Life of Lyra
Chapter 34
Previous Chapter Next ChapterWaking up again brought with it a rush of dysphoria. Lyra tried to shift her wings, but they simply weren't there. Keeping her eyes closed, she remembered her lessons on shapeshifting. "Deep, slow breaths, focus on what I am, make a list of what I should have."
"Legs. Body. Neck. Head. Horn. Tail."
"Wings, but not bat wings."
Lyra's eyes snapped open and she looked across the dimly lit room to spot Scootaloo laying on another bed in the room. "Hey. How're you pulling up?"
"Uh… I'm not sure what you mean, but if you're asking how I feel, it's strange. I can still feel my big wings." What surprised Scootaloo most about saying the words was that they didn't hurt. She felt almost drained of her negative emotions, but in a good way. "When can we go to Thestralia?"
"When I drop you off at school, I'll ask your teacher about when the holidays are. Do you need to take anything special to class or can we head straight there?"
The bedroom door opened and Tufts reached in with a wing to flick the light on. "Here you are."
Rolling out of bed, Lyra landed beside Scootaloo, though Scootaloo was faster to run across the bedroom to Tufts. Looking at her father, Lyra could see obvious signs of strain. "You okay, Tufts?"
"You are not getting back in my Dreaming for some time." Though he scowled at Lyra, he passed her her didgeridoo. "And this one is yours. Take good care of it."
Though Lyra floated her didgeridoo carefully off to the side, it was Tufts she was targeting for a big hug. Grabbing the bat—and ignoring his surprised screech—she hugged him close. "You're the best, you know that?"
Tufts stretched a wing around Lyra's back and hugged her close to him. "Yes I do, but I now know I have the best family in two worlds." He used his free wing to hook around Scootaloo and hug her too. "The sun will be up soon."
"We should be going soon, then. Was it really that hard to pull me into the Dream?" Lyra asked.
"You have no idea."
Lifting her didgeridoo, Scootaloo had to hold it steady with a foreleg rather than her (now) shorter wings. Pressing her lips to it, the instrument already felt a little different. She managed to make a tone, but her lips didn't vibrate as much and her breathing didn't work quite right. She dropped the tone after just a few seconds. "It's a lot harder!"
Joyce, rubbing her eyes with one wing, stepped through the doorway. "How was your Dream?" She didn't so much as pause before walking up to Lyra and putting her own wings around her daughter and Tufts.
"You're going to hear about it from Tufts for weeks. Apparently I'm not easy to get into a Dream." With only her forelegs, Lyra struggled to fulfill her hugging quotient, though her parents more than made up for it. "How about you, Scootaloo?"
Thinking for a second, Scootaloo smiled broadly from one side of her little snout to the other. "Can you teach me how to Dream like that?"
"It's not exactly easy, but I could try. Now I've felt you in a Dream, I should be able to bring you into mine again—and a lot easier than a certain unicorn I won't mention." Tufts stuck his tongue out at Lyra, who stuck hers out right back.
Clearing her throat, Joyce gave one last squeeze before letting go. "Enough of this. We need to get them fed."
"Can you help me get my armor on again?" Lyra asked Scootaloo.
"Okay!" Scootaloo put her didgeridoo on her bed and waited for Lyra to lift her armor on magically. "Why are you going to wear it to Ponyville? To look official again?"
"Mostly, but I also want it with me in case there's some trouble there. If I have to fight something alone, I want to have my best friend protecting me." As she spoke, Lyra gave a tap to her armor with her magic. "Okay, start with the straps. You remember the order from last time?"
"I think so."
The pair went through the same process as the previous day, Scootaloo hanging off the straps until they were tight enough to fasten the buckles, while Lyra kept her help to a minimum. By the time they had the armor on and were in the kitchen with their didgeridoos and Scootaloo's scooter, the sun was up.
Joyce tried to keep from crying. Always before, Lyra had been literally in the same city, but now she was going to be really gone. "I'm going to miss you."
Finishing off the second of a pair of bananas, Lyra gave her mother a droll stare. "Mum, Ponyville isn't even a day away. Less if you fly down."
"Yes, I know, but that's going to make dropping in for tea and having a chat harder." Any actual fight Joyce might have made against Lyra moving was completely lost when she heard how bad that sounded. "I'm being a fool, aren't I? My own mum was like this when I moved out of home."
Reaching his wing around Joyce's back, Tufts pulled himself against her. "My darling Mango, you care for our daughter a lot, nothing more."
Shooting Tufts a suspicious look, Joyce nonetheless let her emotions be appeased by his hug. "When did you get so wordy?"
"Since my family deserved to hear what I had to say." Tufts rubbed his nose against Joyce's with a happy little noise in the back of his throat.
"We better leave before they get too carried away, Scoots." Lyra ignored the eye-roll she got from her mother. "I promise we'll come to visit every month."
"Month!" Joyce's mothering instincts kicked into high gear all over again. "We used to have tea every week! Twice some—"
Tufts had done the one thing to surely silence Joyce. He'd kissed her.
"That's our cue. Love you Mum, Dad." If Lyra's words were heard, she got little reaction except for twitching ears. She led the way out the front door and into the bright morning. "Now, we're going to take the fast way to Ponyville. How are you with heights?"
"Heights? I'm a pegasus!" Scootaloo almost sounded offended.
"Great. What about trusting me to not let you fall?"
"Well, I trust you to try to stop me falling."
"Good enough. Ponyville's just over that way"—Lyra gestured off the edge of the city with a hoof—"I've got our gear, and I promise we won't hit the ground any harder than a moderate jump."
The way Lyra spoke had Scootaloo tense up, but despite her best instincts she trusted Lyra. "Okay, what do we do?"
"This." Lyra grabbed up Scootaloo with her magic and, judging her first set of calculations to be half a mile off the edge of the city, teleported them both into empty air.
Scootaloo's first instinct was to panic. Panic was what any creature that couldn't fly would do when faced with a several mile fall to the ground. She'd had exactly a full day in Lyra's company, however, and though the very idea of doing so was probably mad, she trusted the unicorn. It didn't stop her from screaming, though.
Falling from such a height, Lyra knew she'd reach terminal velocity quite quickly. A glance down made her laugh into the wind rushing past herself and Scootaloo, but it didn't stop her from calculating their angle and velocity with a flipped vector. Wrapping herself and Scootaloo in her magic grip again, Lyra teleported before reaching the rooftops of Ponyville.
Suddenly, Scootaloo's momentum was carrying her up instead of down. For a fraction of a second it took her brain to work out she wasn't falling anymore, and when it was done figuring that out she laughed.
At the peak of their ascent, when their upward momentum had finally been canceled by gravity, Lyra cast her final teleport and had them both appear just half a pony-length from the ground below.
"How'd you do that?!" Scootaloo spun to look at Lyra, her heart beating fast in her chest. "That was amazing!"
"I had the best teacher in all Equestria for teleporting. I'll have to introduce you to her sometime." Lyra looked around their landing point to get her bearings. "School's this way, right?"
"Uh…" Looking around as well, Scootaloo got her directions worked out a little quicker. "Yeah! Come on, I want to tell all my friends about—about everything!"
"Race you." Lyra lifted Scootaloo's scooter from where she'd pinned it to her armor and waited for the filly to get on it before extending her the magic handle again. The few ponies that had seen the pair literally appear out of nowhere only heard Scootaloo's squeals as they took off at a gallop.
Lyra reached the school just as Scootaloo's teacher, Cheerilee, arrived. The mare watched the unicorn galloping in—all dressed up in her armor—and had to pick her jaw up off the ground. "Keep it together, Cheery, don't start drooling over every mare you see." She kept the words mostly under her breath, and forced a big smile onto her face as Lyra and Scootaloo arrived at the step of the schoolhouse. "Good morning!"
Backing off from her gallop, Lyra demanifested the rod Scootaloo was using and brought herself down to a walk. "Hi there! I hope Scoots didn't miss too much from her class yesterday?"
"Oh, one day here and there isn't a problem, but I think I can have her make up for it by telling the class about everything she did yesterday."
Scootaloo looked up at Lyra for a second before she started to giggle. "That's going to take a few days, Miss Cheerilee."
Cheerilee had come to expect some boasting from Scootaloo, but it was normally different to her current situation. "Really? Perhaps you'd like to give me a quick rundown before class?" Her look turned to Lyra as she spoke, aiming her question at both ponies.
"That'll probably be a good idea. Would you rather talk inside or out here?" Using her magic to relieve her saddlebag of the letter from Celestia, Lyra prepared to put things in order to tell the teacher. She didn't plan to tell her everything, of course, but she'd need to know some of it.
"My students will be arriving soon. Perhaps you could help Scootaloo tell the class about her day after you've shared the more important bits with me?" Even as she spoke, Cheerilee had to tell herself she wasn't just doing this to see more of the cute Guardpony.
"Well, this is probably the most important bit, though I can assure you I don't plan to change anything about Scootaloo's schooling." As she spoke, Lyra passed over the letter from Celestia. She had the distinct pleasure of seeing a look of shock on Cheerilee's face.
"Y-You saw Princess Celestia about this?" Cheerilee's thoughts of romance were shoved to the side at the revelation she'd received. The documents looked correct, and Lyra wearing Guardpony armor strengthened the authenticity of the paperwork. "What's she going to do about it now?"
"That's not my job. The reason I went to Princess Celestia with it was I didn't know how to fix the problem of a filly being able to live without anypony to care for her. I'm just a soldier." Lyra was happy to hear Scootaloo snort at her final comment. "But there is something much more interesting than all that we can show Scoots' class."
"You're going to play?" The memory of Lyra's playing still made Scootaloo tingle. She'd never heard music that inspired so much emotion before. Before she knew it, she reared up and cycled her forehooves in the air in excitement.
Lifting her didgeridoo from her back, Lyra twirled the instrument with her magic, finishing with the end pressed to her lips. Focusing herself to her task, she started her first breath and began to play.
About to ask what kind of flute was so long, Cheerilee froze at the twin notes that Lyra started playing. The music was instantly captivating, and all she could manage was to sit down in place and listen.
Lyra focused her music on her recent life. Saying goodbye to Sweetie Drops for her big mission, finding the house she wanted, finding somepony already living there, and eventually got to the joy of seeing Scootaloo fight back against the dark things that life could bring. She didn't even notice that her audience of two had grown to include Scootaloo's two closest friends and, eventually, the whole school.
Over a dozen ponies sat and listened to Lyra's song. None of them had ever heard such an instrument before and certainly never played by such a musician. When the song finally wrapped up, everypony cheered and stomped their hooves on the ground—even Cheerilee.
"If you thought that was good, wait until I get everything moved here, so I can play my bass." Slinging her didgeridoo to her back, Lyra looked around the young ponies assembled. There was a mix of races and age-groups that spanned Scootaloo's age right up to what she would call teenagers. Ponyville school covered quite a wide range.
"Why do you have a smaller one too?" Apple Bloom asked. She'd taken up position close to Scootaloo, her curiosity burning at her to find out what had happened the previous day.
"That one's mine," Scootaloo said. "I'm not very good with it yet, but I'm going to learn to be the best!"
All the other foals gasped in appreciation, but Sweetie Belle was first to ask a question. "Where'd you buy it from?"
Looking to Cheerilee for guidance on what she should be doing, Lyra only saw a happy smile on the mare's face. "She made it herself, with the help of—"
"A bat pony!" Scootaloo's little wings shot out to add emphasis to her words. "He was really nice, and we went looking in the forest for the right trees to make them, but I guess it took a while because it felt like days in there."
It was altogether too much for Diamond Tiara to take. "There's no way you could have spent so long in a forest. You were only gone for a day!"
When Scootaloo looked up to Lyra for support, Lyra weighed in. "Well, of course, but it all happened in the Dreaming. It's like a dream, but you can share it with others. In dreams, days can take hours, or hours days."
"That makes even less sense. If it was all in a dream, how do you have them for real?" The logic was flawless to Diamond—none of what they were saying made sense.
"It was something Tufts did. He was really awesome. He let me be a bat pony in the dream and everything!" Scootaloo punctuated her statement with a raspberry blown at Diamond.
"It's true," Lyra said.
Silver Spoon didn't like the way Lyra Heartstrings was just brushing off each of Diamond Tiara's questions. She pouted a little as she tried to work out a way to make her friend feel better. "Why are you wearing armor?"
"Because"—Cheerilee felt the need to defend her new guest's honor somewhat, considering the only reason she'd come up with this was to get to know Lyra better—"she's a member of Equestria's E.U.P. Guard. That mark on her armor, there, tells you that she's a private, which means she's in the full-time guard."
"Actually, I'm just in the reserves, but thanks to a little action I saw a bit ago, I was awarded the rank of private." As Lyra explained it, she felt a touch embarrassed for gainsaying the teacher. "My wife is in the full-time guard. She's a member of the Monster Hunters."
Cheerilee's hopes and dreams (at least those of the morning) took a nose-dive. Married. Of course she would be—all the cute ponies were married or not into mares. Fighting with her emotions, Cheerilee put on her teacher-smile and nodded to show her support.
"Why are you at our school, and why was Scootaloo with you yesterday?" Sweetie Belle asked.
"Lyra's going to be looking after me. After my parents—when I found out they wouldn't be coming back," Scootaloo said, pausing when several other foals gasped, "I was kinda hiding. I got by doing some work to wash plates and things, but—"
Scootaloo cut short her words as every single foal walked up to her and hugged her. Not even being school-ground rivals would stop any of the foals from trying to comfort their fellow student.
"I'm going to be taking care of Scootaloo." The words felt right all the way to Lyra's heart.