Spellbound Fireflies (9 page)

Gentle hooves circled Scootaloo’s neck as Sweetie Belle nearly tackled her in a hug.  “I care, Scoots.”  Her voice wavered barely over a whisper into her shoulder.  “So does Apple Bloom, and Ms. Cheerilee, and Rainbow Dash, and Twilight.  We all care about you.”

Scootaloo’s heart jackhammered in her chest and a squirming lightness twisted her belly.  She sighed into the embrace, hugging Sweetie Belle back.  “Thanks,” she whispered, “I know you do.  I’m just…tired.”  The unicorn nodded into her neck and pulled back, her eyes alight with concern.  Scootaloo couldn’t help but smile.  “It’d be a lot harder without all of you there.  Thanks for bein’ there for me.”

Briefly hugging tighter, Sweetie Belle stepped back.  “Always, Scoots.  C’mon, let’s keep going.”

They climbed back onto the scooter and headed through the town at a more subdued pace.  Scootaloo was hyper-aware of Sweetie’s presence at her back, a comforting pressure of support and camaraderie.  They drifted around in silence, bleeding away the remainder of the hour in leisure.  Glancing at the clock tower, Scootaloo said, “I gotta head to the park soon, want me to take ya home?”

“I’m s’posed to help Rarity today, if you could drop me off at her place.”

Scootaloo swerved to change directions.  “…Sorry for getting so mopey at you and ruining hang out time.  We really don’t get much time anymore.”

“It’s alright.  I told you I’d always listen, so I listened.”  Her grip around Scootaloo’s waist tightened.  “I wish I could do more than just listen.”

A contented grin crossed her muzzle.  “I think all I needed
was
somepony to listen to me.  Yeah, it’s hard, but it’s not like I’m alone or I’m the only one who’s having a hard time with stuff.”  She glanced over her shoulder, the smile showing merrily in her eyes.  “It’s so not fair for me to complain to you or Apple Bloom about cutie marks.”

Sweetie Belle giggled and shook her head, turning with her friend as they crested a hill and pulled in front of Carousel Boutique.  “And you didn’t ruin anything; we got to hang out and that means we won the day,” she said as she leapt from the scooter, cantering a few steps towards the door and turning to face her friend.  She gently poked Scootaloo on the snout with a hoof and said, “We should hang out more.”

Grinning and rubbing her muzzle in mock injury, she answered, “Totally.  It’s good talking to you; I’ll try to remember that better.  Thanks for bein’ there and putting up with me bein’ such a featherbrain.”

Sweetie Belle grinned and cantered to the door.  Scootaloo kicked off towards the park as Sweetie Belle called over her shoulder, “You’re welcome, Fluff-head!”

Scootaloo skidded to a stop, eyes wide.  She swung around on her scooter in time to catch the curly ends of Sweetie Belle’s tail whip inside the shop and the door swing shut.  She stared at the purple paint coating the door, jaw hanging open and breath caught in her throat.  Images of Twilight waving with a grin plastered on her face at Rainbow Dash flew through her head, that same line echoing and doubling over with the words from her friend.

Scootaloo forced herself to breathe evenly, feeling light-headed.  Her face felt like it was on fire.  A hoof drifted up to touch her cheek, confirming it might as well have been.  Bewildered and wide-eyed, she jerkily turned her scooter back around and headed towards the park, barely seeing the ponies she was almost running over.

She coasted to a stop in front of the Twilight’s usual bench.  In a daze she glanced around; she had beaten the pair to the park.  She propped her scooter on the bench and sat on her haunches, willing her racing heart to slow.

She closed her eyes.  Her mind leapt backwards half an hour to the alley and Sweetie Belle leaning back from the comforting hug, worry in her features.  A smile cracked across the filly’s face, then fell to a confused frown.  She opened her eyes again, scanning the empty park, looking for some sort of distraction.

Huffing, she pawed at the ground with her hooves and tried to make sense of her head.  She was saved by a rush of wind as Rainbow Dash landed lightly next to the bench, Twilight sliding from her back and staggering on her hooves.

“You just had to start flying in loops, didn’t you?”  Twilight dropped to the bench, rubbing her face with a hoof.

Rainbow chuckled weakly.  “Guess I kinda got carried away.”  She leaned forward and nuzzled the unicorn’s cheek apologetically.  “Y’alright?”

Twilight groaned, but nuzzled back.  “I’ll be fine.”

“Sorry for bein’ such a featherbrain sometimes.”  Scootaloo blinked and shook her head forcefully.  Rainbow turned towards the filly.  “You ready to get started, squirt?”

Scootaloo nodded, trying to push her bewildered thoughts away.  “Yeah, I’m ready.”

“Alright, well you’ve been workin’ so hard I thought we’d have a bit of a treat today.”  She stuck her head in Twilight’s saddlebag before turning back and grinning around the Frisbee in her mouth.

Scootaloo raised an eyebrow.  “We’re gonna play with a Frisbee?”

Speaking carefully around the disc, she said, “We’re gonna
train
with a Frisbee.”  She set off at a trot to their usual spot.  “Now go long!”

Rainbow Dash did not go easy on Scootaloo.  Every flick of her neck sent the Frisbee careening lightning fast just high enough over the filly to force her to leap, wings buzzing, to catch it.  Every return throw was snapped quickly in the daredevil’s jaw and fired back with no time to rest.  Scootaloo giggled through the whole game, her mane slicking to her forehead and chest heaving deep breaths of air.

Several bottles of water and a few pauses in the game passed by before Rainbow Dash held onto the Frisbee and trotted back towards Twilight, calling over her shoulder, “Alright Scoots, time for stretches.”

“Huh?  That’s all we’re doing today?”

Dash nodded her head towards the distant clock-tower.  Scootaloo’s eyes widened when she saw two hours had passed.  A sheepish smirk on her face, she got to work stretching her wings.  She watched her coach and tutor talking and laughing together.  Twilight lifted a hoof and tapped Rainbow on the snout, causing the pegasus to reel back as if struck, igniting them both in a series of giggles.  Scootaloo scrunched her eyes shut and shook her head forcefully again.

When she opened her eyes, Rainbow’s muzzle was pressed to Twilight’s in a brief kiss.  Scootaloo had seen the two playful and close before, but this was the first time she’d witnessed actual romantic affection.  Memories of Cheerilee and Big Macintosh under the influence of Love Poison rushed to the forefront of her thoughts and she contrasted them with the scene between her coach and tutor.

Scootaloo thought the difference was night and day.  Where Big Mac and Cheerilee induced groans from the cloying and preposterous hyperbole of their words and actions, Twilight and Rainbow Dash’s display was understated and bare; a raw and exposed flash of emotion.  In the short moment the kiss lasted, Scootaloo saw a depth of simple, confident, and effortless tenderness.  She looked away and finished her stretches.

Rainbow trotted back to the filly as she shook out her wings.  “All set?”

“Yeah.”  She looked up to her mentor and smiled.  “Thanks for today.  That was a lot of fun.  I, uh, kinda needed it.”

Smiling gently, Rainbow’s tone shifted from playful to sincere.  “Twi’ told me about your math test and stuff.  I thought you deserved a reward.  Plus, you really are workin’ super-hard.  I think in another couple’a weeks we can do a second speed test and see where you’re at.”

Scootaloo bounced on her hooves.  “Really?”

“Totally.”  She leaned in closer and dropped her volume.  “Don’t let all this junk get you down, alright, Scoots?  Just remember that colt.  You’ll get through it just fine.”

The filly frowned, her brow knitting together.  “…D’ja ever find out what his name was?”

Rainbow Dash glanced away quickly.  “Haven’t found the article.”  She cleared her throat.  “Anyway, I’ll catch ya later.  See ya, Scoots.”

“Bye.”

The mare cantered back to Twilight, bending low for the unicorn to climb onto her back.  With a single beat, they were airborne and sailing towards the library.  Scootaloo slowly retrieved her scooter and made her way through Ponyville towards her house, her thoughts intermittently cycling through the dark yellow eyes of a colt, the snapshot sight of Twilight and Rainbow’s embrace, the bold red mark of victory on her test, and Sweetie Belle’s face filled with concern, hooves wrapped around her neck.

Scootaloo kept her eyes trained on the paper on her desk.  If she focused on it close enough, she wouldn’t glance over at Sweetie Belle.  If she didn’t glance over at Sweetie Belle, she wouldn’t get that weird wriggling sensation in her belly that she’d been feeling for the last two weeks.  She glanced away from her work.

Chewing on the eraser end of her pencil, Sweetie Belle sat at her own desk and rested her chin on her hoof.  She stared at her own page flatly, her eyes half glazed over.  Taking the pencil from her mouth, she blew a stray lock of mane from her eyes and furrowed her brow.  The barest crease of a pout crinkled her muzzle as she wrote in an answer.

Scootaloo darted her focus back to her own sheet, a small smile on her lips and cheeks burning.  She rubbed her stomach idly, attempting to coax it back to normalcy.  Ever since the day of the Frisbee training, Scootaloo found her thoughts drifting to her friend, and with those thoughts came confusion and worry.

She looked up at the wall clock.  Two more hours.

Sighing quietly, she bent over the page, carefully copying out the numbers in smaller sections on her spare sheet and working through the problems in stages.  With a colossal force of will she got through half of the questions without her attention drifting.  Pleased, she sat back in her chair.  Suddenly she was looking at Sweetie Belle.

‘I gotta stop this,’
she thought as she whipped her eyes away, her face warm again,
‘I do
not
have a crush on Sweetie Belle.’
  She glanced back at the unicorn.  Sweetie Belle was scowling at her assignment, a grumpy frown on her lips.  Scootaloo dragged her focus back to her assignment and rubbed her face roughly with a hoof.

‘When’d this happen?’
  She scanned the room, drifting from colt to colt.  They all looked normal to her.  They were all nice enough foals; somepony to play sports with or have as a project partner.  Unremarkable.  She switched to the fillies.  Plenty were just as unremarkable as the colts, but here and there…they were pretty.  Scootaloo liked watching them, caught up in their own heads reading, or talking to each other.  She’d catch herself staring and force herself to do something else and let the color drain from her cheeks.

She wasn’t sure when she first developed her staring problem.  Thinking back, she realized she’d been doing it for months.  It took Sweetie Belle to bring it to the front of her attention; she was having the same problem with her friend, only it was much worse.

Cheerilee cleared her throat, glancing up from her desk.  “Ten more minutes.”

Scootaloo refocused on her math work.  She copied down the next set of problems in her method of smaller, easier to read chunks and answered them quickly, breezing through the remainder of the page and signing her name to the top.  She gave a cursory glance back over her answers, but didn’t really check accuracy; the longer equations switched around and got confusing if they weren’t broken apart.  Nodding with satisfaction, she leaned back…and looked over towards Sweetie Belle.

The unicorn scribbled in an answer and pushed her sheet away, a silent sigh escaping her mouth.  A small smile graced her face as she leaned away and looked towards the ceiling, her eyes growing distant and unfocused.  Scootaloo watched her friend daydream, the mass of butterflies filling her belly and spilling into her head.

‘She’s just so…’
  Scootaloo pursed her lips in a frown.  She cycled through her muddy thoughts, looking for an answer to what it was about Sweetie Belle that had so arrested her attention.  
‘Nice.  And kind.  And she gets me.  I like talking to her.  And listening to her.  And…looking at her.’

Face painfully warm, the filly looked back at her finished work, feeling ashamed and frustrated.  She didn’t want to be dealing with this.

She remembered a breathing exercise Twilight had taught her to help clear her thoughts when they became jumbled with letters and numbers.  Continuous reading of difficult passages had a habit of backing up in her head into a twisting snake of symbols that grew more and more abstract and meaningless.  She inhaled slowly and deeply through her snout and focused on a blank piece of paper in her mind’s eye.  As she slowly released the breath she drew an imaginary pen across the page, filling the crisp and creamy sheet with careful and deliberate strokes.  At the end of her breath, she could clearly see her name written across the page in block letters.  Smiling softly, her mind free of distractions, her stomach feeling normal, and her face devoid of a blush, Scootaloo leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

She found herself transported back six weeks in time, the low light of the moon filtering in through the open doorway of the clubhouse and gently highlighting Sweetie Belle’s sleeping face.  She felt the soft breeze of the wind on the top of her head, small hot breaths on her muzzle from the unicorn’s closeness, and a hoof holding her in place.  She watched Sweetie Belle in the recollection.  The tiny rise and fall of her sleeping bag, the little dancing jumps of her eyes behind closed lids, the insistent grip as Scootaloo tried to pull away.  She remembered the sense of warmth and comfort she felt in Sweetie’s gentle embrace.

Scootaloo opened her eyes, not trying to dismiss the grin on her face.  
‘Okay,’
she thought,
‘I totally have a crush on Sweetie Belle.’
  She looked over at the filly in question and let her face grow warm.  She frowned again, sinking her cheek onto her hoof and staring out the window.  
‘So...what do I do about it?’

A quick look behind her revealed Apple Bloom discreetly passing notes with Rumble.  
‘I could talk to Apple Bloom about it,’
she mused.  Her frown deepened; her mind colored with worry about a reaction, not only over the fact that Sweetie Belle was a filly, but also that she was such a close friend to them both.