Sunlight had never felt so good on his face as it did right now. Scratched, bruised, battered, and a bit bloody, Sundance soared over the treetops while hooting and shouting about what he considered to be one of his finest achievements. This and slaloming the stacks at the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen would be his go-to boasts, on the rare occasions when he felt like blabbing about his accomplishments.

The fact that he was paid for this thrill-seeking was just icing on the cake.

One primary had been torn right out on his left, leaving him with a wing that trailed a thin ribbon of blood as he flew. It stung a bit, but it wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to him. Next time when he made his delivery here, and there would be a next time, this was great money, he would hit the canopy at speed. Perhaps some protective barding might be in order, some waxed canvas coveralls might help, but his wings would still be exposed.

He was going to need a day or two to recover, sure, but taking jobs like this one could only benefit the barony. His debt was substantial, but he was determined to face this dragon—alone, if necessary. Though he was hesitant to admit it, he was getting comfortable with his position. He felt itchy all over if he thought about himself as Baron Sunfire, but he was comfortable with the idea that he was a civil servant.

With this in mind, he thought about his submissive nature. As much as he dreaded it, as much as he wanted to avoid it, it crept into his mind. Meeting his new friends had been the first cautionary step of discovery, and he was thrilled to discover that there were other ponies just like him. Only, Sundance wasn’t sure what he was yet, but with his new friends, he saw what he might be, which was endlessly reassuring.

Was he gay?

He couldn’t say.

Much to his chagrin, he had a type though, something that had slowly developed over time. Unfortunately, and confusingly so, that type applied to both genders—and rather than sort it out, he had just retreated. The idea that he wasn’t quite like the others had been with him since an early age, much to his shame and consternation. He finished school and then continued to live with his mother. Facing himself was so unbearable that he had buried himself in his project—which had helped considerably, but now that project was over and he was no closer to figuring himself out.

With his wings flapping at a steady beat, he thought of Olive and his reaction to her. She was chiseled from granite, that mare, a solid slab of rippling muscles that undulated beneath her taut, supple skin. She was statuesque, solid; she was a creature that he’d spend hours staring at, taking in every available detail through his eyes.

Allowing his mind to drift, Sundance aimed himself for Canterlot.

The bistro, quite charming, was somehow even more so with the company of Fleur Dis Lee. Sundance had bumped into her through sheer serendipitous circumstance, and Fleur had introduced him to one of her friends, a vivacious, somewhat chatty mare named Sweetie Belle. After Fleur had fussed over him, cleaned away the blood, and patched up his worst wounds, the three of them had lunch.

“Miss Belle is very much like her older sister,” Fleur said, striking up a conversation while they waited for their food to arrive. “Beautiful, intelligent, witty… and hoping to find her a prince someday. What is it that you do again, my dearest darling?”

Ears pricking, her green eyes glittering, Sweetie Belle let out a nervous chuckle. With her right hoof, she stroked her neck, smoothing out a few stray hairs, and with her left hoof, she made a casual, dramatic wave. “I’m a counseling psychologist that specialises in destiny-related stress factors. Fate-based fugues are no laughing matter.” Again, she chuckled and her eyes darted to and fro between Sundance and Fleur. “I’m part of a three pony team. Each of us has our own specialisation and we’re advancing an entirely new field of study. Undiscovered territory. We’re pioneers!”

“Smart mares are an asset, are they not?” Fleur asked while focusing her polite stare upon Sundance. “Brains and beauty. One enhances the other.”

“You specialise in the study of cutie marks?” Shifting a bit in his seat, Sundance made a polite effort to avoid Fleur’s soul-piercing gaze. “Mine showed up for no reason, no reason at all. It was just… it was just there one day, and I started getting these weird compulsions.”

“Oh!” Sweetie Belle gasped and within moments, she became quite animated. “External circumstances! Those kinds of marks happen sometimes. They’re quite strange, and my friends and I have determined that it isn’t because of something that you did, but rather, because of external circumstances. Something happened somewhere, some event, or perhaps some sequence, and when these events took place, you received your mark. These events are mysterious, no two are ever quite the same, so it is really difficult to study them, and we don’t actually have a lot of verifiable scientific data on them. Just guesses. Really good guesses.”

“Guesses?” Sundance, a bit dubious, folded his forelegs over his barrel and waited.

“Well, one of the best recent examples was a chain reaction of cutie marks. Rainbow Dash made a rainboom happen and this triggered a sequence of events that caused a chain of related marks to appear all at once. Not quite the same as your situation, I don’t think, but related in a tangential way. Something probably happened somewhere, maybe somewhere far away, and your mark appeared as a reaction.”

“As I was saying, brains and beauty,” Fleur quipped.

Even though it wasn’t much to go on, Sundance was intrigued. Had something happened at the barony? Some sequence of events or a chain reaction? He knew about the rainboom connection because he had studied it in school. Every foal studied that in school. That mysterious connection spoke of greatness. Which was fine for Princess Twilight Sparkle and her friends. As for Sundance, he was a pegasus with a sunflower cutie mark that had inherited a run-down travesty of a barony. A soggy grey rain cloud over a sunflower was not a mark of distinction, but rather, had condemned him to a life of servitude.

“You come from a most noble bloodline,” Fleur began, her voice soft and demure. “Said bloodline had fallen on hard times. Perhaps your mark appeared because you were the best pony available to restore your family name.”

This seemed possible, but Sundance was riddled with doubts when faced with evidence of some great destiny. “I’m not noble though. I’m barely educated. I—”

“The trappings of nobility can be a hindrance.” Fleur’s eyebrow arched in apology for her interruption. “Education can sometimes teach a pony all of the wrong things. Leave their mind rigid, unyielding, and inflexible. There are times when the best education comes by doing, my dearest darling. You seem aware of your shortcomings, but not your strengths. You rescued one of your peasants, and did so at great risk to yourself. Princess Celestia picked just the right pony for the job. Your mark, whatever it might mean or for whatever reason it manifested, marked you as just the right pony for the job.”

“You know…” Sweetie Belle tapped on her fuzzy chin with one hoof and tapped on the edge of the wrought iron table with the other. “How one sees their mark can affect the outcome of how it inspires them. Observation changes the outcome, as is typical with magic. Just out of curiousity, if you don’t mind me asking, how do you see your mark? When you look at it, what do you see? What do you take from it?”

Sundance started to respond, but just as he was about to say something, the words died right on the tip of his tongue. It seemed like such a simple question, but truth be told, he hadn’t really given much thought to the imagery of his mark. A soggy grey rain cloud over a sunflower—what could it possibly mean? It was confusing, to say the very least, and ambiguous as well. It was a mark with no distinct meaning, no pictogram of clear instruction. Was he supposed to be a weather pony? A storm chaser? What did it mean and what was the point?

Humming to herself, a waitress dropped off a platter of fried mushrooms and breadsticks dusted in seasoning. Then, she departed so that she could look after the needs of others. Sundance watched her go, thoughtful, but he wasn’t really looking at her, she was just something to focus on while he thought. Unknown to him though, Fleur observed him as he stared, and did so with a curious expression.

“You know, it’s funny, but I do seem to attract storms,” Sundance remarked, still distracted. “I do seem to be quite good at flying through them. Was like that in the city. I could fly and make deliveries in conditions that would ground most pegasus ponies. I’m sorry, I’m not trying to brag, but you asked. I guess maybe it is a point of pride for me, flying in any weather?” Falling silent, he thought of his bombing run in Froggy Bottom Bogg and how close he came to absolute disaster. There was no point in mentioning that, not right now, anyhow. He’d need some time to let that story simmer. He would tell the truth, but he needed time to think before he could tell the truth in the most flattering, best possible way.

“That’s pretty good.” Sweetie Belle spoke with the practiced voice of a serial-encourager. “So you think your mark allows you to face the turbulent storms of life?”

He hadn’t thought about it that way before she mentioned it, but he thought of it that way now. His vacant stare now focused on nothing at all. This was the trouble with thinking; once one thought about something, there were always more thoughts to be had. One simply could not think about one thing without inviting more thoughts to come and have a party. Uninvited guests were the worst.

“That’s only one way to look at it,” Sweetie Belle continued, her eyes bright, focused, and thoughtful. “Sunflowers need a few things to grow. Rich soil, sunshine, and rain. These are three things necessary for life. Your barony is the soil, Princess Celestia is the sunshine, and you… you’re the pony that brings the rain. You’re the Rainbringer, if you wanted to call yourself something fancy and meaningful.”

Sundance unfolded his forelegs from his barrel and allowed them to come to rest against the edge of the table. The Rainbringer? It was true what she had said—sunflowers needed rain. The barony was fertile earth and Princess Celestia was a distant sun that dwelled in Canterlot. What his barony needed was rain so that it might prosper again. He was slow to turn his head and when he glanced at Sweetie Belle, she seemed eager to engage him in some sort of meaningful conversation.

“Cutie marks are all about the meaning that you find in them. It can completely change your perspective if you take some time and think about all of the possible meanings. It might inspire you, take you in new directions, it might lead you to do great things. Even the simplest of marks might hold the most complex of meanings. In my job, I deal with a lot of ponies who are held back by their own beliefs, their views, and how they perceive things. Some of them believe that their mark traps them. Others fail to recognise their own potential. That is what my friends and I do—we try to counsel others so that they might find new meaning. Every single pony is entitled to live a rich, fulfilling life, and we work to help them accomplish that.”

“Do you really think I was born to do this job?”

Ears splaying out sideways, Sweetie Belle hesitated to answer. She raised one hoof, a silent request for a moment to think, and her lips moved with silent words unsaid. After taking a bit of time to collect her thoughts, she replied, “I think you were born with the potential to do anything that you want. But, it does seem that you are a good fit for this position. Honestly, it all comes down to you. Princess Celestia clearly saw something within you and she chose you for this task. Were you born to do it? I don’t know. Your mark has just the right metaphor for the situation though. Perhaps Princess Celestia saw the meaningful mark required to carry out whatever it is that she has planned.”

“So… cutie marks are… advertising?” Sundance’s head cocked off to one side. “A sign saying, ‘pick me’ so the agents of destiny can assign me a job? It’s just a matter of having the right visual metaphor for the task at hoof?”

“I suppose?” Sweetie Belle stretched out the words, hesitant. “I never thought of it as a billboard. That changes my perspective. Hmm.”

Fleur, ever hopeful, seemed pleased by this turn of events, and she smiled a warm, gracious smile at the two thoughtful ponies who stared off in different directions. She tapped her front hooves together, a soft, polite clonk, and then she helped herself to a mushroom fried in golden batter. Leaning in, chewing with exquisite politeness, she seemed eager for things to develop.

“Well, I have a new question to ask Twilight and Cadance. Also, I’m thinking I can finally tear Apple Bloom a new one, and say that her backside is big enough to rent out advertising space on. Jumbo billboards. Birthing billboards? I’m having all sorts of ideas.”

Pausing mid-chew, Fleur almost choked.

“What’s interesting is, at least in cases like this one, is that a mark can appear to prepare a pony for something that hasn’t happened yet. I can only assume that your mark showed up when you were younger, and now, here you are, sitting in Canterlot, the lord of some barony. That’s a hopeful thing, really. A mark might appear for something we’re not exposed to. You started off in one place and ended up here. Did your mark guide you? Or did you bring yourself here? So many questions. This is why I like my job. It’s like being a detective and trying to solve a mystery.”

After a few thoughtful blinks, Sundance glanced over at his sky truck and thought about what Sweetie Belle had just said. Consumed as he was, he failed to notice how Fleur was watching his every movement, his every reaction, reading every twitch of every muscle. Had he been a more observant pegasus pony, he might have figured out that Fleur was playing matchmaker.

But Sundance was oblivious, and from the looks of things, so was Sweetie Belle.

Author's Notes:

A story about shipping and cargo?

Billboarded backsides?