The sounds of the teacher at the front of the class room filled the back of Bronzes’ ears with nothing more than white noise, as she stared out the window at the trees rustling in the wind. Class was almost over, and with it, will come the weekend that she can spend in her fathers’ shop. As a parting gift before he left a few months ago, Anvil left a note on his work bench that gave her permission to use his tools and supplies for whatever she may want to make.

Not that she needed his permission in the first place, her dad always had her best interest when it came to expanding her horizons on her creative side. For not having magic to work with, or even a pair of wings to act as an extra set of hooves. The young filly still did rather well for just working hooves on all the time.

More often than not lately, she found herself in the shop where she felt close to her father. With him gone, all she had around was her mother, and while Aurora may be the best mom that she could have ever asked for. When it came to the mechanical side of her mind, dad always had a better time understanding what she would try and make, and he could throw is own thoughts in to the matter.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t go in the shop so much tonight…’ Bronze questioned her own thoughts.

Her mom had been trying to spend more time with her, do something together that they both would enjoy. Even though she might not understand all the gears and levers that were turning and pulling in her head, Aurora tried her best to help her daughter out any which way she could.

Whether that meant bringing out dinner to her in the shop, tending a cut or scrape from moving around the sharp edges of metal to fast, or even on the likely occurrence of carrying Bronze back to her bed after falling asleep on her fathers’ stool. Aurora did everything she could, to see that her daughter would be happy, even if it meant she had many a sleepless nights worrying about her safety and well-being.

On just as many occasions that she has been carried off to bed. Bronze has walked in and found her mom passed out on the couch, as she waited for her to come in from the workshop, if only to spend a few moments more with her before they both went off to bed. The thought that she was pushing one parent out, while another was gone weighed heavily on the fillies’ mind. It wasn’t until two days ago that she got a tear in her eye, when she walked in and Aurora was fast asleep in the living room, laid back in her fathers’ recliner.

Missing him just as much as she did.

That night she crawled up in her mothers’ lap and fell fast asleep with her. Waking up the next morning with herself held tightly in her moms’ hooves, close to her chest. It was the best sleep she had gotten sense her dad left. “I’ll help her make dinner tonight…” Bronze told herself, smiling at the thought after living in a memory, “Maybe afterwards we could read to each-”

“Bronze,” the unicorn mare heard the teacher call out from the front of the class.

Snapped out of her daze from the call of the mare, Bronze looked around for a moment to get her bearings, “Yes Ms. Parish?”

“What’s more important?” Parish asked to try and trump her student, “looking outside, day dreaming, or what I have on the chalk board that will be on the test in a week…” Looking past the mare, Bronze examined what was written up on the board.

The basic lesson on pony anatomy was nothing new to the filly, when she wasn’t learning more about how to work with her hooves. The makeup of her own body always fascinated her to no end in how it worked, and how it could be improved. Scoffing slightly at the teacher, Bronze grinned.

‘She spelled Tendon wrong…’ the filly remarked in the back of her head.

“Something funny, Bronze?”

“No… Ms. Parish…”

“Oh, okay then,” Parish nodded sincerely for a moment, before sending a calm glare her way, “So if that’s the case, please explain to the class the process that ones’ muscle goes through in order to get movement, and why you feel tired afterwards…”

Bronze looked at her, then to the board. That subject hadn’t been covered yet in class, so more than likely she had just missed it after thinking about home. Though with the readily available resources at the library in school… Bronze took her education a few grades higher than any of the teachers could have guessed.

Standing up from her chair, the young mare slowed her breath as she recalled all the information from texts that she read over the past years. “Oxygen is taken in by your lungs, and after seeping in to the blood stream through thin membranes. It’s taken to your muscles by blood, there it’s used by the mitochondria in the cells and mixed with the others sources of energy that your body uses,” ‘carbohydrates, and fats as such’ she mentally told herself to give a small pause, “after it’s mixed, the finished product creates energy for the cell to do its primary function… in the case of a muscle, to move…”

“However, when your body is putting more effort in to the motion then oxygen that it can take in, your body has to look for something else to sustain the process,” standing there for a moment. Bronze was already satisfied with the teachers’ jaw hitting the floor. Though just the drive the point home, she couldn’t simply stop there, “that something else, is carbon monoxide, one of the byproducts that’s created from your cells… using that though instead of oxygen isn’t as efficient, so as a result, lactic acid builds up in your muscles. Thus, giving you that burning sensation, and making you feel tired…”

For but a moment, the filly stood there in silence, just as her class had done the same. Taking her seat back, Bronze closed her text book in front of her and crossed her hooves triumphantly over her desk, as she looked back at the teacher, “Did I miss anything… Ms. Parish?” Bronze asked while keeping all the respect she could in her tone.

Choking on her own words, Parish half way was tempted to smack the twerp with a ruler for calling her out like that in front of the class. Though the teacher of many years knew better than that, after all, Bronze did answer her question to the fullest… and then some. “No, Ms. Bronze,” she swallowed the words she wanted to say, “I think that will be all, very well done actually. I see you’ve been hitting the books lately…”

“Better than hitting you, sometimes…” she muttered to herself.

A knock came to the door, halting the lesson that Parish tried to pick up with, though she didn’t pay attention to who it was. Bronze went back to looking out the window, seeing as she already knew she could silence the teacher if need be.
“Ms. Bolt…” she heard Perish call out once more. Looking back to her, Bronze simply got a gesture at first of herself being waved forward, “you’re needed in the principals’ office.”

Quietly, Bronze got up from her desk, leaving her books out. As she expected she would be done soon no matter what the case was… even if she did just call out a teacher. ‘In my defense, Principal Hawkins,’ Bronze mentally went over her rebuttal to the accusation, ‘I did answer the question to it’s fullest, and any insult I may have given, I didn’t mean in the slightest…’

It wasn’t a long walk thankfully, and by the time she reached the door, she already had the response memorized to a tee. Stepping in, Bronze noticed how quiet the main office was compared to some of the other classes, though that thought was ignored with in a moments’ notice.

“Mr. Hawkins will see you now,” she heard the receptionist call over top of her desk as soon as she came in to view.

Not being needed to be told twice, Bronze went ahead past the desk and down the hall. She already knew the way rather well, having been to the office on several occasions when it came to the torment of the others at her school towards her. Though this time felt different, this time she was being called in, instead of requesting to see him.

Knocking on the large wooden door, Bronze heard a muffled ‘come in’ from the other side, and pushed it open with her hooves. Stepping inside she had her back to those that waited for her at first as she closed the door behind her, though when Bronze turned around, she caught a sight she wasn’t expecting.

There stood on either side of the room two royal guards, donned up in full dress uniform, standing as silent and stoic as she ever could have imagined. At the desk, there was Hawkins, the principal of the school. One that the students knew as being an older stallion, stuck in a young colts’ body, as spry as ever, and could probably run laps around some of the older kids in the high school nearby. This time though, even Hawkins eyes laid dormant as his own met the young fillies.

“Bronze…” he called to her, though the call was ignored by something far more important.

There, sitting in the chair just across from him, was Aurora. “Mom?” Bronze said, not so much to get her attention, but as a question. Though when her mothers’ face met her own, it said all that was needed.

Stains from the tears already shed carved a channel down her mothers’ face that allowed the new ones to roll on by without anything to hold them back. Whatever was eating away at her moms’ heart, seeing her daughter just reignited the spark. Looking over her, Bronze could see her mane was a mess, her tail had knots inside and out, and even several of her feathers had been pulled from her wings out of absolute frustration.

Bronze couldn’t fathom what had gotten her mom so worked up, until she looked down at her hooves.

While she may have not been able to read what was written down from where she stood. Bronze heard enough talk from other kids around the school to know what it already said, plus the golden stamp at the top of the royal seal gave it all away. Add in the two royal guards who came to deliver the message to the family first hoof, and there was no doubt what the letter had brought them…

Though the most telling clue, was Bronzes’ own hammer, now held in her mothers’ hoof.

“Bronze… I’m so sorry,” Aurora said softly, as she got up to her hooves. The first step was trouble, as her hooves trembled from underneath her feet where she stood, “Something… something’s happened…” her mom said with a passing step closer to her. Though with that step taken, Bronze took one back, as she looked at all four of them in the room, and just uttered one word.

“No.”

With that, Bronze backed out and took off from the room. Clear of their sights in mere moments. “Bronze! Wait, please!” she heard her mom call out to her, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything, not her school work, not her home, not even the tools that she kept closer to her than most other ponies…

…all she wanted to do, was be gone from it all, for just a moment.

Tearing through the halls of the school, Bronze shoved student after student out of the way, barely hearing the scampering of hooves off in the distance as Aurora beat chase to catch her. If only to tell her that everything was going to be alright.

But how would it? How would any of this be alright anymore?

Everything that she thought made sense in the world, shattered in an instant. Hiking up her fore hooves, with one push she kicked open the front doors to the school and darted outside in to town. Everyone around her seemed like a stranger, like she just woke up in a new land where nothing was familiar, and everything was wrong to her. Ignoring any and all that gave her any heed, Bronze wasn’t even sure where she was running off to. All she knew was that she needed to run.

But running can only take you so far.

A bump in the road took her off guard, and sent the filly skidding across the dirt path. Laying there, seemingly stuck in time, the breeze picked up. As she stopped breathing, letting the wind run through her mane, and slowly let it work its way in to her nostrils. The sun high up in the sky, warmed her coat with its’ rays, and even if it was just for a split second.

Bronze found some sort of serenity.

“Bronze Bolt watch out!” she heard her mothers’ words chase her down through the peace and quiet. As she looked up, the only thing Bronze saw was the light of the sun…

…Glinting off the metal frame of a hay wagon.