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Air Groove looked nothing at all like her sire and her mother would come to be thankful for this fact. She didn't hate Tony Bianca, per-se, but she hated that her should-be spouse decided that her career and ambition held more importance than Air Groove and her mother. Tony didn't want a divorce, but Air Dancer did. Tony wanted to go back to racing while she wanted them to both worth together, racing in low-stakes regional circuits so that they had enough time to support Air Groove. But, Tony was uninterested, and so Air Dancer kicked her to the curb.
Children are much more wise than adults give them credit for. It did not take long into Air Groove's life for her to notice that other children typically had more than one parent. She remembered someone, with fiery hair and an even more fiery mien, but it would take a while longer for her to realize who that fuzzy face in her mind actually was. What it did not take long for her to realize was how her mother's demeanour shifted whenever family was involved, and that many photos of her mother in a beautiful, regal wedding gown that she oft fantasized about wearing had been awkwardly cropped down the centre.
Air Groove came to her mother one day when she was preparing dinner, and waited patiently for a child-friendly task to obsess over.
"Mother?"
==
Whenever her mother was home Air Groove would be hugging her heels and begging for conversation. When she was too young to be home alone, the child often had to endure staying with a family member she didn't particularly feel anything for. As an infant she was horribly clingy, but as she got older that would fade-- outwardly, at least. While she stopped clinging to her ankles and hiding behind her, she would still follow her into the garden and off on errands, cooking, chores... her mother tried, but often to little avail. If she really put her foot down then she would scamper off, but it saddened her to do that. Air Groove was an incredibly well behaved child that forced herself to mature early. In her youngest years she was always a foal-at-foot but never quite underfoot; as she got older she would become fixated on staying out of the way as much as possible, being as little of a burden as possible to a point of neurosis, even while following around trying to do whatever thing her mother happened to be doing. It didn't take too long for the child to start trying to take over domestic tasks.
It was always:
"Why don't you go and play with the others, Air Groove?" or "Air Groove! Did you check the garden yet?"or "Why don't you go for a run around the block?"
And then it was always, more or less:
"You are too tired!" or "You are making us sad!" (whatever that meant) or "You need help! I want to help you!"
The kind of thing for which a young child would not take no as an answer.
==
"Yes, Guru?" The Queen's title might make one think of her as anything but a well-oiled machine. The woman peeled was peeling carrots and dicing potatoes with the speed and agility you only develop after years of performing domestic tasks.
"Do I have to get married, too?"
That was the kind of question that, when a child asks it, you have to drop everything you were doing.
"Oh, sweet pea... where did this come from?"
"You had to get married... and so you stopped running." Little Air Groove went on with a pout. She was at that age where, if people did not introduce such concepts to her, she would pick up on them. Children loved to eavesdrop, and those ears meant that Air Groove could hear quite a bit. Not to mention the realities of the modern world making it nigh impossible to completely control everything your child knows.
"I didn't have to, darling. I wanted to," she lied with a smile. The kind of smile that had already been proven to work on family, and the kind of lie you felt justified in telling children. Unfortunately, Air Groove was wiser than she ought to have been at her age.
"Did she leave? Where is she? Did she make me? Was she human? Was it a he?" The the various axes of sex and gender and their complexities were a bit beyond the scope of the understanding of a six year old, and well beyond the ability of an exhausted single mother to explain at the moment.
Her mother had to laugh a bit. "Um... no. She didn't... not exactly, sweet pea..."
None of these answers would satisfy Air Groove. Her pout deepened, and her lip quivered; the fuse was lit. Parental panic ensued. "You stopped running because you had to get married..." A pause, and a little sniffle. "...does he not like me? Will he come back?"
Her mother noticed now that Air Groove was clutching a small portrait of her in her racewear, in a gilded frame, after the Japanese Oaks. There were many of them around in no small part because Air Groove liked to swipe them and hide them away (and her own mother had printed them out in insane numbers). In her room, she would surround herself with them and replicate her victory pose wearing a dress of cloth and sheet in the best imitation of her racewear that a toddler could manage. Her mother had never cultivated this tendency in her; she actively did not want Air Groove to feel pressured to follow in her footsteps, but her daughter seemed to want to more than anything else in the world. When she was even younger she would imitate her mother to the point it was a touch worrisome, but thankfully it was just in that way that toddlers can be a little strange.
"I don't wanna... hc... I wanna be better, so I can help you, so you can go run again. I wanna see you run like on the TV!"
"But I do run. With you, sweet pea."
"No! I mean like on the TV! Where you were happy! W-Where you--!" Air Groove wiggled free of her mother and did an impression of her mother's victory twirl and mimed the cape and everything. She couldn't help but smile; her daughter was getting surprisingly good at imitating her. All the tapes from her races and performances had been all but worn bare. Her daughter's obsession both warmed her heart and concerned her, but is it not a mother's nature to be concerned for her child in any case?
"And you sang!! And danced..."
"Yes! I did, sweet pea..."
"And you were soooo beautiful! Everyone loved you!!" Air Groove twirled again with an arm raised outward, clutching a beautiful cape that only existed within her mind. "And you let NO ONE be mean to you, ever! Never ever!" Air Groove said with a puff, a huff and a few stamps of her feet. Her huffs quickly turned to sniffles, and before long the little girl was trotting back to fall into her mother's arms again. "...did you stop running because you had to have me?"
Adults were prone to forgetting how keen children can be. They always watch, always listen.
Air Dancer scooped her daughter up in her arms as if she were little more than a bundle of cloth. Her hands were wet and smelled of vegetables, and now Air Groove's hair was as well, but at least she could soothe them both now.
"No, no, no, sweet pea, no-- w-where did you get such an idea?" She was thankful that her daughter could not see the glare that she had, now. What did her mother say to her?! She was incredibly old fashioned and had a lot of outdated conceptions of the world. Her mind was running a mile a minute trying to fathom whatever awful picture of a future whichever relative of hers' painted for her daughter. "No one stopped me, I stopped myself."
Another lie. Sort of.
It is not only humans for which success and prestige make you a valuable mate.
Conventional wisdom holds that If you're successful and so is your partner, surely your child will be even more successful than you. In spite of evidence to the contrary, this has been presumed more or less true for generations across various axes of time and space on this earth. But, conventional wisdom can be anything but wise on a long enough timeline.
In the long-standing tradition of making stronger and stronger horses, this creates an incentive for arranging marriages, particularly with the popular belief of certain bodies having an ideal reproductive age; if you race too much and wait until you're too old, you might not be as good of a mother and so forth. Much the same as with humans.
Air Dancer's family, in particular, received a handsome dowry for their marriage and production of Air Groove. She was young, too young, enough at the time to assume this was what she wanted because it was what others wanted, because this was how it was, it was what her mother did, what she was told she was best at, and she did not dream it could be any different. Not until all was said and done. Her family was quite put out when she decided to divorce Tony Bianca and all that came crumbling down.
She had many, many regrets, but none of them included Air Groove. Her daughter was one of the few things she didn't regret. Everything she did now was for her, for her to stay in her life and have an even better life than she. It was why she worked herself ragged to raise her on her own. Even still, no matter how much she had to work and sacrifice she refused to settle for a partner that did not meet her standards. And no one ever would.
"Air Groove, my darling, can you listen to me very closely? I want you to remember what I have to say.
The little girl clung to her mother in a desperate desire for comfort. It wouldn't be too long before she would be to big to be held like this. She nodded.
"Never let anyone make you do with your life what you don't want to do, and never anything that would hurt you." Those words were perhaps best said a few years down the line rather than to a rambunctious six year old, but it would pay off down the line. "You only have to get married if you want to, okay? You do with your life what you want to do. Don't let anyone stop you."
"...buh-- what if I get married and then they go away?"
"Then we will give them a stern talking to," she said with a smile as she kissed the top of her daughter's head. "And I will be here. I will never leave you. I am going to help you be whatever you want to be." Her will have choices she herself did not; she sacrificed her own dreams of fame, recognition; a voice, able to speak for herself in the grand story written about her life; power, and beauty unparalleled.
Sniffle. "Never leave?"
"Never. Now, sweet pea, save your tears. Let's only think of happy things for a while, okay? What do you want to be when you grow up?" She plunked her daughter down on the floor. Already, the child was trotting around in a circle and twirling about in her imaginary skirt and cape, flower blossoms spinning about in her mind.
"I wannnnnnnna be strong like you, mom! So I can stomp meanies! And beautiful! I wanna be beautiful! And I wanna run! I wanna run! Run!"
Air Dancer's dream may seem dead, but dreams do not have to die. They can change hands. She can give them to her child.
As she watched Air Groove she felt her heart swell with love, pride, and a warmth she desperately needed.
"You are. You are beautiful and you are loved."