene, the odd patterns in the bark faded from my mind, as if they had never existed. If they had, there might’ve been one word, the one carved deepest, that would have stuck to my mind.
Mother.