Soul-Flame
The sky is blue.
This is the first lesson she learns, when she dares to lift her gaze to the harsh expanse of space looming beyond the wispy borders of Cloudsdale. The sky is limitless and vast and unerringly, infallibly blue.
The fillies and colts in her class frolic beneath it during playtime, the cockier ones fluttering up to its fringes, laughing and giggling as they turn their backs to the emptiness above them. Fools.
Her mother doesn't understand, but how could she? She's made of copper and gold—the first star that turns its face landward when the sun kisses the heavens farewell. When she flies, the blue doesn't mind; it welcomes her as a wayward piece of the sunset, mistakenly wandered into daylight. Blue and copper and gold expectantly watches her, waiting.
She can't.
Her father tries to understand. Question after question, and then doctor (her feathers are a bit patchy, yes, but nothing that should inhibit lift) after doctor (Your daughter, you say? I understand the concern, but it's not altogether unusual to see latent flight ability, even with skilled parents) after doctor (Severe psychological imbalance. You might want to arrange for an alternative lifestyle).
He's frustrated, and he doesn't understand the fact that of course he can fly; his coat is dipped in the dappled sunlight of early morn, his mane the deep shadows that slowly mark the passage of the day, unstoppable in their tranquility.
She's never seen him fly—really fly, the type of flying that makes the other pegasi nod in respect when they trot by—but it seems only natural that the sky would take no offense to him sailing through it, just another harmless ray of sunshine beaming through the blue. He's a dancer, after all, and dancing is hardly threatening.
They don't see why she can't.
But it's obvious.
Spitfire is neither sunshine nor star; she lacks both the docile grace with which her mother spirals through the air and the serenity that accompanies the heavy beat of her father's wings. She is fire—her very name confirms it. She is fire, and fire burns.
For an entire month, her parents think that perhaps the other colts and fillies tease her, that perhaps she feels alienated from her peers and is hesitant to join them as they tumble through the blue. Spitfire nearly laughs when they ask her (gently, as though she might break if their voices are louder than a distant rumble of thunder) if anyone is mean to her.
Laughs, because she had won yet another footrace on the clouds beneath the blue when her frustrated, worn out opponent had muttered the unspeakable (At least I can fly) and Spitfire had looked at her with blazing amber eyes and burned her, burned her with words and scowls and a voice of molten sunfire and then the filly started crying and Ms. Cloudstep came over and made them both say sorry and hug and now Fleetfoot doesn't say stuff like that anymore.
Laughs, because she can run circles around them all, and her peers have long since traded open curiosity for quiet indifference, when they take to the skies and she remains. She thinks they enjoy it, even, when they land upon the clouds and rush to her, eagerly reciting every little detail about their brief rendezvous with the heavens. They don't understand, but they know better than to mock.
The gentlecolts that her father brings for dinner one night understand almost immediately. They take note of the fiery ringlets cascading from her mane, the soft yellow of her coat, and they hum to themselves, calculations and speculations flashing behind their eyes as her father shifts from hoof to hoof, shuffling his wings and looking faintly uncomfortable.
(Quit fidgeting, Jetstream, you're making her antsy.)
(Are you sure this is the right filly? Only joking, she has your coat.)
(What's your name, dear?)
She glares at the gentlecolt in his fancy jacket and silken scarf; her father most certainly already told them her name and she isn't a dear, Honeysuckle from flight school is—with her pearlescent coat and her delicate wings and the dumb way she yelps when the wind ruffles her feathers wrong—and the gentlecolts laugh when she tells them so.
(Spitfire, indeed!)
(Let her be. She'll fly when she's ready, Jetstream.)
And then they follow her father onto the pavilion for dinner.
The third pony scrutinizes her a moment longer with eyes as golden as her coat.
(It's the sky, isn't it?)
His coat is as blue as the heavens she has no right to enter.
(It's large and empty, just waiting for you to take it.)
But it's not, she wants to tell him. The sky belongs to fluffy clouds and soft sunshine and gentle fliers that dance with it like her mother does, and Spitfire is no more gentle than the rocky ground lurking far below.
(And the others fly so carelessly, so casually, and you wonder if maybe you weren't meant to have those wings after all, because if flight is no big deal to a pegasus, then what are you?)
She's fire and brimstone and she will burn the sky as surely as she burns everything else because despite the blankness of her flank, Spitfire already knows she is meant to set the world aflame.
(Don't be afraid of destiny, little one. The sky will not extinguish you.)
Spitfire doubts it could do anything else.
[She is fire and fire burns]
|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|
Her parents send her to her grandmare's home, deep in the forests to the east, where she stays for nearly a month, hidden below the trees. The dirt beneath her hooves is hard. Unyielding. Steady.
She is sheltered. She is hidden. She cannot feel the sky watching her.
She inexplicably wakes up one morning to blue, so much blue, and not a single tree or pony in sight.
She lies there in the field, paralyzed by the sky, until her grandmare soars into view an hour or so later, ocher mane whipping in the wind and panic ablaze in her eyes.
Her father arrives that afternoon. He doesn't fly her back to Cloudsdale.
When Spitfire next opens her eyes (don't stare at the blue, it will extinguish you) Jetstream's sailing down the Baltimare flight strip, touching down in front of a sleek, polished buggy.
The buggy takes them to an aerobatics arena, where her father sweeps her inside and through dim, cool hallways and then they're back outside, standing on the pitch of the largest arena she's ever seen: row upon row upon row of empty stadium seating stretching into the blue, which just barely peeks over the tips of the stands.
Jetstream escorts her to the highest stand, where the gentlecolt from last month's dinner is seated. (There you are, young filly. Come and sit with me; you're in for a treat tonight.) Her father departs, and Spitfire is left shivering beneath the cloudless sky, wings tightly folded against the breeze.
The arena slowly fills as ponies of all types trickle in, the steady buzz of conversation gradually replacing the echoes of silence. The stand Spitfire shares with the gentlecolt holds a handful of guests by the time a horn blows, igniting the crowd in a singular, massive explosion of noise.
The Wonderbolts sear into the arena; four blue-clad blurs spiraling towards the ground at speeds that make Spitfire gasp, the noise lost amongst the roar of cheers as the Wonderbolts pull up at surely the last possible second before shooting back into the wild blue yonder. She scoots to the edge of her seat until she's practically hanging out of the box, and doesn't sit back for the remainder of the event.
The show is a mess of emotion and speed and adrenaline, the intensity of it washing over her in time with the waves of applause as the stunt team defies the sky again and again. And just when Spitfire thinks it couldn't possibly be any more astounding, she realizes that this is what her father does, what he means when he says he dances with the sky for a living. She seeks him out and there he is, ripping through the heavens with seven of his teammates.
Her father is a Wonderbolt, but he isn't a dancer. Spitfire was wrong to think him serene; he isn't some tranquil beam of sunlight falling through the air.
He's a thunderhead, and he's razing the heavens.
This is what flying should be. This is what pegasi were made for, what she is destined for. Her wings weren't fashioned for a cheerful glide through the park, no. No—the spark of desire flaring to life within her rapidly-beating heart begs her to take to the sky and make it her own, to claim it as her birthright with the same conviction that her father flies with now.
Jetstream isn't the fastest Wonderbolt, nor the most skilled, but he moves as though the sky's sole purpose is to bear him aloft, to serve as the medium for the glorious work of art he creates with his team. He streaks through it, his dark mane a thick, black line violently smearing patterns upon the pristine blue canvas. He moves with power and precision as he tears through the sky; black and blue and more blue, with the occasional flash of yellow.
Surrounded by his fellow Wonderbolts, he conquers the sky. It does not strike him down in retaliation, and the spark of desire inside of Spitfire becomes an inferno.
Spitfire can't sleep that night, despite her premium cloud mattress and the weariness from the return flight to Cloudsdale. It's as if an itch has settled into her mind; the memories of the afternoon, of the show, refuse to quiet, instead playing before her again and again.
(She is fire, and fire burns)
Hesitantly, she rolls from the bed and creeps down the silent hallway, past her parents' bedroom, and out the front door. A persistent need pushes her onward, driving her to the border of the floating city.
A cold wind at her back, Spitfire edges to where the clouds grow wispy and frail, peeking out into the empty space below. Pinpricks of light glow wearily off in the distance, but before her is nothing but shadows.
(Fire burns)
Does fire fear the void?
(She is fire)
She jumps.
Darkness.
She's falling. For some uncountable length of time, she's falling and it's wrong, it's so so very wrong; this was a stupid idea, her ears feel like they might be bleeding; she's violently plummeting toward an unyielding ground and she should be terrified, she should scream, but it's exhilarating and she can't breathe anyway, nopony will hear her, heart's racing, can't see, nothing but wind and speed and yes, yes, yes...
She flares her wings and the wind tries to rip them off. By miracle, design, or perhaps sheer force of will, they remain attached. With no conscious thought, no magical command, no fanfare of any sort, falling becomes flying.
She soars through the darkness.
She was made for this; her entire life has led to this moment, as she gives herself to the emptiness of space and rises up again, flapping her wings with violent joy, dizzy with adrenaline. How could she ever think the sky wanted to keep her grounded, when it was so obviously waiting for her to claim it? She might as well have been rendering herself blind, or deaf, or even paralyzed; a pegasus without flight is an ocean without water, a morning with no sunrise. [A fire without heat]
Spitfire senses rather than feels the glowing heat emanating from her wings as she soars towards the waters at the foot of Canterlot. Her wings falter for a moment (a candle sputters) and she angles her flight over the lake, looking down upon the smooth, shadowed surface to realize that she isn't soaring, she's blazing, a searing trail of flames sparking from each flap of her wings and burning into the nothingness.
She is fire, and fire burns.
The flaming phoenix newly emblazoned upon her flank proves it.