Stars. So many stars. Points of white light in an infinite cosmos, each one a wonder orbited by planets and moons, a universe in miniature. And thousands of them scroll past us every minute, like images on a screen.
It's strange how quickly the wondrous can become mundane.
I roll my neck, listening to the vertebrae crackle. Fan my wings out and try to remember the feeling of wind in my feathers. Things were different once. I remember when every day mattered. Every mission. Every wingbeat.
Things change.
“See anything interesting?” a voice asks. Bright and chipper and about a million years younger than I feel right now.
Vapor is good like that. You can lock her in a box for nine hundred days, and she'll still come out smiling on the nine hundred and first.
With effort, I summon a smile for her. “Nope. Not yet.”
Not yet. The story of my second life. In my old life, before the dislocated wing that downed me temporarily and then permanently, every morning brought something new. The sky was always a different colour, if you see what I mean.
And maybe the starship could have been that, in another life. When they first gave me the offer, my heart skipped a beat. A chance to fly again – not wonky flapping around town, limping where once I soared. But a chance to be once more a part of the elite, breaking new frontiers and building something glorious. A second chance.
In the early days, when we were pioneers pushing the boundaries of the known universe, carving uncharted space into the map...maybe it was different for a while there. More like what being a Wonderbolt is supposed to be. But look at me now – Captain Spitfire, supply run champion. Daring the abyss to bring the colonies their latest shipment of hay bales.
Cut off from the teammates who once felt like a second pair of wings. Trapped in a tin can where every day is the same, down to the minute and second where my recycled bowl of oats is served.
It’s not what I imagined, that day the recruiter leaned in close to me and whispered we need you out there, Captain. In the stars.
I glance back out at the stars, once so rich with promise. All they promise now is another few mind-numbing years before I’m shuttled off to some princess-forsaken retirement colony. Maybe they’ll let me go back to Equus, at least. I could get a bunk in the ‘bolts retirement village. Try to make up for lost time with my old squad; pretend that they don’t have an extra twenty years of shared history that I’ll never be part of.
The cockpit is empty. Vapor’s vanished while I was thinking. Celestia only knows where she’ll be. Probably off in a vent somewhere, up to her wingtips in the ship’s innards. Or lying down like a dead thing, trying to breathe at the same time as the ship...breathes? I don’t know what she thinks it does. One time I called it a hunk of junk in front of her, and she asked me to be mindful of its feelings. I told her it wasn’t alive, and she actually asked me if I was sure.
It’s like weather, she says. If you concentrate and reach out, you can feel it in the filaments of your feathers.
I look sourly at the dashboard and wish this lump of crystal-tree-space garbage was like weather, instead of a mashup of the worst of earth pony and unicorn magic. It was supposed to be intuitive. This new model was crafted for all three races, with threads of cloud and wind and root and rune weaving it together. I preferred the earlier models, built on the logic that if a spaceship flies, a pegasus is the only possible pilot. The command deck had two huge metal wings that were custom-made to fit mine, and every twitch of a primary meant something.
I never thought I’d miss the Goose – my first ship, named for the ancient Wonderbolt callname that nopony at space command knew – but after four years aboard, the Wanderer is a mystery to me. One I feel further from solving with every year that passes.
I rise from my chair and stretch again. There’s nothing visible, nothing on the sensors apart from a sun a few light-klicks away that’s flaring up a bit. The ship can hold this course for an hour or so without me. I need to track down that stupid kid and make her take a breather that doesn’t involve meditating herself into a ship-hyperfocus coma.