I speed through the streets of Canterlot, keeping one eye on the courier and the other on passersby so as to not cause anymore undue breaches of etiquette. I may have whined about leaving back in the tower with Princess Luna, but already I could feel the pressures of the city ease away as I put distance between me and my most recent home, and causing delays would interfere with my private little race. I feel the sun beating down on me, as though Celestia herself were spurning me out of her sight. The reality is most thestrals do very poorly in direct sunlight due to our nocturnal nature. Our eyesight especially can be diminished to near dangerous limits. And most thestrals overcome that by simply flying over the things they might run into otherwise. I had to strengthen my other senses because I did not belong in that group. I am a wingless thestral. Silly little bat-less pony. 'Batless' is what they used to call me. The irony was I had wings long before any thestral, any pony for that matter, in the form of a cutie mark at birth.

My mind drifts back to the beginnings of my life quest. I say beginnings because <ugh, do you have to walk all your foals in a line RIGHT when I'm going down this street?!> ahem, beginnings because there were at least three different starts to my life, all conveniently mapped out on my rump. The proper term is flank for one's location of the cutie mark that highlights their purpose in life, yet I grew to hate mine, at least in the beginning.

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I was born to loving parents. Mother and Father raised me as all thestral parents raise their foals I suppose. Our dwellings were in caves, very nice communal cave networks kept warm and cheery, not like the cold dank horrible places where monsters dwelt, the ones parents scared us with in late night bedtime stories. I imagine had we been more secluded I could have dealt with my...differences better. As it were, I honestly was unaware I was different. I saw Mother and Father's legs, I had legs. I saw their faces, their ears. I had those. I saw their cutie marks. I had a cutie mark. Me, born with the image of a pair of turqoise wings on my flank. Against my black fur, they practically glowed. When you are born you are spared the horror of witnessing the expressions on your parents if they are unlucky enough to discover you have abnormalities. You are not mentally developed, so you do not process their reaction. Had I been, I would have known it was not the mark that upset them. It was my real wings, or lack thereof.

As I grew and was introduced to the other colts and fillies in the community, that is when I became aware of my abnormality. A rare thing among thestrals, so rare that you might see it once or twice throughout the several generations across many communities. Such a sudden shock might have caused my parents to give me my initial name. I could see Father choking out a question, or my Mother asking him what is wrong and asking him to help her name me something fanciful. In the end, they called me Jen. Short and sweet. And utterly devoid of any purpose since everyone already knew what I would, or wouldn't be doing. I had my mark, who needs the real thing? One day I asked if Jen was the name they had planned for me before I was born. They made such a fuss about some other unrelated topic that I got my answer. I thought I did at the time.

Young ones can be so mean to each other when they are envious or see something different. They envied my early showing of my cutie mark, and mocked me that they were wings to underscore the fact that I had no real ones. There were some instances where some would reach out to me. Call it pity or just plain goodness, a few of the fillies stayed when the group of foals would fly off to play among the night-shrouded clouds. They did not stay long, peer pressured to choose between me or the 'in group.' I bore them no ill will, for I understood their decision. I was different, and hanging out with 'Batless' would make your wings fall off. That was the nasty rumor some of the more vicious foals tossed around, at any rate. Oh, it made me so very bitter. I kept a stiff upper lip when I came home at sunup, told my usual lies to my parents about what a great time I had with the local foals so they would not worry for me, and I cried long into the day before falling asleep. I cannot say how long that went on. I can say the bitterness must have been so potent that something heard me. And spoke to me.

At first it was swirling mists in my dreams. There was something in the dark and I walked alone, seeking it, yet never finding it. Each time I awoke, I felt I had gotten that much closer. It was on one particularly grueling evening when I first heard the voice. I had gone out for Nightmare Night and come across some of the meaner foals who happened to be picking on a younger colt. He had not quite figured out how to fly yet, so the older colts thought it good sport to hover above him with the bag of candy they had stolen from him, hanging it over his head so he could not reach it. I stepped up to them and told them to buzz off, likening them to a pack of changelings sucking off the despair of the poor colt. Thestrals typically have a bad enough time dealing with other races in the land, they didn't need any links to that particular set of creatures. Being called a changeling was NOT a compliment. It certainly pissed off these guys to where they wanted to fight me right then and there. So I ran, out of the nearest tunnel to the surface, past trees and through bushes. While I made my escape, I noticed the leader had dropped the younger colt's bag of candy as he ducked low to avoid the rocky overhang at the entrance. The young flightless colt immediately picked up the bag and hid behind a tree, watching as I tried to escape the ruffians. He looked grateful, which to me was a victory, to be short-lived if I could not lose these knuckleheads.

"Batless! Wingless! Always alone cause you're friend-less!" The pack of thestrals flew high over the trees to avoid clipping branches while I had to dodge tree trunks, roots and underbrush. Our community had made its home on the eastern slopes of the Badlands, up against the Hayseed Swamps and just north of the Forbidden Jungle. The jungle was one of those places nopony dared to venture, and that was where I was headed. As I rounded the last set of bogs, the jungle loomed thick ahead of me. Quick glances behind me showed several of the thestrals had peeled off. Their leader was starting to slow as well, unsure if he should pursue me. I changed his mind.

"Witless and crass. Your stupidity's great and so vast! One look at a jungle, your pursuit you doth bungle, and ultimately you look like a DONKEY'S REAR END!" Yeah, that did it. I could even tell when his brain substituted 'rear end' just so he could make it rhyme correctly because he yelled and swooped low. I lowered my head and sprinted as hard as I ever did in my entire life, aiming for the denser clumps of trees and forcing him to either lose distance as he swung wide or risk running into trunks and branches. It became my focus for several minutes to squeeze every advantage out of the years I spent running while every other pony flew. So focused was I, it was several more minutes before I started to realize I no longer heard his wings flapping or his heavy breathing from exerting too much energy to catch me. I smiled and looked behind me briefly. The tree in front of me bore witness to my prideful mistake and took the force of my entire body slamming into it headfirst. Darkness swept in swiftly. And in that darkness I found the Voice.