It had been a quiet few weeks after the summer sun celebration. Shadow Shielder was lying on a cloud overlooking Ponyville. Both she and her sister had found jobs. Light was working at the veterinary hospital, as well as working part time at the local doctor’s office and hospital. She was one of the best healers Shadow had known so this was perfect for her. Shadow was working at a local café. She had always loved to cook and she might have followed that as a career if that event hadn’t happened. As they now both had jobs they had started looking for their own place to live. She couldn’t in good conscience keep imposing upon Twilight to both teach her and provide her with a place to stay. She assumed her sister felt the same about her host, Fluttershy. She, though, could at least help provide care for the animals.
Today was her day off of work at the café. She had found a way to integrate her combat specialialized magic, as well as her natural abilities that came from being half dragon, into cooking. She was relaxing on the cloud because she lacked anything else to do. She wasn’t familiar enough with the forms of entertainment in this time, and she had never had the best understanding of the culture of regular ponies, both a thousand years ago and now. Partially because she and her sister had grown up with dragons and a group of ponies that had fled their land long before even her mother, who was a dragon, was hatched.
It didn’t help that very few ponies in town trusted her. She was the mastermind behind their supposed invasion after all. It didn’t help that she was half dragon either. Her sister was more trusted, but she was to kind to hurt anything. She was a healer also so she already had a little status from that. So Shadow sat on the cloud watching.
She saw a lot of pegusi flying back and forth all at different speeds going in all different directions. Among them she saw a streak of rainbow. It belonged to Rainbow Dash who was the most distrustful of Shadow, if not the most vocal. If she was honest it was insane to let her live in this small town. She had formulated a plan in order to take over, and it shouldn’t matter how many alicorns come to your defense for it being a fake plan. Whoever does that should be put in prison, banned, or at the very least given a guard not be allowed to go free. Shadow rested her head upon the cloud and closed her eyes with the intent to take a nap. She wanted a quick nap as she had nothing beter to do. That and she liked naps.
“Hay.”… “Hay.”… “I know your awake so don’t ignore me,” a loud voice yelled in Shadow’s face. Shadow decided to ignore the loud annoying voice and continued to pursue her nap. “DON’T IGNORE ME!! It’s time to settle the issue and the question of who is faster,” the voice yelled.
Who is this loud person who wants to race me? Shadow opened one eye in order to see who was talking to her. There was a blue face right there.
“Yah, who, no what, no why, no,” she stammered as she jumped backwards off the cloud and stared to fly in order to stay aloft. “You scared me. Why were you that close? What do you want, and have you heard of personal space?” she said as she settled back into the cloud.
“I wanted to make sure you were awake before our race,” Rainbow said as she shrugged like it was no big deal and started flying. “Come on lets race. You said you were fast so prove it.”
“No,” said Shadow, “I won’t race you. I wanted to relax and take a nap on my day off, so I won’t race you.”
“What, why not? Oh, are you scared you will lose, are you a big scaredy cat, are you, huh, Shadow,” taunted Rainbow Dash.
“You won’t leave me alone until I agree to race you will you?” asked Shadow turning to face Rainbow.
“Nope,” Rainbow said while grinning.
“Fine. Where will we race, and when will it start?” Shadow said her head drooping in resignation.
“Why can’t we race here?” asked Rainbow tilting her head to one side.
“That is or was how races for honor, as well as for fun sometimes, were held a thousand years ago. Have the practices and customs changed that much over time that races no longer require an audience to attend in order to both witness and testify for the results. What about the judge who would be the unbiased third party in order to make sure both parties follow the rules. How much have the times changed I wonder?” Shadow asked Rainbow standing up and pacing on her cloud as she explained.
“Fine, fine, whatever, we will follow those old rules that you are used to but please stop pacing your making me dizzy. Don’t worry I will find an audience and judge and we will race at…” she paused for a few moments to think. “Oh I don’t know yet. I’ll find you and tell you later once I have everything in order. When you lose you’ll only have yourself to blame once the entire town hears about it.”
As she said that she had already started to fly away, only leaving her rainbow trail in her wake. Shadow shrugged and laying her head down on the cloud she took the nap she had originally wanted.