Derpy Hooves has, since birth, been completely unable to feel pain - it’s something a lot of ponies seem to covet (stunt ponies have certainly proclaimed their jealousy, and Trixie once almost got Derpy to join her act for a trick she called “firewalking” before other ponies convinced her not to) what with the way it seems to lend Derpy this fearlessness about her (not uncommon) tumbles and crashes. There are ponies out there who don’t covet it, but that’s more for the clumsiness they assume it causes in Derpy - that her tumbles and crashes are caused by a carelessness instilled with the lack of pain. Doctors who have examined Derpy generally agree that the clumsiness is caused by a dyspraxic comorbidity of the painlessness, rather than some further development of the painlessness itself; with Derpy’s birth not being the easiest, like, medically and all. But so the point is that Derpy is both very clumsy and totally unable to feel pain, which explains her very rapid descent onto the Wonderbolts training fields and also her very rapid shaking-off of said descent - the whole situation witnessed by Rainbow Dash.
“Hey, are you- are you alright?” Rainbow Dash was standing over Derpy’s still sort of hunched frame - Derpy still not having fully risen from the small divot she’d left in the grass and dirt.
“Think so.” Derpy didn’t even look up, she was just rooting about in her saddlebags for something or other, legs quivering slightly beneath her in this way that made the rustling of said saddlebags seem unnaturally frenzied.
“That was a pretty bad wipeout, Derp.”
“Hold on a moment…” Derpy sprung her wing from out of her saddlebag, holding something small between the feathers. “I have a letter for you, Dash!”
“You’re shaking, Derpy. I can see you shaking.” Rainbow Dash looked between the almost full standing figure in front of her and the training facility proper, many paces back. “Do you need to, like, come inside or something?”
“Oh, I’m alright Dash. I don’t wanna…” Derpy transferred the letter from her wing to her hoof. “I just have this letter for you. You must see a lotta ponies crash up here, huh?”
Rainbow Dash grabbed the letter. “Most of those ponies are Wonderbolts. Why didn’t you just deliver this to my place back in Ponyville?”
Derpy sort of cocked her head at this, this complete lack of understanding. “Well, you’re not in Ponyville. You’re here.” If she’d tilted her head the opposite direction, her eyes would almost look in line, but as it stood they just seemed even more out of wack than usual.
Derpy used to feel very self-conscious about her eyes (Ponies always seemed to stare at them, after all), but then, after some point, she began to feel more self-conscious about feeling self-conscious about her eyes (but then again, isn’t that just what eye contact is, the staring at her eyes? is she so special that she’s, like, exempt from eye contact?), and so she just decided she’d try and ignore it all. Just ignore thinking about her eyes at all, the same way she never really thought about the color of her coat or the cutie mark she wore on her flanks, these things that were just her in this way she didn’t have to think about. It worked sometimes, sometimes it didn’t and she just got caught up in these even deeper patterns of thinking/being self-conscious/being self-conscious about being self-conscious/etc. about her eyes. But today was one of those days she didn’t have to think about her eyes, the same way she didn’t have to think about ‘is it even worth getting up from this fall’ today.
Rainbow Dash tucked her letter into that little band that kept her goggles on her face. “Do you have loads more mail to deliver today?”
“Oh, umm… Only a little.” Derpy was folding and flexing her wings in and out as she spoke - scrunching them in basically every way they could be scrunched, rolling them about in their joints, occasionally touching her hooves with her feathers - alternating between smooth and jerky motions, these slow motion flails. It almost had the coursing of a rhythm and system throughout it, though one that seemed impenetrable to the outside observer. Her hind legs were still shaking, and the rest of her along with them. “I delivered most of the Ponyville mail already.”
“Do you think you can take a little break, then?” Rainbow Dash looked back to the training facility. “I’m not, like, worried about you, or anything. I just think- I mean it’s not a short flight back to Ponyville, I just thought you might want to rest.”
Derpy thought for a moment, wings now settled astride her barrel in rest. She was a mare who had no problem sitting and thinking in silence, even if she was mid-conversation. The phrase ‘think before you speak’ had floated around her a lot when she was a filly, so she did. She thought before she spoke. “Okay.”
So she got up and trotted, line as straight as she could, alongside Dash.
“Aren’t you gonna open your letter?” Derpy was laying full body across the sofa in the Wonderbolts Rest Area, possibly the only comfy surface in the whole Wonderbolt Academy. There wasn’t any conscious ‘anti-comfort’ philosophy amongst the Wonderbolts, it’s more that they just didn’t have the time for comfort - or, like, if they did they were at home already.
“Sure, yeah, I just- I just gotta talk to Spitfire real quick.” Rainbow Dash was off as soon as she came.
Derpy lay, then, just staring at the ceiling. It was a common ceiling of interior modern pegasus architecture - thick plywood with cloud-fluffing either side, for insulation. Heavier materials were often too awkward to work with, just in terms of working at altitude/with clouds, so plywood/cloud combination was a nice mix of price, ease of assembly and function. It, unfortunately, didn’t make much to look at, though - it was the same sort of cloud you could see anywhere in Cloudsdale, just with a little light-ish brown faint behind it.
Derpy was the sort of pony to touch her face without realising, this absent minded action of thought (or, sometimes, thoughtlessness) which overtook her occasionally - which, today, is what finally alerted her to the blood sort of globbing from her nose. It wasn’t a particularly fast or heavy stream, more this slow, slow, slow release of thicker blood that had already started clotting to the fur of her face. Rainbow Dash didn’t mention any bleeding to Derpy. Derpy wondered if Rainbow Dash thought she (Derpy) already knew about the bleeding, and was just trying to be, like, fearless about it. Derpy was not a fearless pony. She remembered saying, quite casually, to another pony when the topic of fear/fearlessness came up something along the lines of ‘it’s not the falling that scares me, it’s the getting back up’ and then being very proud of saying that afterwards, that she was able to so casually say this thing which actually seemed quite profound to her. Derpy wondered if maybe she should ask Rainbow Dash for a tissue, just for the bleeding, or if it’s better not to bother her for whatever important thing she has to talk to Spitfire about, and she wonders this long enough that she decides laying here on this couch doesn’t seem to be doing her any issues so she’ll just keep doing that instead.
One time Derpy broke a wing and only realized it when she started crashing a lot more than usual on her daily delivery, and asked a doctor about it thinking maybe it was some issue with her ears. She remembered hearing that ear infections can cause, like, balance issues or something. Since that major crash and wing incident, she’s taken more care to properly inspect her wings post-crash - along with that she developed this tendency to probe at the ground with her hooves: It’s not as conscious as her wing examinations, but still as important in terms of her telling when something is ‘off’, really, just with how she’s always nicking at or digging into the ground now, so she knows how it feels even if she’s not necessarily consciously feeling all of it, so she also knows how it’s not meant to feel, ergo she also also knows that something isn’t right if it doesn’t feel right - if and when it does end up feeling not right.
The couch was this long, flat L-shape with a single raised edge against the long back of the L. It didn’t have any rests on the other edges, just sort of two flat rectangles placed against each other for the most part. It was comfy though, whatever fabric it was made of feeling nice against her body, and firm enough that she didn’t feel like she was sinking - a feeling she got from most of the furniture she owned herself. Derpy was still staring at the ceiling, so didn’t notice that Rainbow Dash had returned with Spitfire in tow. One of her legs was still twitching, but only a little.
“Derpy Hooves!” Spitfire was physically incapable of sounding both loud and empathetic at the same time. “After correspondence with the Ponyville post office you have been relieved of further duty today. Rainbow Dash is willing to cover the rest of your shift.”
Derpy let her head loll to the front side of the sofa, where Spitfire and Dash were standing. She didn’t speak for a few seconds. “Can I have a tissue for my nose?” Her voice was very nasal, but this was unrelated to the nosebleed. She just spoke like that. “For the blood, I mean. I don’t need to blow my nose.”
Spitfire looked to Rainbow Dash for maybe half a moment, then back to Derpy. “On it, citizen.” Derpy thought it was strange that Spitfire called her ‘citizen’. While, admittedly, she hadn’t spoken to or seen Spitfire all that much, she couldn’t recall Spitfire calling any other ‘citizens’ ‘citizen’. At the same time, though, Derpy wasn’t unused to ponies acting differently around her in this sort of small way, this way she couldn’t always point right at - sometimes less blatant, even, than slipping in the word ‘citizen’ out of nowhere - but she could tell just that ponies weren’t working their A game around her, a lot of the time. Like they lost their metaphorical balance, in terms of social skills and whatnot, this little thing Derpy could only just pick up on.
“So, should I just… Take your bags and go?” Rainbow Dash asked.
Derpy didn’t answer. She was staring back at the ceiling now.
“I mean, I’m covering your-”
“I’ll be fine.” Derpy didn’t mean to interrupt Dash, it’s just it took her that long to think of what she wanted to say. “I just need to clean my nose.”
“Are- Are you sure?” Rainbow Dash was trotting on closer to Derpy, now, standing right by the sofa and looking over this supine mare below her.
“I’ll be fine.” Derpy sniffed up a glob of blood. There was some silence as she let herself think for a while before she came to what she had to say. “It’s not the falling that’s scary. I don’t think it’s getting back up, either.”
From the looks of things, Dash didn’t seem at all sure what Derpy meant. Or maybe that sort of inattentive goggle she was giving was from her still piecing together Derpy’s getting back up off the couch in general.
“I think the scary part is not getting back up, right?” Derpy slipped back off the couch, slowly, and sidled over to Spitfire - who had appeared by now with a full box of tissues. “Thank you. I got some mail to deliver.” She took a tissue from the box, erupted into it, scrunched it up and handed Spitfire back the now damp red ball. Rainbow Dash and Sptifire still just stared on, confused. “I got some mail to deliver.”