More coffee.

Scootaloo regarded the grounds at the bottom of her cup. The stuff, like wet sand, sat on the cheap porcelain in little clumps and swirls, evidencing the motions within the absent fluid that had carried them there. A little trail of the black grains ran up the cup’s wall, and even remained in tiny heaps on the rim, where they had made contact with Scootaloo’s lips. She had drank too deep into her fill, because she didn’t know how to drink coffee, and she didn’t even like it, the taste was disgusting. But she yearned for more anyway.

A tiny drizzle touched down lightly against the window. The weather was downcast, not too heavily, and usually you wouldn’t even have noticed the gentle sprinkle, if not for the dark flakes of soot, or ash, that seemed to be plaguing the lower city air, maybe the accidental result of some fabrication process, or the smoke from chimneys of the many foundries. Tiny specks of dark clung to the glass, and streamed down within water droplets, just like coffee grounds. Seemed like Skyview had problems of its own after all.

But that didn’t keep its inhabitants from barrelling on. Despite the weather, the street was busy as ever, all manners of ponies and creatures walking past, caught up in their daily adventures, absorbed in news and conversation, talking and shouting and laughing, markedly unhindered by the protective cloaks and rain covers over their heads, their baskets, their carts, their wagons.

Across the street, somepony uncovered his cart, gleaming metal tire covers and wooden spokes. The stable doors revealed a wagoner’s workshop, a splendid wagon of varnished boards and reinforced struts half-finished in the works. Maybe this wagon would one day be the delivery pony’s, or maybe he worked for the shop and fetched the materials, and the wagon would go on grand adventures beyond the city limits with its owner. Whatever the case, the young stallion unloaded his cargo, and then he threw back his hood, and looked toward the sky. His eyes were gleaming, prospecting the future, and, coffee grounds staining his fur, he smiled.

Because, however dire the circumstances, the future was here, and everypony got their chance.

Everypony, except Scootaloo.

“Where’s the coffee, for life’s sake,” Scootaloo snarled.

“Scootaloo,” Fluttershy said, “language.” The admonishment had been light, almost playful, which made it sting all the much more.

“Sorry,” Scootaloo said.

Fluttershy sat on the other side of the table, softly sipping from her steaming cup. She didn’t look out of place whatsoever, nestled into the old furniture, with a decent breakfast spread around her, as if she had never left this restaurant since two days ago, when they had had a break here after their arrival. The restaurant was fairly busy still, many travelers stopping by for refreshments, some still wearing their flight gear, while others had it donned again, in preparation for takeoff, like Fluttershy’s heavy flight scarf, and Scootaloo’s little bandanna.

Of course, only now had Scootaloo come to understand why they were here, why all these ponies travelled, why they toiled every day. There was this sense of discovery, of unexplored frontiers, exerting its irresistible, almost physical, pull, just waiting to be examined, because there were things that you couldn’t learn from any book, that you had to observe, to touch, to feel, for yourself.

And then there was the city itself, because no pony, no zebra, no dragon, no gryphon, no diamond dog or hippogriff or any other creature, was exempt from the rule of trade, from making a profit, from competing and bartering and cooperating, from the universal laws of economy. And they all went about their jobs, and, begrudgingly, paid their taxes, and the money went to the state, and the state, in turn, paid them the money back for their services, to build and maintain the city. Skyview city, a vast machine so infinitely complex and nuanced, ever changing and expanding, that it could only grow organically, by the hard work of ponies and creatures of all walks of life, with all their abilities and humours and desires and faults. Driven by an unsatisfiable hunger for discovery, and achieved by means of coexistence.

Scootaloo would not forget. Scootaloo tried not to forget.

Finally, the waiter arrived with a fresh serving of coffee.

Fluttershy got a refill. She moved and acted with such perfect grace, it seemed almost unnatural, ephemeral. Yet she was entirely grounded in the exact place and time of the now, her hooves moving effortlessly around the table, her long, immaculate mane swaying in the draft. Fluttershy put in a couple of pieces of sugar, dropping them as gently as possible, so her beverage wouldn’t spill out, and topped it off with the weird-tasting goat milk. Then, she took a bite from a buttered biscuit, and continued eating her banana.

Of course, she would be needing all that energy, for she would be doing all the flying, because Scootaloo couldn’t. Just one more entry on the long list of things Scootaloo would never be able to pay Fluttershy back for.

Scootaloo took her coffee black.

“I’m sorry for swearing,” Scootaloo said, “I just never thought it would feel this way. Now that we have to go back home ... “

“It’s okay,” Fluttershy said, “but we always knew our little vacation would end eventually, so there’s no point in resenting the fact.”

“I know,” Scootaloo said.

“Which reminds me,” Fluttershy said, “it’s a good thing too, because we were just running out of your allowance money. Here, I know it’s not much, but I wanted to give you the rest.”

Fluttershy pushed the coins over the table. It was a pathetic four bits.

Scootaloo didn’t care to think what she would waste the money on.

She was sad that her delightful time in Skyview was going to come to an end. She had discovered so much, made so many new friends, had so much fun, and she hated the idea that all of it would be taken away from her. Of course she hated it. Who wouldn’t? And her relationship with Fluttershy? Well, Scootaloo had botched her entire life up to this point, so she could trust herself to make their next encounter as awkward as possible. Just another moment of clumsiness, down for the count.

But there was something new brewing in Scootaloo’s cocktail of emotions. Something she hadn’t anticipated thus far.

Fear.

Real, honest fear.

The fear of loss was so great, it made Scootaloo’s hooves tremble. And it wasn’t the loss of something she had, but of something she would have been able to have, the loss of her future. Even now, she could already feel the oppressive presence of home, of Ponyville, looming over her, threatening to blot out her recollection of this wonderful place. The daily trot, crushing her back into hopeless lethargy. Her former classmates, now official graduates, getting on with their lives, while Scootaloo was held back and locked into the perpetuum of pointless tests and jumbled books and numbers. Her young adults counsel, her teachers, her foster parents, everypony resenting her for being a lost cause, Scootaloo, the idiot, wasting her time, the featherbrain, getting into crashes because she always has her head in the clouds, ending up going nowhere. It would all come back. Daily routine, grinding the memories out of her, like sand in the wind, making her forget.

She was scared that she would forget.

There was a family in the restaurant. Parents with their kids. About to leave through the front door, the foal was having her clothes adjusted for the weather outside. Everypony was fawning over her, holding her so she wouldn’t fall over, and making sure she was comfortable. And whenever the foal did something right, she would be rewarded with little squeals, touches, kisses. Only the utmost praise and affection.

Scootaloo wiggled on her seat. She pressed her hind legs together, but her limbs simply touched, there was nothing between them. She was wearing regular, adult underwear.

That absence was more painful than anything else. Scootaloo was aware of her physical deficiencies, of her crippled wings and her dwarven body, but this omission felt entirely different, like someone had ripped a piece straight out of her soul, phantom pain in the back of her head, something that should be there but wasn’t, she was debilitated, her very essence wailed because it felt just so wrong.

“I just wish it didn’t have to end,” Scootaloo said. At least, she tried to say it, but her voice cracked, and she suddenly had to blink the blurriness out of her vision, and wipe her nose.

“It’s okay, Scootaloo,” Fluttershy said calmly, “there’s no need to cry. There, there.”

She reached out with a hoof, gently brushed Scootaloo’s cheek. Scootaloo absorbed the affection from the little gesture, and imagined she was being praised and fawned over by the bigger pony. It gave her little solace, but she didn’t care, she cherished every second that she could spend with Fluttershy.

They sat in sombre silence, drowned in the noise of the crowded restaurant.

Fluttershy was the picture of calm composure as she ate, but she regarded the miserable pile of Scootaloo on the other end of the table intensely. She finished up her fruit and her pastries, and neatly put her table napkin onto the tray.

“Scootaloo,” Fluttershy said, “I’ve been thinking when to bring this up with you ...”

“What is it?” Scootaloo grumbled into the complicated patterns of scratches on the table top’s worn wooden surface.

“I believe,” Fluttershy said, carefully, “there might be a possibility that we could return to Skyview again.”

“What!” Scootaloo cried.

Jumping up, she had knocked over her cup, coffee splashing onto the ground. Under the stares of curious onlookers, she wormed her way between the tables over to the serving counter, retrieved one of the cloth rags that were placed there for this exact reason, and took it back to the table, wiping up the trail of coffee along the way.

“Oh, for the love of ...” Scootaloo said, breathless, “What was that?”

“I said that we could visit this city again,” Fluttershy said.

“I can’t believe --”

“But, Scootaloo,” Fluttershy said.

“Yes?” Scootaloo said.

“But,” Fluttershy said, “In return, I will ask something of you.”

“Yes,” Scootaloo cried, desperately, “Yes! Anything!”

And Fluttershy looked her directly in the eyes, calm, collected, in full earnest, and said, “In return, you will take the Equestrian State Graduation Exam. And you will pass.”

The coffee had soaked through the rag, and was running down Scootaloo’s foreleg.

“What?” Scootaloo said, tears welling up again, “But I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can,” Fluttershy said.

“But I can’t!” Scootaloo raged, her cheeks now burning, “I can’t take the exam! I can’t take exams! I don’t know how to take exams! I’m an idiot!”

“Scootaloo, you are not an idiot,” Fluttershy thundered, “and that’s final.”

Scootaloo shut up, like she had never shut up in her life.

“Look,” Fluttershy said, “I know you don’t believe that you can pass the exam. But what you believe doesn’t matter. The truth is, you can.”

“But how?” Scootaloo said, “There’s so many subjects, and I never understood any of them.”

“Scoots, during our stay here in Skyview, we’ve learned a lot, you and I,” Fluttershy said.

“But I didn’t learn,” Scootaloo protested, “I was having fun! Our stay here was amazing, there were so many wonderful sights.”

“Didn’t you listen to what Lane said, yesterday?” Fluttershy said, “Call it learning, call it fun, call it whatever you want, but learning is not about memorizing dusty old books. I have seen you explore and experience things in this city that even I hadn’t known about before. You have even lectured a couple of students at university about their own subject, for Celestia’s sake!”

Scootaloo was upset and delighted that Fluttershy swore. “Yes,” she said, “but --”

“And didn’t we get to see all these amazing sights, together?” Fluttershy said, “I saw you admire the architecture of these buildings, when we visited the ancient ruins. And I was there when you delved into the history of this place.”

“Yes ...” Scootaloo said. It was true. Ever since they had visited the ruins of the Pendaros buildings, she had meant to dust off her own history book from school, to see if there were more such delectably absurd stories buried in there.

“And didn’t we explore the curious streets of this city,” Fluttershy said, “and its weird layout, and the greenery inbetween?”

“Yes,” Scootaloo said. The streets and the buildings and the parks and the cable cars and the fields, and the trade routes, and the air traffic, and why the city was layouted the way it was, and why it was important to read maps and sky charts. Every piece of this intricate design worked together in wondrously subtle ways, and her geography books seemed more than suspiciously ripe with the reasons why things worked out this way.

“And we went swimming, and had a wonderful time exercising, and watching other ponies at their crafts,” Fluttershy said.

“Yes.” Scootaloo said. She had always hated team sports, and group activities, because she hated being forced to do the same stuff that everypony else did, even though she couldn’t, and she didn’t want to. Maybe solo sports were more up to her speed? And she liked singing ...

“And we saw so much more of what’s going on in this city,” Fluttershy said, “The nature, and the sciences, and the festivals, and the engineering, and the magic.”

“Yes!” Scootaloo said. She had experienced every form of academia that she knew, before even finding out about it. She had that longing to finally pinpoint the difference between biology and chemistry, and she knew where she had both of those books. And her decrepit magic tomes, to unleash the information contained within, in such an awesome show of battle magic. She just had to know how that worked. And Scootaloo wanted to know more. She wanted to know about all the animals, and the ecosystems. And the tools of physics and alchemy to get there. And all the tables and numbers ... was it true? They didn’t matter? It was just about the relationships?

And she wanted machines, and artifacts, and constructs, know how to build them, know how they worked. She wanted to know about relationships, and constraints, and formulas, so she would be better prepared when she got to see them in real life.

Because none of her books had been written without purpose. Every book had a story behind it, every lesson was the result of somepony trying something out, and trying to communicate their findings. There was awesome exploration, discovery, excitement, behind every page turned, no matter how rotten and dusty it was.

And more than anything, something presented itself to Scootaloo, something, that, she had come to realize, she had never had in her life before.

A chance.

Her chance.

“Yes!” Scootaloo said, “Yes! Fluttershy! I have school books for all of this!”

“That’s nice,” Fluttershy said, “and I want you to study all of them, for the exam.”

“But how?” Scootaloo said, “There are so many!”

“I want you to study,” Fluttershy said, “like you have never studied before. Remember, there is still time, a couple of weeks, in fact, which is more than enough. I want you to study every single page in every single book that you have. I want you to recite chapters in the morning and exercises in the evening, until you have memorized every last figure and every last paragraph. Read every book as many times as you need, copy it down, memorize it by sheer repetition if you need to, or make a song about it, like you have memorized that song by singing it only once.”

Fluttershy took Scootaloo’s hoof.

“The point is,” Fluttershy said, “No matter what you believe, no matter what you think, you have shown that you are capable of this. I know it, too. You just need to start doing it, and keep doing it.”

“Yes!” Scootaloo pleaded, “I will! I will do it! I want to learn everything that I have from school! I want to take that test!”

“And I want you to give it your best,” Fluttershy said.

They eventually left the restaurant, many guests still covertly staring at them. But Scootaloo didn’t care. Her mind was reeling. Even now, she was making plans in her mind, where she had stashed all of her books, how much paper she would need for her notes, when to go to sleep, when to rise, her schedule, her diet. How to get as many hours of studying in as she could. She was burning with excitement. She wanted to start learning, now.

They quickly crossed into the gateway building. Fluttershy pulled out the key and retrieved their flight gear from the locker. She saddled up, making sure the straps sat tightly and securely, and then she donned the rest of her equipment, pulling her aviator’s goggles over her eyes. Then she turned around, and put Scootaloo’s equipment on for her, because the smaller pony was way too distracted to do it on her own.

The building housed a shop, it was a tiny duty-free souvenir stall selling overpriced trinkets, little symbols and figures of the city and its landmarks, and travel novelties, such as games and books. The small travel books had covers hardened against the weather, and little straps to be tied around hooves. One of the books was educational, the title read “Equestria: castles and cities”. Scootaloo looked at the price.

It was exactly four bits.

Scootaloo excused herself.

She returned with a little book dangling from her hoof. “Um, Fluttershy?” she said, “Is it okay if I read during the flight?”

Fluttershy responded calmly, of course, but that twinkle of pride in her eyes was praise enough to make Scootaloo weak in the knees. “Of course,” Fluttershy said, “I think that’s a very nice idea.”

They stepped through the gates, and onto the platform. Scootaloo mounted the saddle, pulled out the map so they could plot the course, and Fluttershy checked that her boots were strapped in nice and securely. After finishing up her preparations, Fluttershy walked up to the platform’s edge, felt the wind.

The grimy rain lightly drizzled on the top of Scootaloo’s head.

She looked up into the overcast skyscape, and, coffee grounds splashing onto her spectacles, suddenly, she understood what that pony across the street had felt.

And she smiled.