The air on any summer night is cool and damp.
Every single one.
Go on: pick one. There’s never been a summer night that wasn’t mysteriously refreshing, filled with the sounds of cicadas and crickets, stirred by the occasional breeze, lit by the melancholy fractals in the sky.
This was the sort of night that Vinyl Scratch found herself on a Buckball pitch, because there just isn’t any other sort of summer night. How and why she found herself on a Buckball pitch is of little importance, though you may be able to fill in the blanks. The important thing is that she was there, and the air was cool and damp, and she felt new.
She took a deep breath, really feeling her chest swell. She remembered the words of a not-so-close-friend advising her on her vocal form. Head up, shoulders back, breathe and--
No. Wait.
Chin out, wide stance, open your diaphragm and--
Huh. That didn’t feel quite right, either.
Maybe no one had ever told Vinyl what to do.
“Funny.”
Vinyl’s shoulders leapt out of the proper form, and her hooves rustled through the spray-painted grass. She turned to look at the source of the unwelcome (but, then again, very much desired) voice.
Much in the way that all summer nights are alike, Octavia was always there. Celestia only knows how she found her way to the Buckball pitch that night, but she was there because Vinyl was there.
Vinyl snorted. “What is?”
Octavia smiled, but calling it that sold the whole thing short. “This is the happiest you’ve looked in years.”
Vinyl’s own smile melted. “Oh, I…” She could feel her chest collapsing, that cool air rushing out of her lips and leaving not a whisper of breath behind. “Octy, it’s not like that, honest. I just--”
“No, no.” Octavia walked towards her ex-marefriend, and the fireflies lit her up in an otherworldly dance of light. “That couldn’t possibly be a bad thing. I want you happy.”
She looked ethereal. The floodlight shone down on her like a ray from the heavens, casting a long shadow across the grass. She had pulled her mane back in a funny sort of knot that seemed utterly impossible, yet natural and free as a bird on the wing.
Octavia was never the type to wear make-up outside of a performance, but Vinyl noticed the distinct weight of mascara on her lashes. I guess events like this were close enough to performances in her mind.
“I…” Vinyl looked down. Her own mane shifted from behind her ear and cascaded towards the overly-green grass. “I want you happy, too.”
It was Octavia’s turn to snort. “Well, of course you do. You’re a good pony, aren’t you?”
“I try to be.”
“That’s what counts.”
Vinyl chuckled, a dry and husky sort of sound. She hardly meant it.
The mares fell silent. In the distance, Vinyl thought she could sense the thrum of a bassline, not unlike a heartbeat.
They would be lying if they said neither felt the unusual electricity of this moment. Just like every summer night is the same, and just like Octavia always found her counterpart, it’s true that a moment of silence in the darkness will always taste sweeter than it truly is. Right here, right now, a kiss would feel right. It would always feel right.
Until the heat of morning, of course.
“Are you okay?” Octavia asked.
Vinyl blinked. “Am I okay?” She made a breathless, desperate sound. “Are you okay?”
Octavia smiled, but it’s practically a sin to call it that. “As okay as you are.”
Which wasn’t exactly an answer, but it sort of was.
“What are we gonna do about the lease?” Vinyl asked.
It sounded stupid.
“We have a guest room,” Octavia said. “We’re good at living together, I think. We can make it work a while longer.”
“I could move in with--” Vinyl stopped herself. With who? “--uh. Somepony.”
“Like who?” Octavia asked, the hint of smirk creeping onto her face. “The princess?” She nodded back in the direction of the thriving party.
Vinyl laughed lightly, but not at all sincerely. She wished she was back inside. It’s not every day you get to play at a Wonderbolt’s birthday party, after all.
“We’ll work it out,” Octavia said, her voice at once gentle and firm. Just in the way that the air was both warm and cool. “I can help you look for a place.”
“N-nah.” Vinyl shook her head. “It’s cool. I got this.”
She didn’t. But she would try.
The song ended. There was a brief, anticipatory silence, followed by a rush of cheers. It washed over the pitch like a wave.
Vinyl slid a hoof along the grass, just to feel the dew soak her hoof. “We did the right thing, right?”
“We did.”
“But the plan was--”
“So it didn’t go quite as planned,” Octavia interrupted. “Maybe I don’t love plans as much as I used to.”
“But what about--”
“Oh, hush.”
Octavia held Vinyl’s gaze a moment longer, but the far-off twittering of a bird caught her ear, and she looked up to catch its silhouette against the stars. Vinyl watched, too, as it darted across the sky.
“Sit with me, would you?” Octavia asked. Her eyes sparkled in the fading light.
Vinyl balked. “In the stands?”
“In the grass, you dope.”
She didn’t wait, just tucked her tail to one side and slid down into a bed of dewdrops. Her skin prickled at the sensation, a little ripple of muscles down her side.
Vinyl hesitated, but plopped clumsily down beside her companion. "Y'know, I wasn't trying to--"
"We don't have to talk," Octavia said simply. "We can just look at the stars."
Vinyl closed her mouth.
A little whisper of a breeze swirled over the pitch. It barely ruffled the strong blades of grass, but it whipped Octavia’s mane about her neck. Vinyl, not thinking, reached out with a magical touch to pull it all away.
Octavia looked back at her companion--her once companion--with an ache that cannot be described.
“We used to be so close,” Vinyl whispered.
“We aren’t anymore.”
“But we could be again.”
“We won’t be,” Octavia said with unmistakable firmness. “And that’s okay. Isn’t it?”
Vinyl was silent.
She breathed deeply of the cool night air, and that her chest was open and free.
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess it is.”
Octavia looked at her ex-marefriend with an emotion that cannot be named. She held open one foreleg for an embrace, and Vinyl leaned against her barrel fondly.
“I love you,” Vinyl said.
And she meant it differently than she’d meant it these past few years. But maybe that was okay.
The humid stickiness of their skin felt cool as any summer night.
Go on. Pick one.
Cicadas sound the same on every summer night.
Every single one.
A warm rush of sound, followed by a gentle ebb. The clicking and chirping of crickets above it all, underscored by wind in the reeds and the leaves. Now and then, a bird. A bat. Other creatures, perhaps not so easily identified.
On any other night, Twilight would have taken notice of the unusual twittering in the air. On any other night, she may have matched it to a field guide and excitedly chattered away about Berunda songs and behaviors. Tonight, however, her own hiccuping sobs ripped through it all.
It isn’t important how Twilight found her way to the Buckball pitch. It only mattered that she was there, tearing over the dew-laden grass and not daring to look back.
Stupid. So, so stupid.
It was the only thought in her head, overriding everything else. Just like the way her crying had overtaken the cicadas.
She soon found herself gasping for air, and skidded to a sudden stop on the pitch. Dead-center, of course. Had her mind been in one piece, she may have likened herself to a stage performer-- the spotlight on her, center-stage, ready for her big solo.
And all she could do was cry, though, joining the swelling symphony of nature and the muffled sounds of the party in a fantastic display of young adult angst.
She never made mistakes like this.
She had a plan, and the plan was to never do a thing like this.
She was the perfect student, the perfect princess, the perfect friend. None of those ponies would ever do a thing like this, certainly not on the night of--
“Twilight?”
Twilight sucked in a breath and quickly wiped away the tears on her cheeks-- not that it would have done any good. Rarity knew quite well what Twilight was doing out here.
Rarity, after all, had followed Twilight to the Buckball pitch.
“I’m sorry, I just--” Twilight choked on her words. “I wasn’t going to--”
“Hush, now.”
Twilight felt the welcome presence of her friend’s hoof on her shoulder, but the guilt made her crumple onto the grass. Her tears flowed all over again, just like the cicadas thrumming in the distance. Her wings collapsed at her sides. She trembled like a leaf.
Rarity stroked Twilight’s shoulder.
Twilight cringed into herself all the more.
There was an odd sort of silence just then. The kind when you want nothing more than to cry, but simply can’t bring yourself to make a sound. And you hold it down, like bile boiling in your throat, feeling worse and worse until it finally spills out.
Twilight spluttered once more; an ugly sound, but no uglier than the cicadas.
“Say something,” she choked.
“Hm?” Rarity paused her stroking.
Twilight took in a huge breath, barely containing another sob. “Say something.”
The comforting hoof on Twilight’s shoulder slowly withdrew. Its vacancy left her skin cold and longing.
“I’m… not sure what you’d want to hear,” Rarity murmured.
Twilight sniffled and lifted her head. “It doesn’t matter what I want,” she said, wiping aggressively at the tears which pooled under her eyes. “Say what you really think.”
Rarity sighed and slid down into the grass beside her friend. She looked up at the sky, as if hoping for answers in the stars, but they were drowned out by the floodlights of the Buckball pitch. Just like Twilight drowned out the cicadas.
“You certainly surprised me,” Rarity said, the hint of a chuckle on her tongue.
Twilight moaned and buried her face in her forelegs.
“I didn’t say it was a bad surprise!” Rarity quickly corrected. “I just-- well, goodness, I don’t have any other way to say it.”
Another moan, this one softer. A little less insistent.
Rarity bit her tongue a moment. She looked down at her hooves, admiring the way her own coat seemed so pristine against the spray paint on the grass. She ran her hoof through it. It was strong. Rarity didn’t know a thing about grass, but she thought that strength in general was such a good quality, even if it wasn’t always easy to spot. The grass looked like any other grass, after all.
“You’ve never said anything about--”
“What was I supposed to say?” Twilight asked. “How do ponies do this? I’ve never-- I don’t understand how it just… happens.”
Rarity noted that trademark panicked tone; a tightness, if you will, in her friend’s voice.
Her dearest friend.
She reached over again, this time stroking Twilight’s mane. “I’ll be honest: I have absolutely no idea.”
Twilight peeked up at her friend.
Against all odds, she was beautiful. Nopony could look beautiful like this--sweaty and washed out and very nearly crying herself--but Rarity was. Her skin seemed all the more luminous, her eyes shining with a depth and a softness that seemed infinite as the night sky itself. She was undeniably gorgeous. Ethereal, even.
She overtook it all.
“You say something,” Rarity said. “Please.”
Twilight lifted her head. “I think I’ve said enough.”
Rarity giggled, a sound more beautiful than silver bells on Hearth’s Warming. “Quite the contrary, darling. You’ve hardly said a word.”
“You know what I mean.”
Rarity sighed. It sounded just like the wind in the leaves.
Twilight cleared her throat. “Rarity?”
“Yes?”
“I--” Twilight’s words caught in her throat, and she had to take a moment to center herself. “I love you.”
It seemed to echo, Twilight thought. It seemed to dart back and forth over the pitch, overtaking the cicadas and the crickets and the birds and the breeze. To Twilight, it felt as frantic and senseless as she was.
To Rarity, it was the joyful melody of the summer night symphony.
It wasn’t the plan, of course. Not the plan at all.
But it hadn’t been the plan to kiss Rarity, either.
And Twilight had done both.
Rarity did not move. She only stared at Twilight, right in the eyes-- goodness, how her eyes sparkled in the dark. In those eyes, Twilight saw the feeling of a summer night. If only she could give it some other name, she thought.
That’s what it was, though. Why muddy it?
A summer night in Rarity’s eyes.
Then Rarity ran her hoof along Twilight’s jaw, gentle as the breeze, and kissed her back.
And their hearts swelled, like the sound of the cicadas on a summer night. Any one at all.
Go on. Pick one.
The sky on a summer night is always a color you could never name.
It’s practically a rule. An immutable law of time and space and matter; you will see a color you have never seen before in the sky on a summer night. And it will change you forever, if you’re lucky.
Rainbow Dash was dazzled every time. You wouldn’t peg her as the type to notice things like that, but she had been trained to. Many, many birthdays ago.
It was a ritual of hers. A very private one. Despite the crowds of ponies celebrating her--Rainbow Dash, the element of loyalty, the Wonderbolt--this was undeniably her favorite part of any birthday. Of any summer night, period.
There was just something about roaming beneath the open sky. Rainbow had picked this venue specifically for its wide, open spaces. For its Buckball pitch.
As a foal, the plan had been the weather factory.
She kind of hated to admit that, honestly. She had admitted it to very few.
Okay, one. One particular pony whose name starts with “flutter” and ends with “shy”.
It wasn’t, like, a big deal or anything. That first rainboom had kinda changed all of her “plans” or whatever. Who plans to suddenly bust out an aerial move that breaks every law of time and space and matter?
Maybe not the night-sky-color law.
She had studied that stuff, young as she was. Actually, she had gone through a major phase as a foal where she’d been totally obsessed with all things weather. That had, of course, been overshadowed by the Wonderbolts stuff later.
But, hey. Rainbow Dash loved hard. And, boy, had she loved weather.
All of it. Everything. The science, the art, the form, the history.
Did she have all of that as a Wonderbolt? Of course.
Was it infinitely better and cooler than being some anonymous weather pony?
Rainbow glanced over her shoulder at the party raging back at the convention center.
She pulled a convention center for her birthday party.
Yeah. This was totally better.
But, every once in a while, Rainbow Dash would look up at the sky on a summer night and remember it all. Remember the plan.
Things hadn’t gone quite as planned, but that was okay. Good, even.
But, honestly, it doesn’t matter why Rainbow was on the Buckball pitch that night. She could have been looking for a place to sneak a nap, or she could have snuck out of a club for a breath of fresh air.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she was there, and she was looking up at the sky with an emotion that couldn’t be named.
Just like the colors she saw up there.
Rainbow Dash closed her eyes and breathed deep and long. Filled to the brim with the cool night air, she fell backwards into the grass of the Buckball pitch and spread her wings out wide.
It felt almost like soaring through a silken cloud, if she squirmed just right and imagined as hard as she could.
That young version of herself--the very youngest that Rainbow Dash could remember--was like a separate entity. Her best memories of being that age came in the form of photographs and stories and hazily-remembered facts, not so much the first-hoof feeling of her modern self. Little Dashie was something entirely separate from herself now.
And that was good.
Because, as much as Rainbow hated to admit it, she didn’t think they would get along so well.
Rainbow closed her eyes and placed her hooves on her chest.
That tiny filly, beaming with pride in a grainy photograph in front of the weather factory, wouldn’t understand. Not yet. Her life was all science and numbers and being that small part of a big team.
Now, it was all about fame.
It was about big birthday parties and loud music and her name in every newspaper.
Rainbow smiled at the thought. Such is the way of the limelight, right?
There was a soft rustle in the grass to her left. Rainbow gasped lightly and scooted away.
And there she was. Grainy as a photograph, her mane shimmering not with the colors of the rainbow but with those unnameable colors of the night sky. Tiny and scraggly and undeniably wild.
“D-Dashie?” Rainbow whispered.
The filly blinked. “Hey… you look kinda like me.” Her voice somehow came from the crickets and the wind and the cicadas.
It almost made Rainbow laugh out loud. She rubbed her eyes, expecting the image to vanish, and yet she still stood there.
“I… I am,” Rainbow said. “I think.”
“You are?” Dashie circled Rainbow’s head, eying up the pony in the grass. “But… you’re a Wonderbolt.”
The memory was coming back to her, bleary and distant. A dream. A dream from so, so long ago. A dream about her future.
“Uh… yeah,” Rainbow said.
Dashie scoffed. “Then you can’t be me. I’m gonna work at the Weather Factory.”
She said it like that. Undue importance, capital letters. Her fuzzy little chest puffed out with pride.
Rainbow pushed herself off the grass. “I mean-- yeah, I worked there for a while. But now I’m a Wonderbolt,” she said, the same undue importance on a new word. “That’s where it’s at, squirt.”
Dashie tilted her head. “What about mom and dad?”
Rainbow scoffed. “You kidding? They’re crazy proud.”
“But they wanted you to be a Weather Pony, didn’t they?”
Rainbow sat up, looking deep into the ghostly eyes of her younger self. They shimmered like the moon in a puddle, ethereally distant and quickly dispelled.
“They’ll be proud of us no matter what we end up doing,” Rainbow said. “They love us.”
“Well, yeah, but…” Dashie looked at the ground, not bothering to finish her thought.
“Hey, hey.” Rainbow put a hoof on her younger self’s shoulder, and it felt just like dew-laden grass and silken clouds. “They love us. And… I love you, too.”
Yeah.
Rainbow--both Rainbows, but only one body--fell back into the grass.
“I love you,” she whispered again.
She could feel the dewy, cloud-like softness filling her up inside.
She leapt to her hooves, staring back up at the sky. “I love you!” she shouted.
But it didn’t quite mean that.
It meant something else. Something that can’t quite be said; at least, not in the words we have so far.
It felt like one of those unnamable colors in the sky on any summer night.
Go on.
Pick one.