I knew it was impossible, but sometimes I wished the sun would jump off a cliff. Don’t get me wrong—I was no Nightmare—I totally got that we needed the sun. Heck, most of the time, I relished the thing.

But when I slept, particularly when I was in the middle of a good dream, well... y’know.

Batting a hoof uselessly at the rays of light piercing my window and falling on my head, I groaned and wriggled for a good half-minute before finally peeling my eyes open and tumbling out of bed. Somewhere between the jolt against the floor and the scent in the air, I snapped awake.

“Do I smell pancakes?”

A deep voice rumbled back down the hall. “Not if you don’t hurry you don’t! Your train leaves in half an hour!”

My eyelids flew up and my pupils conquered my face. In no time at all, I was racing around the corner and slamming my flank into a chair at the table. I didn’t bother pausing to talk, immediately shoveling bite after bite of fluffy goodness into my stomach. By the fourth bite, my wings stopped buzzing.

“Hungry, eh?” Dad smiled across the cheap birch and flimsy china, gobs of syrup dotting the mostly-empty plate in front of him. “You know, I can think of one pony who probably won’t approve of this...”

A lump of barely-chewed batter slid down my throat. I exhaled and did my best to smile back. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

A silent second passed between us before Dad reached across the table and mussed my mane. “I’m more worried for her than you.”

I was suddenly grateful that my mouth wasn’t full of food, as I just about choked on nothing, and something probably would have fared worse. Dad always did know how to make me laugh. With a contented sigh and a slight fixing of my ’do, I tossed him a bemused look. “You know, you could have woken me up earlier.”

He shrugged. “I don’t see the point. You don’t need a lot of time to get ready, and I don’t need a lot of time trying to keep a straight face while I say goodbye.” He blinked. If anypony asks, it was just something in his eye. Like a whirlwind, I whipped through the house and left catastrophe in my wake as I scrambled to get ready and make sure I was packed. Dad was right, though, and in just a few minutes I was ready to roll. I spent a moment staring at a scooter two sizes too small before slinging my bags over my back and heading toward the door.

Dad was there, holding his hooves out for a hug. I took him up on the offer, and it was harder to let go than it should have been; it wasn’t like I’d never see him again. Had he always been that soft? When we broke the embrace, his expression shifted into one of the more serious looks I’ve seen him give, and for a minute I was worried something was wrong.

“Remember: I love you, and I’m proud of you.”

If anybody asked, there was just something in my eye. I blinked my vision dry as best I could, nodded, and trotted outside. Dad didn’t shut the door, just standing there watching me walk away and waving until I had to turn down a different path and put a building between us.

Still having some minutes to spare, I ambled through town at a pretty lazy pace, letting nostalgia wash over me at every turn. I swam through a sea of pleasant memories of days long past. It was mostly made up of things I’d done with Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle and Dinky, before or after the Crusaders, it didn’t matter.

My part-time job at the bowling alley had been, well, it had been something, and if you can look back on something and laugh, was it really so bad? Rounding another corner into the center of town, I shouldered a wave of guilt over how easy my life had been and stepped somberly past the memorial. I didn’t want to think about it, and I didn’t want anypony else to have to, either. That was part of the reason I was enlisting to begin with: I wanted to keep Equestria harmonious. I wanted to do something. To give back something. Just about every last pony I’d ever met had been so good to me, and it was only right that I return the favor. I may not legally have owed Equestria a debt, but I’d never have forgiven myself if anything had happened that I could’ve stopped.

Besides, she would be there. I never could explain exactly what she was to me, but whatever the phrasing, the result was the same. She was important. I wouldn’t have become the same mare if she hadn’t been there when I was a kid.

I spotted the tiny little train, creaking in place at a rusty old station. Some parts of Ponyville hadn’t been maintained so well since so many ponies moved away, but nothing had fallen into outright disrepair. The train still showed up on time to whisk ponies away and the station still sat there, providing walls to plaster schedules on.

I climbed into the only passenger car and did a quick scan around the interior. One yellow earth pony with an orange mane sat in a seat, slumped against the wall; I didn’t recognize him. He looked like he was sleeping, so I didn’t bother him for something as trivial as asking his name. Besides, we’d probably get to know each other in Friendship Camp.

Of course it wasn’t called that. It wasn’t literally “Friendship Camp,” but everypony would know what you were talking about if you said it. Even the ones who didn’t like the idea for whatever reason. I could never understand how anypony was against it. There was no downside, and on top of that it was all voluntary.

The train lurched and started rumbling slowly down the track; I’d cut it closer than I’d thought. I planted my flank on a seat in the back corner of the car and stared out the window at the scenery rolling by. Lush greenery gradually dulled into a brown haze as we left the replanted area of Ponyville and moved into blasted plains that hadn’t yet recovered. Nature was tenacious, though, and even in the harshest craters a few specks of vibrant green peppered the dead earth. One of my eyebrows lifted up on its own as I realized I didn’t know exactly how long the ride would take. It was less than a day, I knew, but was it an hour? Two? I’d never actually owned a watch, and I started to worry I’d die of boredom. Not only was there nothing fun to do, but I wouldn’t even be able to stare at the time and fidget impatiently! My flank was getting tired already from being pressed against the lumpy old cushion.

“Eep!” I shrieked, practically jumping out of my coat as I felt something tap me on the shoulder. I spun about in midair and fell gracelessly on my back, facing the formerly sleeping stallion. He was now awake and standing. Right next to me.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, looking down and scuffing a hoof across the floor.

I hopped to my hooves and turned to face him in one fluid motion, offering a hoof and a smile. “No worries. I’m Scootaloo. You are?”

His ears perked up and his face brightened. “Ink Well,” he said, shaking my hoof firmly. “You’re enlisting, right?”

I nodded. “No other reason to be on this train.”

“Well, you could be on staff.”

My eyes did a quick sarcastic circuit. “Pfft, yeah, I’m totally one of Equestria’s foremost heroes.”

He shook his head and smirked. “I meant something more like a cook. It does take more than just the counselors to run a camp.”

“Heh... yeah, I guess you’re right.”

I suppressed the urge to groan, sigh, or shake my head at how cheesy the mare’s speech was. I knew I wanted to make a difference and all that jazz, but there are only so many positive buzzwords a pony can take. Synergy this and empowerment that. I was positively giddy when she finally left the stage and the Elements of Harmony stepped up in her place. The ponies around me were similarly enraptured and broke into a thundering wave of applause.

Almost immediately, Twilight stepped forward. She stood almost as tall as Celestia now, enormous wings coiled tightly at her sides and impressive horn jutting fiercely upward. Despite her imposing stature, when she opened her mouth she was as warm as ever. “Can I please have everypony quiet down? I know you’re all excited, but we still have a lot to do and the sooner we get everypony sorted, the better. As... rousing as that speech was, I’m not sure we had the time for it to run quite that long.”

The crowd chuckled, then obeyed as the few hundred ponies in front of her all dropped into low whispers or total silence.

“Thank you. There will be plenty of time to talk over the coming weeks, but for now we need to get moving, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to start right away,” she said, levitating a small crystal before her. Her eyes slid closed and a bright beam of magic shot into it, causing it to pulse and rotate. I could feel the gentle thrum of its magic coursing through the air. After a moment, she opened her eyes back up and surveyed the crowd. “Out of curiousity, and I assure you there’s no consequence to being right or wrong, could everypony who thinks they’re a ‘Magic’ raise a hoof?”

A few dozen unicorns immediately thrust their hooves skyward and held them there.

Twilight giggled. “I’d guess all of you are right, but there are probably a few more as well.” Her horn flashed and the crystal floated higher, spinning faster and faster until it exploded into tiny purple beams that spilled across the crowd, highlighting all of the unicorns with raised hooves. And, as Twilight predicted, four others, including a very confused Ink Well and one other earth pony.

“Alright then. If all of you could please follow me?” She began trotting off to one side, and the ponies encased in a lavender glow went after her.

Rainbow Dash’s crystal was already on the verge of bursting. She’d taken a head start instead of waiting for Twilight to finish, and she only bothered saying two words. “Loyalty. Hooves?”

My gaze sharpened and my hoof was up before I had a moment to blink. I didn’t get a chance to look around before I felt a warm sensation envelop me and I saw Rainbow Dash leaving the stage. I turned and fell into line with the rest of the Loyalty herd, wasting no time in getting started. I found myself walking alongside a mixture of proud and confused pegasi, earth ponies, and unicorns, all distributed across race and surprise pretty evenly. I looked behind me to see Fluttershy squeaking something unintelligible and a very small number of hooves going up. Quite a few ponies quaked silently with all four limbs on the ground, either too unsure of themselves or too afraid of making a scene.

We didn’t walk very far before Rainbow Dash stopped and whirled to face us. “Some of you know why you’re here. Some of you don’t. Some of you think you ‘get’ loyalty. Some of you don’t. None of that matters,” she said, her eyes cold and focused. She paced in a small circle. “You’re all here, and you all know deep down why that is. Fortunately for all of us, it’s not complicated. We don’t have to spend very long talking about what loyalty means, because I only have to give you one order for everything to be crystal clear.” In an instant, her wings were flared out to her sides and her gaze bored into us with an intensity few could match.

The air went still, and even the scent of pine seemed afraid to interrupt, receding back into the trees.

“There are ponies you care about. Don’t let them down,” she barked. Her feathers twitched for a moment before her wings fell slack and she gathered them back to her sides. Her eyes softened and she put on a big smile.

The stiff atmosphere relaxed, and everypony exhaled at once into the forest air, once more smelling of pine as it blew softly about.

“Okay. That’s, uh, that’s pretty much all there is to it,” she said, rubbing a hoof at the back of her head. “The others are still probably getting their ears talked off, but that’s really not my thing, so I’m gonna go ahead and have you guys pick out cabin numbers now and the rest of the night is yours. Lights out is technically at ten thirty, but I couldn’t give a dang if I tried.”

A few whoops and cheers went up, and I returned two semi-random ponies’ hoof-bumps before Rainbow Dash had dragged a big splintery box in front of her. “Everypony just reach in and pull out a number. Twilight said something about how destiny and luck were two sides of the same coin and minor enchantments can easily highlight connections and blah blah whatever, but the box did a pretty darn good job last year and the year before, so I’m not gonna question it. The number you get is the number painted on the side of the cabin you’re staying in. Every cabin has one of each element, and somehow or other the numbers work out so nopony is left behind. However it works, it’s pretty snazzy,” she said. She dipped one of her hooves into the box and stirred the contents. “So yeah, line on up.”

I waited and plopped myself at the back, giving myself plenty of time to daydream about the kinds of ponies I’d be making friends with. I hoped at least one of my troop would be into awesome things, but I wouldn’t have had a problem with a dictionary or a handymare or a genius. I wondered if anypony I knew would be in my cabin and started flipping back through my memories, trying to think of the most awesome fillies I knew growing up. The list was still pretty short when I felt a light knocking on my skull.

“You in there, Scoots?”

I blushed a bit, but shrugged it off. “Hi, Rainbow Dash. It’s... it’s been a long time.”

She looked... distant isn’t quite right. She was right in front of me, but I almost felt like there was a wall between us. “I know it has, kid. And I’m sorry, but, y’know. Everything—”

“I know.”

A little window in the barrier opened, and she gave me a small, but genuine, smile. “You know I can’t give you any special treatment, right? I’m not allowed to play favorites here.”

I grinned at her. Not up at her, but just at her. It felt surreal being the same height as Rainbow Dash and not looking up to make eye contact with her. “I’ll just have to be awesome, then.”

“I guess so.” She raised her hoof. I raised mine and bumped forward, and I felt cooler than I’d ever felt before.

The cabin sat modestly in the center of a clearing, surrounded by maybe fifty feet of open ground and then a fairly thick patch of old forest. A huge yellow “12” glimmered in the light of the evening sun and I nosed the door open. “Hello?” I called out. My voice echoed around the simple structure, and nopony answered. The cabin, like the camp, was only a few years old and in very good condition. The walls almost sparkled, and the floors did gleam. Cleaning staff must have come through recently, because I couldn’t find any dust or cobwebs despite the place having been unoccupied for the better part of a year. As I looked around, a lump formed in my throat. No matter how well-kept the cabin was, nothing changed the fact that the cabin measured five hundred square feet at best and was meant to house six full-grown ponies.

A few more seconds of sleuthing showed that the cabin only offered one bathroom, too. Before anypony else could get a chance, I decided to claim a space and take a shower. I fished around in my bags to find some soap, shampoo, and a towel, and tossed the rest of my things onto the upper bunk in one of the cramped bedrooms before waltzing into the bathroom and flipping on the lights and plumbing. I slapped my towel over a steel rod adjacent to the shower curtain and set my toiletries on a little shelf just inside the curtain and just outside the water’s reach. Jets of steaming water were pouring down from the nozzle above. I placed a hoof under the stream and quickly pulled it back. It burned a little, so I twisted the knob a smidge and then jumped in.

The Magic in my group was probably a unicorn. Probably into books. They tend to follow a trend. Kindness could vary, but would almost certainly be more soft-spoken than the others. Laughter would be fun, and Generosity was theoretically fine, since there was no particularly strong connection between generous ponies and fashion. For a minute, I started to wonder how Honesty and I would get along, letting my mind wander in speculative directions I knew I shouldn’t. None of my idle thoughts slowed me down, though, and in a hooffull of minutes I’d scrubbed myself down and rinsed myself off.

With nigh-perfect timing, I turned off the water just in time to hear the front door opening. A few rivulets of clear water ran down my face. I buzzed my wings for a second to kickstart the drying process and reached for the towel when I froze in place. I heard a stallion’s voice.

Somehow, I hadn’t realized that the camp was full of stallions as well as mares and the random cabin assignments didn’t differentiate between the two. I’d never lived with any stallion but Dad, and the... cozy quarters of the cabin weren’t likely to make things any less awkward. In a flash, I slapped myself dry with the towel and barreled out of the shower and into the hall, only to freeze a second time. My wings shot up and my face went red as I stared at Rumble. I hadn’t seen him since we were foals and the other Crusaders got on my case for having a crush on him. He’d certainly grown up, well, looking good was one way to describe it. “Um... hi,” I mumbled.

“Hi yourself there... Scootaloo? Is that you?” he asked, taking a few steps toward me. “Jeez, I haven’t seen you in ages! How’ve you been?”

The mush that should’ve been my brain stirred a few times, and I opened my dumb mouth. “Elevator.”

Rumble just blinked. “What?”

I shook my head, positive that had made sense in some way but unable to figure out how. “Err, yeah... I’ve been good. Ponyville’s pretty dull with so few ponies, though.”

“Heh. I can’t make a direct comparison, but I can tell you most of the old cities are pretty boring. All the cool stuff is going on in the newer settlements, and I’m—”

Our conversation was cut short as a bouncy, bubbly mare flew in through the door and clapped one hoof around my shoulders and the other around Rumble’s, drawing the three of us into an impromptu hug. She hadn’t literally flown, being a unicorn, but it had been hard to tell with how fast she came.

“Salutations, new friends!”

Rumble blinked again. “Hi?”

I wriggled a bit, but didn’t manage to pop free of the mare’s grip. “Laughter, right?”

She smiled—wide—and let Rumble and I go, facing me and holding out a hoof. A lock of red hair ran down over a red shoulder; two different shades of red, but I was never that good at naming colors. “Indeed I am, good-buddy-to-be! My name’s Cherry Pie! What’s yours?” she asked, giving her hoof a little shake to draw my attention.

I grabbed it. “Scootaloo. I don’t suppose you’re related to—”

“Nope! Complete coincidence! Inconceivable? Not even close, because it’s the actual-factual truth!” Her hoof disappeared from view as she whirled about to face Rumble, holding it out toward him instead. “Your turn, chum!”

“Uh... Rumble,” he said, shaking her hoof. “Cherry, was it?”

“Yup yup yup!”

“You can, ehm... you can drop the act.”

Her hoof stopped, a crack appeared in her smile—

“W-what?”

“You’re coming on way too strong. You’re gonna tire out the rest of the cabin even if you can manage to keep it up yourself.”

—and the smile shattered.

Cherry slumped to the floor. “How did you? I’m sorry. I just, I mean, Pinkie’s so infectiously gleeful and I’m... I’m not even close,” she said. “I can’t hold a candle to that pony.”

Rumble pushed his hoof toward her to pull her up. “That’s fine. You’re not Pinkie Pie, and you’re not supposed to be. Pay attention to your lessons and be yourself, and everything’ll be fine.”

She wiped a droplet of moisture from her eye before pulling herself up with Rumble’s help. “You sound like you have some experience with this.”

“Nope,” he answered, “but my brother does, and I heard plenty of stories about ponies trying too hard to be just like their Elements. Again, be yourself, listen to what your Element has to say, and you’ll do fine.”

“Thanks,” Cherry said, giving a much smaller smile. I liked that smile a lot better.

The smell of pine, quickly losing what respect I had for it, had been scared off by the crackling logs in the pit just outside our cabin. Cherry had insisted that we all get to know one another by swapping stories around a campfire.

Our Generosity, a stallion almost as big as Big Macintosh named Pocket Watch, sat to my right, telling us about a particularly frustrating encounter he’d had. From a distance, he could easily be mistaken for Macintosh’s slightly younger brother, though he talked an awful lot more. He didn’t seem to have much of an interest in fashion, and for that I liked him already. He paused his story to lean forward before continuing, “So then I says, ‘Lady I will give you the dang thing if you go brush your teeth!’”

All of us laughed for a minute or two, Rumble almost falling off the log, and Cherry smiled another one of her smaller, better smiles to my left. I made a note that listening to Cherry was a good idea.

Across the fire, on our third log, Shimmer put together s’mores with her magic. She was our Kindness, and she seemed content to stay mostly quiet. Her dainty horn peeked out of a thick, green mane and glowed faintly enough that the fire masked her magic almost entirely. Next to her sat Magic, Wishing Well. She was just as surprised as her twin brother Ink Well when he was also sorted out as Magic and hadn’t talked about much else yet. I wasn’t quite sure what I thought of either of them yet, but I hoped for the best.

The fire burned on through the night, long past ten thirty, as the ponies of cabin twelve got to know one another. I didn’t know whether Rainbow Dash was in charge of our neck of the woods or not, but nopony bothered us about ‘lights-out’ or anything of the sort.