“It’s not fair!” Rainbow Dash glowered at the sprawling green below her.

Old ponies wandered about, alone or in pairs or groups, nibbling the grass and flowers. Or they sat on benches and pillows scattered about like the remains of her dreams. Of course the punishment had to wait until Spring. When else would she be ordered to do Community Service? She snorted.

At least Princess Twilight had given her some time each day to spend with her friends and Tank, but she still had to manage the weather.

“But she didn’t have to send me to Ponyville Retirement Center!”

“The elder ponies were the ones hardest hit by the winter you brought down on Ponyville so quickly. It’s only fair that you serve out your community service helping them.” The Princess, not her friend, had slammed her hoof down on the gavel stone.

Twilight Sparkle had refused to talk to her about it, but the Princess had offered to make an appointment with the Community Service board.

She had declined. The last time she’d tried to press the Princess on it, her Highness had consigned her to shepherd old ponies too feeble to live on their own. For two hundred hours. Hours she could have spent practicing. Or napping. Or spending with Tank.

“I have to be fair, Rainbow Dash,” she had explained. “I can’t be a Princess making judgement and your friend at the same time. I have to separate the two. I have to. I want to help you, but the Princess of Friendship can’t do more than I have already. I won’t play favorites, and you messed up, big time. Be happy it’s not more. Please, as a favor to me, don’t press it further.”

She sighed, frowning down at the old ponies, at the long shadows they cast over the lawn and the next several weeks of her life. There was no budging The Princess, but her friend had sympathized and offered to look after her tortoise.

Maybe it was petty, but she had turned down the offer, and asked Fluttershy to do it, instead. Maybe she shouldn’t have sneered as she did it. Maybe she shouldn’t have freaked out last Fall. Maybe she should have done a lot of things differently.

Maybe she wouldn’t get to do a lot of things.

With one last sigh, she flew to the front entrance of the retirement home and ambled past a creaky old pegasus with a black coat and white mane still streaked with electric blue here and there. She looked back at him as he left the building, and caught a wicked grin starting to crack his withered face.

Before she could wonder why, a hoarse, furious shout came from inside.

“Thundercrash, you get back in here!” A unicorn mare, her pale blue coat and white mane thoroughly soaked, dashed past Rainbow, a soggy pile of paper held in her aura. “I demand to know who gave you water balloons! Those are strictly forbidden! Especially for you!” She stood in the doorway, shouting at the top of her lungs. “Do you know how long it’s going to take to re-transcribe these records?”

“You could give a drill sergeant in the Wonderbolts lessons,” Rainbow said with a laugh as the mare trotted back past her, dripping papers held over a bucket labelled Thundercrash Contingency.

Rainbow tried to hold back a grin, but not well enough.

The other mare’s scowl could have lit a bonfire under wet canvas. “You must be Rainbow Dash. You should have been here half an hour ago.” She looked pointedly at the white clock bolted to the wall, its minute hand halfway to the next hour. “You’re assigned to Thundercrash. Keep him out of trouble. If you can.”

“That’s it?” She grinned, not trying to hide it. “Easy, peasy. Want me to—”

“And keep him away from anything that can hold water.” The mare slammed the bucket down on the counter, slopping water over her desk. She grunted. “And you’ll be cleaning up any mess he does make. Starting with this one. There’s a mop and bucket in that closet. If you have any questions, come see me.”

The grin vanished. “You?” Rainbow pulled the court papers out of her saddlebag, and glanced them over. She bit back a groan. “You’re Quick Quill?”

“Yes.” The single word snapped like a whip. “And if you don’t show up here on time, every day, and do as you are asked, when you are asked, I will be putting that in my report to the Service Board.” Quick Quill paused, taking a breath, and sat down with a crack like a sinking ship. “Do you hear me?”

“Yes ma’am!” Rainbow saluted automatically.

Quick Quill’s glare was an even match for Spitfire’s, she decided as she raced for the mop and bucket.

---

Ten minutes later, she was outside again, a blistering remand to keep Thundercrash out of trouble still ringing in her ears. He wasn’t hard to find, at least. A group of older ponies, some attended by nurses in white coats and hats, had gathered around him in the center of a low hedge garden.

She took a moment, standing at the edge of the crowd, to study him. His name had been nagging at her, and now, having a look at him, so did his appearance. He was lanky, with too much loose skin where there should have been muscle or fat, and his wings barely held a scrap of plumage anymore, as though ravaged by severe feather-flu. But he held himself erect, head high, and there was a familiar cocky grin fixed on his lips, spreading his rakish gray moustache.

All around him, old ponies grinned, chuckled, or shook their heads as he told them the story of the prank he had just pulled. She found herself chuckling along with them as the story came to a close.

“…should have seen it. I had them all piled up right on top of her clipboard, and had just put the handkerchief over it when she came back. She didn’t even look! She jerked it up, and off they went, all over her! I got out of there like a skiff with a tailwind. I feel sorry for the pony next on her list!” He laughed uproariously, loud enough to be heard over his audience, and wiped away tears as as his eyes found Rainbow Dash. “Hey! There’s our newest member. Come over here, kid.”

It hit her, then, who he was as she stepped forward, even as she gritted her teeth. “Thundercrash. You used to be a Wonderbolt!”

“Used to be? Used to be?” He laughed, waving a hoof at his audience. “It’s like she’s never heard of me!”

Laughter rose from a few of the residents, and even from a few of the staff, and even more stamping of hooves from those with oxygen masks, and clapping of hooves from those in wheelchairs.

“Kid, I never stopped being a Wonderbolt. Thundercrash the Brash! Prime prankster of the Corps, stunt inventor extraordinaire, the most agile flyer of my day, and the only bonafide captain of this lot.” He bowed with a flourish of his denuded wings. “At your service.”

As he straightened, folding his wings back, she couldn’t help but notice his face locked in a grimace.

She ruffled her own wings, ducking her head to give him a bit of privacy. “Uh, Rainbow Dash.”

“Heh. Heard of you. My grandson, Thunderlane, thinks a great deal of you. Can’t hardly shut him up.” He grinned. “So, they gotcha for community service, huh? Gotta say, I never thought to mess up the Weather Factory. But those old stodgers and their schedules gotta have something shaken up now and then, eh? A good ship needs a shakedown every now and then, after all! Good on you!”

“Heh. The court didn’t think so.” She shook her head. “And I am the weather manager here… it was a mess getting it all cleaned up.” You messed up.

“Ah, well… I s’pose you coulda used a little more moderation. But what’s done is done, and hey! You’re here, now, so come on over and introduce yourself.”

“So,” she said, rubbing a hoof against her other foreleg. “I’m Rainbow Dash.”

He tapped her shoulder, surprisingly hard, when she sat next to him. “Gonna have to speak up. Some of us are a little hard of hearing.”

As she opened her mouth to repeat herself, she spotted Quick Quill hovering at the edge of a hedge, clipboard held in her aura. She gave Rainbow a pointed look, as if to let her know she knew she had been spotted. The clipboard rose fractionally.

She bit back a grimace, returned the cool look with a heated glare, and spoke loudly. “I’m Rainbow Dash, the fastest flyer in all Equestria.” She puffed out her chest and spread her wings wide. “I love pranks, my pet tortoise, Tank, flying, and I’m going to be a…” She swallowed, her stare wavering as Quick Quill arched an eyebrow and set quill to paper. She deflated, wings settling back to her sides as she continued more quietly, “A responsible pony, and I’m here to help keep Thundercrash out of trouble.”

Boos and hisses greeted her announcement.

Thundercrash surprised her by clapping a hoof to her shoulder. “You can try, missy, you can try.”

---

Every day, she dragged herself out of bed before the sun rose, washed up, and was at the door to the retirement village on time, her timecard in her saddlebags, and a lunch already packed.

She had never been so bored or tired of routine in her entire life.

But the court papers were entirely too clear about what might happen should she get a poor report from Quick Quill.

“Further disciplinary action may be leveled upon completion of the 200 hours of community service at Ponyville Retirement Village in the event of a poor performance report, to be determined at the time of a review by the Community Service Board.”

At the very least, it meant a black mark in her record, possibly ending her career as a weather pony, or worse. The courtroom when she had gotten her sentence handed down had felt like the sweltering desert for all the glares she got from the Cloudsdale contingent, and she knew they would be there at the hearing.

If she messed up again, they could keep her out of the Wonderbolts. You messed up.

And Thundercrash wasn’t making it easy. Not that he was entirely to blame, she reminded herself as she laid her timecard on Quick Quill’s counter for a stamp, and got her standard issue name badge and staff pass for the day.

Quick Quill was as much to blame. She had a knack for showing up at the exact wrong moment.

Yesterday, she had shown up as Rainbow was trying to dismantle an intricate bucket trap on one of the staff entrances.

Twitch, twitch, went the older mare’s sodden eyebrow. Scritch, scritch went her quill.

And down, down went her hopes, sinking like the sailing puns Thundercrash tried to make float.

She trudged back out the door, hoping to catch up to the old geezer before he finished setting up whatever it was he’d managed to put together overnight. It was like he never slept, and his every waking moment was spent trying to figure out how to make her life miserable.

She stopped, letting the swinging door hit her as it swung back, and turned back around.

“Um, Mrs. Quill.”

She looked up from her desk, one eyebrow raised. The same pinched, professional smile she always wore darkened her face as it grew. “Yes, Ms. Dash?”

She cleared her throat, ruffled her wings, and tried to remember what it had been she was going to ask. She stared, and the other eyebrow joined the first.

“Never mind.” She turned away and put a hoof to the door again.

“Try getting him to tell you a story.”

“What?” She looked over her shoulder. “A story?”

Quick Quill nodded once. “He loves telling stories. And I would prefer not to take a bath earlier than this evening.” The pinched smile quirked, or so it seemed to Rainbow, and then it was the thin, professional line, as if it had never changed at all. “So see if you can make it a long one.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Did she just make a joke?

She threw another look at the mare over her shoulder as she left, but Quick Quill was already back at her mountain of paperwork, expression inscrutable.

---

The old coot was standing under a tree on the tallest hill on the retirement community’s grounds, his moustache bristling over a broad smile. An elderly earth pony mare, Golden Oats, she thought, sat beside him, giggling like a filly.

“You old charmer. You’re relentless.”

He laughed. “And Brash. Don’t forget that.”

Rainbow coughed loudly into her foreleg as she approached.

“Might wanna get that checked out, Dash. Sounds serious.” Thundercrash threw a smile over his shoulder at her, and turned back to the older mare. “So… tonight, then? My place? I’ll have everything ship-shape this time, I swear!”

“Ugh!” Rainbow clapped a hoof over her muzzle, too late. “I mean…” She coughed again.

Golden Oats stiffened. “I’ll talk to you later, Thunder. Don’t let this whippersnapper keep you from your fun, hear?” The glare the old mare shot at her left little room for interpretation. “And you, Ms. Dash…” She shook a hoof at her.

“It’s fine, Goldie,” Thundercrash murmured. He stroked a hoof under her muzzle, bringing her eyes back around to meet his, and gave her a broad smile as he took her extended foreleg in his other. “I’ll have the deck shuffled better this time, so no sneaky business like your last win, you pirate, you.” When she giggled, he smiled again, and caressed her hoof. “Tonight, at eight.”

“So… Uh…” Rainbow scrubbed at the back of her neck as she sat, staring after the tottering Golden Oats. “Sorry.”

He snorted, shaking his head. “I used to be like you, y’know.” He jerked his head towards the trail leading down from the hill the tree sat on, overlooking the wide open field where the community building sat. “I suppose, in some ways, I still am.” He started off down the trail without checking to see if she followed.

She sighed, and fell into step beside him. A story. Or something to keep him away from Quick Quill. “How so?”

Thundercrash glanced at her. “Cocky. You may be a mare, but you’re still a rooster where it counts.” He snorted at her, and she wiped the scowl from her face. “You walk around like you’ve got everything figured out, even Quick Quill. Well, ya don’t. Yer as ignorant as a cabin foal.”

She felt her hackles rise. “She’s tired of your pranks.” And I’m tired of your stupid ship talk!

“Correction. She’s tired of being the butt of my pranks.”

“Huh?” Rainbow stopped, staring at him. “But she got mad at you for dousing her paperwork! I was there, remember. That was, what, five days ago? You haven’t forgotten, have you?” Senile. I’m stuck taking care of a senile old pony who thinks pranks are the end all, be all, of life.

He kept walking, and she could have sworn he was laughing.

Exile. They’re going to exile me to… to… Gryphonia! Gildas everywhere!

You messed up.

“You coming?” He looked over his shoulder at her. The old codger was smiling at her, his teeth bared. “Or do you think you can’t keep up with me?”

“Try me, old man.” She trotted past him, wings flared.

“Rooster.”

“Codger!”

He laughed, stamping a hoof, and followed after her. “That’s more like it. Now, why would you think Mrs. Quill would get mad at me, hmm?”

“Huh?” She frowned at him, and tried to work out what game he was playing, and feeling, for some reason, like she was trying to argue with Pinkie Pie. “But she yelled at you the first day I got here, and she hasn’t let up on me since. You drenched her paperwork. If she’s anything like Twilight, I’m surprised she didn’t try to brain you with that bucket.”

“Pah. You’ve never pranked the Princess?”

She tossed her mane, and fixed him with a glare. “So, what if I have? She’s my friend. She understands. I need to prank her from time to time. It keeps her loose.”

“Uh-huh. That’s about what I thought.” He grinned at her as he caught up, and passed her again. He could move surprisingly fast for how stiff his joints seemed. She picked up her pace. “You wanna know why I set those water balloons on her clipboard?”

Because she’s got a stick so far up her butt it’s about to come out the other end. She snorted a laugh, shaking her head. Thundercrash gave her an odd look, as if he could read her thoughts. “What?”

“You really have no idea?” He sounded incredulous, and came to a stop, holding out a hoof to stop her. “Come on, Rainbow Dash. What’s the number one reason to prank someone? You profess to love pranks, so what’s the number one rule?”

It came to her, but it couldn’t possibly be right. Not in a thousand years. It would be like Princess Celestia addressing the nation with a chicken on her head. She laughed at the image, shaking her head. “Getting even?”

“Right in one!” His laugh sounded like a one of Pinkie’s desserts tasted: rich, creamy, and full bodied. It touched off a spark in Rainbow, and she couldn’t help but laugh along with him. “You want to know why I was getting even?”

She shook her head.

“Because she thought she’d saddle me with some young upstart to try and ‘keep me from hurting myself.’” He snorted, shaking his head. “She’s got a job to do, but I think she’d smother me to death with kindness if she could.”

“Kindness? Quick Quill?” Rainbow laughed, then frowned. It sounded hollow to her. “The kindest thing she’s said to me is—” She snapped her mouth shut, looking askance at him.

“Bah. You don’t know her.” He grinned at her. “I prank because I care. Like you. Can’t pull off some of the epic schemes I used to, but I’ve still got it in me.” He stopped abruptly, his legs shaking. One wing twitched. Then he belched, and gave her a thin smile. “Don’t ever get old, Rainbow Dash. It gives you gas like nothing else.”

Rainbow made a face at him, but it felt mechanical, like something expected of her. Her eyes wandered to his dessicated wings against her will, and hers tucked tighter against her body. She shook herself, spread her wings, and folded them back again. It felt good to move them, but she couldn’t help but glance at his wings again, and feel a pang of guilt at showing off.

If he felt any regret or longing, he didn’t let her see, but neither did he say anything else as they followed the winding trail down the tall hill.

She coughed into the silence. “So… why do you need me to keep you from hurting yourself? You’ve pretty much tied me in knots this whole week! I should be the one needing protection.”

He roared another laugh. “You’ll understand in time, Rainbow. Now, come on. It’s Twofer Tuesday, and I ain’t gonna miss two desserts just ‘cuz you can’t keep up!” He broke into a trot again.

She couldn’t do anything but stare after him for a long moment, his words rolling around in her head like an insane rollerball.

“You coming?” His voice drifted up from farther down the hill.

She continued to stare after him, wondering why it felt like she was seeing Tank getting ready to hibernate all over again. Ponies don’t hibernate. She groped after why, frowning down the trail.

Before she could grasp it, his voice drifted up, even farther away. “Can’t believe I’m gonna beat the fastest flyer all Equestria! Hah! A wallowing cog could fly faster than you!”

She growled, low in her throat, and leapt up, off the side of the hill, and dove after him, wings flared to catch the wind, then sleeking back as she flattened into her dive.

“I’m gonna make you eat those words, you old coot!” she shouted as she flashed past him. “Ships don’t fly like this!”

---

She arrived earlier the next day, surprising herself when she looked at the clock inside the front office. Almost half an hour early. Quick Quill quirked an eyebrow at her, stamped her card, and waved her back out.

Before she left, she turned to ask, “When did you take a bath yesterday?”

The smile she got in return brightened the stodgy mare’s plain features. “A little after seven. At home. Thank you for taking care of him.”

“It was fun.” She paused after saying it, and felt a smile creep across her face. “It was.”

Scritch, scritch, went the quill.

She sighed, turned, and pushed past the swinging doors, back into a morning still getting its start.

It was the first time she had seen the grounds almost empty. Dew sparkled on lawn furniture and topiaries, glimmering like sparkling crimson gems in the quickening light from the East.

Rarity would like rubies like that.

But the tables and chairs were empty, the lawn games neatly put away, and the life pulsing in the place during the day was gone. Her smile slipped as she recalled what this place was, and what it meant.

This place was a prison. Neat, orderly, and soft, but it was keeping her from where she should be: with her friends, and with Tank.

“Bit for your thoughts?”

“Huh?” She turned her head, and saw Thundercrash sitting in one of the chairs at a table. A steaming mug gripped between his hooves, a tea tag hanging over the side. “I never thought you’d be a tea person,” she said.

He pulled the tea-bag from his mug and set it on a plate. “I’d prefer coffee, but nopony gets coffee around here. Besides, it’s good for my joints on a cool spring morning like this. Better in winter, of course.” He grinned at her.

“It was a mistake.”

He shrugged, made a soft sound, and took a sip. “You’re usually not here until another half hour.” He pulled a shining golden bit from a pouch around his neck and set it on the table.

“What’s that for?” She walked to the table, peering at the coin. “It’s a bit.”

“Why, so it is.” His eyes sparkled as he took another sip. “A bit for a bit of your mind.”

She sat, watching him as he sipped at his tea, her eyes going to the gold on the table between them. “I thought that was just a saying.”

He pushed it at her with one hoof. “I think sayings are worth listening to. What brought you here so early?”

“Good question.” She tapped at the bit, but didn’t take it. She flipped it up to an edge, and rolled it back and forth under her hoof, frowning. “I had fun yesterday,” she said after a long moment. “I’m not sure I should. I’m paying a debt, right? That shouldn’t be fun.”

He frowned, and the expression looked so alien on his face, he seemed a different person. Then it was gone, replaced by a flat expression, as though it had been a pond that had frozen over. She couldn’t read anything in his eyes as he stared off into the distance over her head.

“Holding a debt,” he said, after a time, “shouldn’t be fun. Paying it off… why shouldn’t you be happy? You’re about to be done with the worry and frustration, and the expectations that holding a debt bring.” He met her eyes. “Why don’t you want it to be fun?”

The bit rolled back and forth under her hoof, drawing a line in the dew atop the wooden slats of the table. Do I? Don’t I? it said through the rumbling roll of the coin. She slapped it flat and peered at the face showing under the edge of her hoof. Celestia looked up at her, and the golden eyes seemed to glow in the morning light.

“I… I might have gotten some ponies hurt, if I hadn’t been so lucky.” She slid the coin closer to herself, then tucked it into her own purse. “The factory barely got repaired in time to get winter rolling again for the other cities. Some birds still hadn’t flown south, and a lot of animals weren’t all the way ready. Some may have died, thanks to me.”

“May have?”

“Fluttershy says it’s normal for some animals to die during the winter, and those that didn’t make it…” She looked up at him, trailing off, and looked down at the coin again.

“Ah.” He sipped from his mug again. “The elderly. The infirm. Like me.”

She nodded.

“Let me tell you something, Rainbow Dash, and you’re not going to like it.” He took another sip.

She gritted her teeth, and forced her attention to stay on the straight line of dark wood standing free of the dew spattered everywhere else. She wouldn’t rise to his bait.

“Get over it.”

She frowned. “That’s it? Get over it?”

“Yup.”

“I can’t get over it. I might get barred from the Wonderbolts. At least you were a Wonderbolt! It’s my dream!” She slammed a hoof against the chair’s edge. “I might not ever get over it!” She looked away, eyes stinging. You messed up, Rainbow Dash. “I don’t want to get over it.”

He took a deep breath, and she waited for him to call her down, berate her for her anger. She wanted him to. You messed up, big time. She clamped her jaw tight over the whimper wanting to come out.

Instead, all he said was, “Ah. I remember when I held that very same sentiment.” He took one final sip from his tea, and set the mug down firmly.

She sat still, not moving a hoof to betray the hot ache in the corner of her eyes. He sat still as the sun crept up past the trees, and watched the sun rise above the trees, turning the dew on every table, every leaf, and every blade of grass into a golden fire that burned away some of the ache in her heart.

“I can see why you like to sit out here.” She blinked in the fierce light as it crested fully above the horizon.

Thundercrash smiled, nodding. “Nothing quite like it in the sky. Or the sea.” An odd smile tweaked his lips, then, and he stood. “Follow me, I’d like to show you something.”

He waited until she got to her feet, and led her back in through the door, stopping for a moment to compliment Quick Quill’s shorter manecut — the mare seemed oddly pleased, and beamed at him, the look as alien as his frown — and then back through the far double doors and into the main hall.

Greens and light blues dominated the walls and columns holding aloft the giant skylight letting in the same golden radiance. There were a few residents already sitting around tables, on couches, or winding their way through the pillow-strewn center, all chatting in low tones and not paying them any attention.

She followed him through a short maze of narrow hallways smelling of the metallic tones of hospital antiseptic, the dim walls festooned with swinging doors, each one with a clipboard tacked to the wall. They passed a nurse’s station, and he stopped again to greet the young mare in a white hat sitting in front of a bank of green lights.

Then to a broader one, where the doors were farther spaced apart, the light brighter, and paintings adorned the walls instead of clipboards. He glanced at her once throughout it all, but didn’t say anything, only raised an eyebrow.

By the time they stopped, she was gritting her teeth over the sharp remark wanting to bubble to the surface.

“Best out with it.”

It was a strain to keep her voice level. “With what?”

“That.” He prodded her chest with a hoof, and nodded at the door with a painting of a schooner on the wall. Thanks to him, she knew more about ships and sailing than she had ever wanted. “Beyond this door is my home.”

“What’s with the mystery? We’re not going to Yakyakistan, for pony’s sake!”

“Ah, but 'tis a far stranger sea that lies beyond.” He rapped a hoof against the door. “Beyond here lay my fondest memories.” With no further embellishment, he opened the door, and waved her in.

She stared at him, tried to read something into his smile, the tilt of his head, or the slight droop of his ears. Fluttershy would be able to. She sighed, dropping her head, and stepped past him… and into a ship’s cabin.

Well. That makes sense, now. She barked a laugh, and covered her muzzle with a hoof.

Wood planking covered the floor, worn smooth from apparent decades of hooves traversing it. Even the portholes set high in the walls looked as though they might open out onto a fine day at sea and not the well-groomed community lawn. A single candelabra provided the only source of light, the candlesticks having been replaced by candle-flame bulbs.

On every surface, shelf, and in quite a few cases scattered around the spacious room, were photographs, awards, plaques, and trophies. She stared at the spread, feeling her jaw drop open and unable to close it as she saw trophies from races she’d only heard about at flight camp, like legends out of a myth.

“You flew in the Daredevil Four Hundred?” She jabbed a hoof at the silver cup with devil’s horns sprouting from the base in front of a set of wings.

“Yep! Last one ever held. That’s actually the one I wanted to talk to you about.” He walked over to the case, resting a hoof on the glass, his reflection grinning at her. “That race got me kicked out of the Wonderbolts, and two of my teammates seriously hurt. Neither one of them ever flew again, and it was my fault.” His smile grew hard. “They still gave me the trophy, for appearance’s sake, but I was quietly bustled out of uniform and dropped. I couldn’t blame them for it, either.”

“Yeah, but you got to be—”

“Shut up,” he snapped at her, his hoof slamming to the floor with a crack. He drew in a ragged breath, and let it out. “My apologies. That was harshly said. You’re young still, and you’ll understand, in time, what pride can do to you. Hopefully sooner than I did.”

Rainbow Dash looked at herself in the reflection, saw the wings and the horns overing above her head, and met his eyes. “But you got back in, right?”

He waved a hoof at the rest of the trophies. “You tell me.”

She wandered the walls, looking at each case and trophy. Other than a single one, there weren’t any without a rank insignia stamped next to his name.

She came back to the one, a simple tin plaque with a sailboat etched into the metal. It sat alone on the highest shelf of the central display case, propped up with a brass hinge instead of a proper stand. What it meant, and why it was in the place of honor, escaped her, no matter how she stared at it, or from what angle. “And this one?”

“That… my wife made for me. I was a spotter aboard the racing sloop Belegaer, out of Gryphonia, and she the captain. We lost the race, in part because of my failure to understand the sea, but…” He opened the case and took down the plaque, cradling it in the crook of his foreleg. “She was an earth pony, and she claimed the only time she felt like she could truly fly was at the helm of her ships.”

Rainbow felt an ache grow in her as she watched his eyes cloud over, and looked away before the first tears fell.

“I told her she was crazy. There’s nothing like flying through a thunderstorm, or diving down the eye of a hurricane, only to ride its arm back out again, I said. She got this wicked grin on her face, and challenged me to stand on the deck of her ship the next time she went out.” He snorted a laugh. “I had little to lose by then, I wasn’t an elite flyer anymore, but I still had my pride. I threw it back in her face and told her I could do it with both wings tied behind my back.”

Rainbow looked back sharply, heart thudding faster. “What?”

He laughed at her, shaking his head. “Before I knew it, I was trussed up like a turkey on the pitching deck of a ship bound for Tartarus. She and her small crew scrambled up and down the rigging as if they were on dry land and the ship wasn’t being tossed about like a foal’s plaything. It was all I could do to hold on for dear life as she screamed, whooped, and jeered at all of us as she sailed us straight into the Dragon’s Teeth.

“I can’t recall what happened during it, sadly, except that I had fallen in love with this crazy pony who defied the sea, sailed into death, and came out the other side laughing. Half our rigging was torn clean away, every crew member had more than a few bruises, and I’d swallowed and retched up enough sea water to make me think I was a fountain, but they were all grinning, shouting and cheering on their fearless, peerless Captain Flora.”

He smiled down at the plaque. “It was like seeing her for the first time as we sailed out of those jagged teeth. Her mane streamed back even as the wind sought to throw us into the rocks, and she grinned through it all and called her orders, stallion and mare alike leaping to obey. So did I, after a time, once I’d finished retching up half the ocean.”

“And then what?” Rainbow leaned forward, ears straining forward to cup every word.

“And then we made port, found out half the cargo was lost to seawater, and I proposed to her on the spot. Wild thing that she was, she accepted. She kicked my hind end up between my ears and made me accept the paltry position in the back-end of an office with the Wonderbolts when they offered again. And I went. I filled out paperwork, and signed ledgers and orders… and worked my way back into the good graces of the higher ups. Eventually…”

He set the plaque back in place and closed the case. “Eventually, I got my Wings back. I stopped blaming myself for what had happened, and owned up to the mistake. I’d made it, yes. But letting it destroy a third flyer would have been even worse.” As he spoke, he made his way to a chest of drawers. “I even made captain. Before I tried to pull a prank on Princess Celestia.”

He pulled a scroll from the drawer, and a golden pair of wings with a clip, as might be on a paper binder.

“She busted you back down?”

“Nah. She laughed, later, when she pulled me from the moat with her own hoof. Piece of advice, kid: don’t prank somepony who’s lived for more than a thousand years. You’ll always be the one in the drink in the end.” He sighed, then, and shifted his wings. “I caught the feather flu soon after, and my wings withered away before my eyes. Celestia did what she could, but by the time the cure had been found, the plague had already swept through most of the Cloudsdale population. That was a bad winter. A bad few winters, and summers. It was the darkest time Equestria had faced in a long while, she told me later.”

Rainbow grimaced, looking back at her own wings, flexing them, and shuddered.

“Don’t you feel sorry for me. Sure, I was young, but I still got to fly, and with my wife by my side. She was right. At the helm of a racing sloop, diving bow-first into every wave and coming out the other side screaming defiance at the sea—that was flying. That was my dream.”

He unfurled the scroll on his bed, and nodded at it.

It was a sketch of a mare standing with her fore hooves braced between the spindles of a ship’s wheel, her smile as broad as the sky, her mane tossed back and flying in the wind. Below it were the words:

Be open to your dreams. Embrace that distant shore. Because our mortal journey is over all too soon.

“I sketched this after our first voyage together, that death-defying race into her heart. The words… came from somewhere I’ve forgotten over the years, but they still ring true when I read them. I’ve never felt so alive as when I sailed with her. Not even winning all of this,” he said, gesturing at the cases, “compares to a single day on the deck of her ship, living the dream I had never known I might have.”

When he stamped his hoof, she understood.

The rest of the room, the side she had ignored for the cases of trophies, flared up in her mind’s eye and called her attention to it. Paintings, photographs, and sketches, all in frames of the same shade of wood as the decking beneath her feet, lined the walls, filling them from shoulder height to the ceiling. In every one, he was with her, or his children. Color photographs scattered in among the rest showed a very young Thunderlane, and an even younger Rumble.

She came to a photograph without his wife in it. She stared at it, feeling the void where she should have stood, where she had stood in every one before it. It was wrong, but she couldn’t say it wasn’t right, either, and it tore at her. It belonged, and was as much a part of his life as his wings. Even after they had been torn away from him, he had lived a life with no regrets, following his heart.

“Home is where the heart is,” she whispered, looking at him.

He smiled back at her, bowed, and spread his wings. “Welcome to my home.”

---

The next weeks passed in a rush. She kept Thundercrash company, and he even agreed to moderate his pranks somewhat.

“Because you remind me of my daughter,” he told her one day. “Ah, she’s still got her mother’s fire burning in her heart, and as much caution.” Right before he pulled back the pin holding a dozen water balloons in place. At least he had helped her mop it up, and claimed she had tried to talk him out of it.

She hadn’t.

Quick Quill’s pen still scritch-scritched on the paper, but it didn’t feel like she was poking holes in her dreams anymore, and the worry over what she wrote felt like a distant second to the fun she had as her community service stopped dragging.

And he told stories. Most often, he told them in the main hall, and used Rainbow Dash as a co-actor in the high seas dramas he played out amid the tapestries imagined as sails, and pillars for mast and rigging both. Pirates, raiders, and sea monsters were fought by the dozens, with swords and spears of words and jests. They sailed across storm-tossed seas and oceans of chairs and couches, through jagged teeth of canes and other ponies.

She came to envy Flora, to have known this vital pony in his prime. It was at times like that when she smacked herself across the cheek. Past his prime? She would ask herself as he clambered up a chair, then rode its back down and jabbed a hoof at an imaginary foe. I know ponies my age less active.

He would sweep her up in the adventure again, and they were off to the far reaches of the seas, sailing for the Cape of High Hopes and the Eye of the Storm to deliver a cargo of precious gems and steal back a historic artifact.

---

Two days before she was due to be released, and Quick Quill’s notes, and Quick Quill herself, went before the board, she pulled Rainbow Dash back into her office when she showed up for the morning’s stamp and badge.

On her desk was a box lidded with the tin plaque, the hinge used for a stand screwed into the wood. She couldn’t take her eyes from it. It wasn’t in the right place. It shouldn’t be there. She stood, frozen in the doorway, ice gripping her heart.

“Ms. Dash. Rainbow.” Quick Quill motioned to the chair opposite the desk. “You may want to sit down.”

“T-that should be in his room.” She pointed a hoof at the lid of the box. “It belongs in his trophy case. His wife made it for him.” She pointed at the empty wall, and lowered her hoof, feeling stupid. “W-what— When?” Her voice broke over the simple words as she took the offered seat, hooves slipping on the edge before she pushed herself back into it and upright.

As she sat, waiting for Quick Quill to straighten a stack of papers, she recalled, with disturbing clarity, the more frequent ‘gas attacks’ she had passed off as signs of old age.

“Last night. His… his family has already been by, but he left this for me to give to you, if he never got the chance. He said you would know what it meant.”

Rainbow looked up, surprised to hear Quick Quill’s voice quaver and break. She was wearing her mane short again. She swallowed against the hard lump in her throat, and tried to think what he would say.

“I like your mane. It’s very you.”

Quick Quill laughed, and cried. “T-thank you.”

She left some time later, smiling as her heart crumbled, after Quick Quill had shared the story of the first time she’d met him, carrying the box tucked under one wing, and made her way to the top of the hill, by the tree where she had found him on the day Quick Quill had first smiled at her.

She faltered in its shadow, almost dropping the box, as the first sob struck her low in the gut.

---

She stood still in the clear, sunny day, watching the black-clad procession of ponies, of Wonderbolts trailing before and after the coffin, and the Princesses standing in the position of honor at the headstone, behind a podium. She still owed Twilight an apology, and two after this.

Her cadet’s uniform, dug up from the bottom of her clothes chest from her stint at Flight Camp, cleaned and pressed just for the occasion, shone crisp and blue in contrast to the Wonderbolts’ dress whites. Spitfire had looked her up and down, lips pursed, and nodded grudging approval, with a quirked smile, as she passed.

She stood with Thunderlane, also in his cadet blues, and his family. They had insisted she be there. Further back, in the crowd of mourners, stood her friends.

Spitfire took the podium first.

“Thundercrash is a legend among the Wonderbolts,” she said, voice pitched to carry. “He is the last of the old guard to pass from this life to the next. But he was also the first of the new guard. The ponies of the Wonderbolts today have him to thank for everything the Wonderbolts stand for today. Without him, we would not be a cadre of elite flyers, who take only the best. Without him, we would not have the stunts and formations we have today. Without him, we would be little more than a forgotten relic of a glorious past.”

She snapped her foreleg to her brow, wings snapping high, as though in preparation for takeoff. Every pegasus in the crowd, uniformed or not, followed suit.

“We salute you, Thundercrash, and celebrate the future you gave us.”

Then it was Rainbow’s turn, and Thunderlane was nudging her forward. Under her wing was the box with the tin lid, it’s surface polished so it shone like a mirror of silver glass. The ship graven on it seemed to leap from the wave it crested.

She cleared her throat. “It’s traditional to wish a pegasus departing this world fair flying, but I would like to wish him fair sailing, and share with all of you some words he entrusted to my care.”

She had known what was in the box before she had opened it the first time. But the letter at the bottom of it had surprised her, even so. She still had read it five times, and committed the simple instructions to heart. She pulled out the scroll instead.

“His wife, Flora, was a sailor without equal, and he told me once that he treasured all of his time with the Wonderbolts as much as a single day on the deck of her ship. Those of you who know him, know this was not an insult to the Wonderbolts, but a compliment of the highest order.”

As she unfurled the scroll, the words of the prepared speech she had rehearsed over and over with Twilight and Rarity, and rewrote half a dozen times, fell out of her mind. Flora stood there on the deck of her ship, grinning defiance at the world.

He stood beside her in Rainbow’s imagination, and the still scroll leapt to life there, rolling and pitching, both of them crying out their love for the sea and each other.

Spitfire broke her free of the vision with a delicate cough, and the scroll was only a scroll again, with Flora standing alone, her mane flung back.

“Be open to your dreams,” Rainbow read aloud, her voice quavering. “Embrace that distant shore. Because our mortal journey is over all too soon.” She let the scroll close again, and looked out over the gathering, every face watching her. “I’ve, uh, had a lot of time to think about what those words mean in the last week. About his life, and how he lived. Dreams,” she said. “Dreams. Embrace all of them, because where one dream ends, another may find its place.”

She caught, from the corner of her eye, Rarity waving a hoof frantically in the air. She’d gone off script. She grinned. Rarity didn’t know she followed a different script.

“Life doesn’t go the way you expect,” she told them all. “Life can’t be planned for, or anticipated. You can make your plans, script your life to the last detail, and life itself will sail in a different direction.” She raised her voice, almost shouting. “Be open to your dreams, everypony, because life sails on, and the unexpected is waiting, right over the horizon.”

On cue, she heard the creaking of a wooden arm crack through the silence following the end of her speech.

Princess Celestia pulled out an umbrella as the sky darkened briefly with the shade of a thousand water balloons raining down over the funeral.

She grinned at Spitfire’s open-mouthed shock as the edge of the cluster splattered down and rolled past them in a tidal wave of bursting balloons, cries rising, and laughter following in its wake.

“He wanted me to make it to rain at his funeral.”