//------------------------------//
// A Talk with Twilight 
// Story: Home Is Where the Hearts Are 
// by Violet CLM 
//------------------------------//

When Rainbow Dash used to wonder at her lack of clear home, she never expected she would come to lose track of her house as well.

It wasn’t that her physical cloud house had gone missing; it still floated above Ponyville, dripping rainbow juice, requiring only occasional adjustments to make sure it didn’t drift too far away or get lost in the Everfree Forest. But with Rainbow Dash’s new relationship came a need to define locations for being together, and that proved complicated. Pinkie, Rainbow Dash was mostly certain, could not actually fly, and Twilight was only so willing to cast repeat cloud-walking spells on her, so they couldn’t spend too much time up there. Pinkie still lived in Sugarcube Corner, where she was coming to take on more and more responsibilities, but that place was not as spacious as it had used to be. The Cakes’ children whom Pinkie had once learned to change and burp were growing up, needing more and more room, and neither Rainbow Dash nor the Cakes were comfortable with the children running around and catching Pinkie and Rainbow Dash in potentially compromising moments. This left only Fluttershy’s house, and so Rainbow Dash frequently found herself in the unusual position of needing to visit her girlfriend’s other girlfriend in order to spend time with her.

Fortunately, as Rarity had suggested on that first, overpacked day, Fluttershy was more than just Rainbow Dash’s girlfriend’s other girlfriend. She was also her oldest friend, and while that relationship certainly had to be continually renegotiated, it did not softly and silently vanish away. Whenever Pinkie or Twilight or anypony else brought up the subject, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were quick to make assurances that they were great friends. There was nothing, absolutely nothing that Rainbow Dash would feel uncomfortable telling Fluttershy, and there was nothing that Fluttershy believed Rainbow Dash couldn’t do if she put her mind to it, and they were still the absolute best of friends. If anything, they had to put in conscious effort to spend time with their other friends, they saw each other and Pinkie so frequently.

And so when Aerilyn’s Aerial Aerodeo soared into town, Rainbow Dash recruited Applejack instead of Fluttershy to be her cheering section while she trained. The earth pony was far more experienced in rodeo techniques, albeit grounded ones, and there was never any danger that she might inflate Rainbow Dash’s expectations beyond what was reasonable. Applejack was as free with criticism as she was with praise, and Rainbow Dash’s skills soared. She did miss the feeling of being praised by somepony who thought she could do no wrong, and even when she did do wrong, well, she had tried very hard and was sure to get it right the next time – but she saw Fluttershy all the time! Sometimes they would all three would go out cloudgazing, and Rainbow Dash would think that a cloud looked like a falcon, and Pinkie would agree with her, and Fluttershy would think that same cloud looked like an otter, and Pinkie would manage to agree with her too.

(Pinkie bought front row tickets for the Aerodeo for herself and Fluttershy, with the help of Twilight’s cloud-walking spell, and Rainbow Dash had never been happier to see that enormous foam finger raised gleefully in the air. And when Fluttershy missed her triumphant first place finish in the stormcloud-tying event because she was looking at Pinkie at the time… well, it only hurt a little, because she was quick to praise Rainbow Dash for it later on at home. Still, the victory never felt quite as meaningful as Rainbow Dash had expected it would.)

When the time came for the annual butterfly migration, Fluttershy invited Rarity instead of Rainbow Dash to accompany her. The unicorn was entranced with the little insects, and their excursion led to the creation of her popular Glimmer Wings fashion line, which even Rainbow Dash agreed to model for her despite having perfectly good wings of her own. Pinkie thought, and Rainbow Dash agreed, that Rarity made for a better butterfly-watching companion anyway, since she was much less likely to spend half the time making dirty jokes about their flying formations to try and get Fluttershy to blush. Besides, they spent plenty of time together doing other things; sometimes when Pinkie had fallen asleep in the middle of a late night conversation, the two of them would recount stories of how Pinkie had done this on one of their dates, or said that, and laugh fondly at the antics of their mutual beloved.

(Rainbow Dash hadn’t originally planned to model the Glimmer Wings line, and when Fluttershy suggested she give it a try, she laughed it off. But Rarity did have a way with words, and Applejack a way with blackmail. As for the butterfly migration: part of her did remember a conversation she’d once had with Fluttershy where she had asked why Fluttershy invited her to such boring things. Fluttershy had answered that she loved challenging Rainbow Dash to try out new things, because someday her brave friend was sure to find herself loving something she’d never have expected, just like she had with reading. Also, if it wasn’t too presumptuous, Fluttershy was always flattered that Rainbow Dash would be willing to do things just because she knew that her friend enjoyed them. And then Rainbow Dash had had to admit that yes, she had never once actually turned down one of Fluttershy’s invitations. So when Rarity was invited instead of her, it did hurt, though only a little.)

When apple cider season began, using for the first time the new and more streamlined means of production that Rarity had introduced into Sweet Apple Acres, it was Twilight instead of Fluttershy whom Rainbow Dash dragged from her bed in the early hours of the morning. The first cider of the season was always the best, and the old egghead was never going to discover that without a little help. Pinkie, of course, was camped out at the very front of the line, and she was perfectly happy to share her spot with a lover and a close friend. Together the three of them made plans for a joint Applejack and Rarity party for the end of cider season, with Pinkie providing the more specialized party knowledge, Twilight handling some of the advanced logistics, and Rainbow Dash offering up raw ideas and enthusiasm to be molded into solid plans by her two compatriots. When Fluttershy arrived somewhat later, also getting to share Pinkie’s tent with them, she didn’t have much to contribute to the party conversation, but Rainbow Dash was nevertheless glad to see her because they were the very best of friends.

(The sunlight was overly bright that morning, making it hard to see Fluttershy’s expression when she appeared, but Rainbow Dash thought for just a moment that it might have looked slightly hurt. She wasn’t 100% sure, though, and it would have been presumptuous to say anything about it, no matter how guilty she found herself feeling later on.)

When Fluttershy somehow managed to net a combined concert for herself and her bird choir, playing in the royal theater in Canterlot of all places, it was from Sweetie Belle that Rainbow Dash first heard about it. By that time, Pinkie had already successfully organized a test audience of randomly picked ponies to deal with any of Fluttershy’s lingering stage fright. When questioned, Rainbow Dash’s friends assured her that they hadn’t mentioned the concert because they assumed she already knew about it, and Fluttershy, bashfully, said that she was so used to Rainbow Dash knowing everything she did that bringing it up had completely slipped her mind. Neither of them said that part of the reason they knew so much about each other’s activities was how much time they both spent with Pinkie. All in all there was nopony that Rainbow Dash could rightfully find to blame for her taking so long to hear about the concert, and she splurged and got front row tickets for herself and Pinkie to see it.

(A conversation with Medley the day of the concert ended up going longer than Rainbow Dash had anticipated, causing her to miss her train. She did manage to make it to the concert, about halfway in, and guiltily slid into her seat next to Pinkie. Because Fluttershy never mentioned noticing her late arrival, Rainbow Dash never quite saw the need to apologize for it, and after all, she was clueless enough about music that her praise was all quite generic and there was no way that Fluttershy could have noticed it all dealt with the material from the second half of the show. That night, as Fluttershy lay cradled in Pinkie’s hooves on her living room couch, Rainbow Dash thought she could just make out tears in her friend’s eyes – and thought for a moment that she might be on the verge of crying herself – but quite reasonably identified their source as extreme happiness at the show’s huge success. The fact that she’d never had so extended a conversation with Medley before, and never did so again, didn’t seem very important.)

When the pegasus waterspout generation duties rotated back to Ponyville, Rainbow Dash was once again put in charge, Scootaloo standing pluckily at her side. Fluttershy performed about as well as any other pegasus on the team, neither noticeably poorly nor noticeably well, and Rainbow Dash found no reason to give her special treatment or ask specifically how she was doing. To do so would have been disrespectful of her friend’s skills as a pegasus and her success in boosting her self-confidence, and Rainbow Dash had nothing but respect for Fluttershy. Still, their victory when they smashed the previous wingpower record felt oddly empty to her, and she made a note to let Scootaloo take charge instead the next time.

All in all, as the moments of “instead of Fluttershy” and “instead of Rainbow Dash” slowly increased, they also faded away. Not including Fluttershy became less and less a conscious decision until eventually Rainbow Dash gravitated towards Pinkie, or Twilight, or Applejack or Rarity or maybe the two of them together, by default. When one of her friends would ask casually if she didn’t usually do such and such a thing with Fluttershy, she’d answer yes, she guessed so, but the two of them were spending so much time together these days that she had to be sure to see her other awesome pals once in a while too! Besides, Fluttershy wasn’t really into this sort of thing; she’d just used to do it so Rainbow Dash wouldn’t be unhappy, but it’d be pretty lousy of her to keep on putting her friend into that kind of situation, right? And if she was talking to Twilight at the time, she’d be sure to throw in an anecdote or two about just how well she and Fluttershy and Pinkie were all getting along, because Twilight and Colgate were so Luna-damned perfect together and there was no way that Rainbow Dash was going to let Twilight look better than her at something.

Meanwhile her relationship with Pinkie was a thrill ride to end all thrill rides, and would definitely have made everything worthwhile had there been anything wrong to make worthwhile in the first place. Rainbow Dash’s lot in the relationship was dealing with Pinkie’s more active side, and they both flung themselves into that: Rainbow Dash to prove how awesome and devoted she was, and Pinkie Pie because she was Pinkie Pie. When Fluttershy baked with Pinkie, the results were delicate, perfectly-balanced confections that Rarity would have been happy to sell had they been clothes instead of cupcakes; when Rainbow Dash tried her hoof at it, the kitchen ended up a mess and the desserts were of questionable quality at best, but she had rarely laughed harder in all her days. Fluttershy and Pinkie liked to take walks together and marvel at all the wonders of the world around them; Rainbow Dash and Pinkie raced. The fastest pegasus in Equestria could never figure out how the pink earth pony could keep up with her wherever she went, and eventually stopped trying after one day when she got caught staring curiously at Pinkie’s long slender legs.

Pinkie giggled and pranced around. “Gee, Rainbow Dash, staring much? My little Pinkie legs are going to melt right off if you keep looking at them like that, and then you’d have to carry me around with you like a swan!”

Rainbow Dash didn’t bother complaining that nopony ever carried around swans. Instead she grinned at her girlfriend, embarrassed, and explained how she was trying to figure out how Pinkie could move so fast.

“That’s a great question!” said Pinkie. “Do you think we could strap a camera to me? I like cameras! But what if we figured out the answer and it took away all the mystery? I kind of like mystery, Rainbow Dash, don’t you? After all, remember what you always call me?”

Rainbow Dash kept grinning. “Pinkie Pie,” she said for the thousandth time, “you are so random.”

Not that there was anything wrong with random; random was fine. Actually, random was awesome! Random was sneaking into Sugarcube Corner at three in the morning in search of day-old donuts, only to discover that Pinkie had gotten a feeling she’d come by and was already baking a fresh batch just for her. Random was signing up for Pepperdance’s flamenco lessons together, and going in to Rarity to get appropriate outfits together, and then swapping costumes with one another at the very last minute before their performance, much to the dressmaker’s mortification. Random was getting off work for the day and descending earthwards in a bright spiral of clouds and miniature thunderclaps to find Pinkie below, likewise just off of work and waiting for her, full of wide open eyes, wide open smile, wide open hooves, wide open heart.

“Gee, Dashie, what do you want to do today?”

“The same thing we do every day, Pinkie –” and she would lean in close with that knowing look that Pinkie could never get enough of “— everything!”

Random was taking pranksmareship to a whole new level, so that even the victim felt part of the orchestration and was just as pleased as they were with how well it had come off. Random was flying blocks of ice down from mountaintops so that Pinkie could go ice-skating on the lake in summer, and then trying to join her, and then ending up skating so fast that she set the ice on fire by mistake and they had to swim to shore. Random was… random was… random was random. Rainbow Dash never once had the experience of idly proposing some wonderful idea only to have to write it off as too elaborate, because Pinkie was always ready to find a way with her to make it work, just so long as the idea didn’t involve leaving Ponyville. She would never leave Fluttershy. But so long as they kept themselves within the confines of the city, Rainbow Dash was confident that she could do anything at all, anywhere she pleased, and Pinkie would reward her with equal parts admiration and adoration. Pinkie was her lover and her fan. Her coolest fan. Her number one fan.

Her number one fan.

So time passed. Rainbow Dash’s relationship with Pinkie retained many of its qualities and activities from the days of their friendship alone, but with added dimensions of intimacy and sensuality. Had they been or desired to be more complicated ponies, they would have had long and heartfelt discussions about their fears and aspirations, but both were content to wear their hearts on their flanks. They still found time to hang out with their other friends, and were polite enough to save their more involved explorations of one another’s lips and bodies for when they were alone, Rainbow Dash knowing each time she tasted Pinkie that those same sensations were shared with another pony who deserved them every bit as much as she did. Pinkie Pie tasted like sugar and creamsicles and fresh cherries, and Rainbow Dash was forever impressed by how perfectly she distributed herself between her two partners, with equal time and excitement given happily to each of them.

This state of affairs might have progressed quite indefinitely had not Pinkie one night, just before going to bed, looked at them and said she worried that they were both sad about something.

“Sad?” asked Fluttershy. Her pink mane shone in the starlight around them and she already looked saddened for having upset her girlfriend. “What do you mean, Pinkie?”

For her part, Rainbow Dash scoffed. “Yeah, right! What do I have to be sad about? I’ve got the greatest girlfriend in all of Equestria, and plenty of awesome friends for when she’s busy!”

“But what if that’s the problem, Dashie?” asked Pinkie Pie, and yawned hugely. “I mean, sometimes you busy yourself with our friends because I’m busy with Flutters, but if I’m busy getting busy with her then you can’t be busy with her at all unless I’m there too and then you’re really busying yourself with me and nothing’s changed!” She stopped, appearing to have confused even herself, but then brightened. “Ooh, unless you hang out together all the time up in the sky where I can’t see it! Do you?!”

Fluttershy glanced at Rainbow Dash, evidently worried. “Umm… not exactly, no.”

“See? Remember back when you two used to hang out all the time? Well not really all the time all the time, more like some of the time all the time, but still! I just don’t get it! You guys are friends, right?”

“Pssh, duh!” said Rainbow Dash. “Why wouldn’t we be? It’s just with you around, Pinkie, we…”

Fluttershy looked as lost for words as Rainbow Dash suddenly felt. “We…”

Pinkie giggled inappropriately. “Aww, you girls! I know I’m super sweet and make you happy and all, but you should really make each other happy too, don’t you think? That’s what friends do! Unless I guess if you two fell in love with each other too then everything would work out, but that sounds pretty tricky. I dunno! Just promise me you’ll hang out together soon, okay? Pinkie Promise?”

They both repeated Pinkie’s sacred oath, and her face split into a wide smile. “Yay! Oh, I love you both so much! Sometimes I wonder ‘Pinkie, which one do you love more?’ and then I just sit there thinking to myself how great Rainbow Dash is when she does this, or how amazing Fluttershy is when she does that, and then some hours go by and at the end I don’t have an answer but I feel super lucky and happy and—“ she yawned again, hugely, and then followed it up with a laugh “—and sleepy, I guess! Good night, girls! I love you!”

Pinkie Pie made her way off into the night, leaving the two pegasi standing there, silent. “Rainbow Dash,” said Fluttershy at long last, “our Pinkie thinks we need to see each other more.”

“Yeah,” said Rainbow Dash. “So, uh… what do you wanna do?”

“Oh, I’m not very picky,” said Fluttershy. “What would you like to do?”

Rainbow Dash knew that Pinkie hadn’t really made any sort of suggestion for what they were supposed to, but she had said something else, and if she knew Fluttershy at all, she was sure that those words were hanging just as heavily on the other pegasus right then as they were on her. And because she was thoughtlessly impulsive, and endearingly tactless, and an unthinking loudmouth, and above all else deathly loyal to her girlfriend no matter the personal cost, she asked the question she had spent so much time mocking – “Fluttershy, would you like to go on a date with me sometime soon?” – hoping as she had never hoped before that Fluttershy would say no, that they could come up with something else to do…

And Fluttershy said “That sounds lovely, Rainbow Dash,” her eyes full of terror…

And they made plans for dinner the next evening, and agreed on a place and a time, and then, the moment everything had been decided on, fled in opposite directions.





There was only one place she could really go next. She definitely didn’t need Applejack’s help to come up with the idea of telling Fluttershy exactly what she’d been going through, totally inappropriate as that might be for a first date. Rarity could say all she wanted about being generous or loyal or whatever, but if in practice that meant a romance where they seemed to spend half their time arguing with one another over the smallest things imaginable, then Rainbow Dash wanted none of it. She didn’t want to fight with Fluttershy. What she wanted was a way to take their friendship and make sure it stayed forever perfect. What she needed was the Element of Magic.

“Hi Spike!” she said, once he finally opened the door after what must have been a full minute of continuous pounding. “Is Twilight upstairs?” The green and purple dragon was no longer quite a baby, but he was aging much more slowly than Scootaloo and her friends and the other ponies around them, and still as short as ever.

“Rainbow Dash?” Spike looked blearily at her, and she noticed the bedclothes that were still wrapped around him. Well, too bad: this was no time for napping. “Uhh, yeah, she is, but…”

“Thanks gotta go!” Rainbow Dash practically threw Spike to the side as she rushed in the door, pausing just quickly enough to avoid slamming into a bookshelf before turning around and heading up the stairs. It had taken her this many months to bring herself to really talk to Twilight about her relationship, and she wasn’t going to give herself a chance to back out now. This was important. No, this was way more than important, it was super important. The light was on in Twilight’s bedroom, suggesting the scholar was not yet abed, and she raced in without bothering to knock. “Twilight, I need your help!” she cried.

“Rainbow Dash?” A familiar purple face emerged, somewhat frightened, from beneath the pile of covers atop the bed. “What are you doing here? Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Not really!” said Rainbow Dash, prepared to put all her cards on the table. “Look, Twilight, I really need your advice for this date I’m supposed to go on, and it looked like you were awake, and—“

“You need advice for a date?” Twilight looked even more confused than she had before Rainbow Dash had started to explain. “Don’t you and Pinkie Pie go on dates all the time?”

“This one’s not Pinkie, it’s Fluttershy.”

“You’re going out with Fluttershy now too?”

“No! I mean, yes! No! I don’t know, that’s what I’m here to figure out!”

“You’re hysterical,” said Twilight. She looked thoughtful for a moment and then turned to look at the pile of covers. “Colgate, umm, I’m sorry, but this sounds kind of important, and…”

Another unicorn, this one bright blue with a blue and white mane, popped into view. Rainbow Dash felt herself go red. “It’s okay, Twilight,” said Colgate, displaying one of her trademark smiles. “See you tomorrow?”

“Definitely,” said Twilight, and gave the other unicorn a quick peck on the lips. Colgate shook the covers off of her and, somewhat unsteadily, made her way out of the room. They watched her silently as she left, Twilight looking worried but affectionate and Rainbow Dash’s face a mask of embarrassment.

“Wow, Twilight, I’m really sorry,” she said after Colgate had gone. “I didn’t know she was here, I mean, um, and…”

“Come on,” said Twilight abruptly, “I’ll make us tea and you can tell me what you’ve gotten yourself into this time.”

“I don’t drink tea.”

“Too bad.”

“Do you have any soda?”

“No.”

Waiting for the tea to be made was painful, since Twilight shot down any attempt she made to begin talking in the meantime, but it ended up being worth it. Twilight was much more amiable once she’d gotten some of the tea in her, and after several more attempts by Rainbow Dash to apologize, she warmed up enough to ask what exactly was going on. This of course forced Rainbow Dash to figure out for herself exactly what was going on, but it was still better than feeling she had gotten her friend angry at her.

“Well,” she said, deciding to put it as simply as possible, “you know how Pinkie and I are going out, right?” Twilight said something about this being obvious. “And how she’s also going out with Fluttershy? Right. Well, now Pinkie thinks that Fluttershy and I should get together too.”

“Huh.” Twilight blew at her tea. “So this is Pinkie’s idea? Why?”

“I dunno! She said something dumb about Fluttershy and I not being good enough friends, and she thinks that if we fell for each other, we’d make each other happy. You know. Random Pinkie stuff.”

Twilight grinned for a moment, though she quickly relaxed into a more somber expression. “Rainbow… how much help do you want me to try to be?”

Rainbow Dash frowned. “Huh? As much help as possible, I guess. It’s not like I’m gonna come here in the middle of the night so you can make a few vague statements that don’t get me anywhere.”

“Well, okay!” said Twilight, once more looking cheerful. This particular cheerfulness, though, was one that Rainbow Dash knew a little too well: Twilight was feeling organized. “Rainbow, as your good friend, I promise you will not leave this library until you feel well and truly advised!”

Yeah, she was beginning to regret this decision. “You’re not gonna make me lie on a bench again, are you?”

“Would you like to?! I haven’t gotten any use out of my couch in ages, not since Twinkle visited from Canterlot the other month and we had this amazing conversation all about the meaning of friendship!”

“Umm… not really, no. Honestly, if we could get through this without props, that’d be fine.”

“Awww.” Rainbow Dash had a strange feeling that somewhere in the library, a couch was being pushed back into a closet. “No props at all? Not even the folders?”

“The what?”

“It’s my newest hobby!” said Twilight, standing up proudly. “I’ve been keeping folders on all five of you, filled with my memories of all the things we’ve said and done together, so I can refer to specific moments in the past in case I ever need to for some reason! It’s kind of like a scrapbook, except putting everything in folders means they’re more organized, and I can change the order of things around if I have to. I got the idea when Applejack and Rarity had that big fight about the merits of pancakes that didn’t have apples in them, and I thought if I came up with enough examples of what good friends they really were, then they’d stop fighting!”

Rainbow Dash thought back to the argument in question. “Right,” she said, beginning to smile, “I remember that. And you heroically forced them apart, and were all set for the lecture of your life…”

“…yes, and then they explained that I shouldn’t be worried, because arguing was just their form of… um…”

“Foreplay?”

Twilight went scarlet. “Aheheh! That’s not exactly the word I had in mind, but yes, I suppose so. The Princess found my letter, err, very amusing.”

“Yeah, I bet she would,” said Rainbow Dash. “So where’s my folder? Can I read it?”

Twilight waved her hoof uncomfortably in the air. “Umm… I’ll give you an abridged version later, okay? I just thought that it might be useful to get out Fluttershy’s, or maybe Pinkie’s, depending on what you want to talk about.”

“I… don’t see any reason why not, I guess. Just no couch!”

Twilight smiled a bit. “Cross my heart, hope to—“

“And no Pinkie Promises tonight!”

Twilight’s smile grew wider.

Soon the kitchen table, in addition to Twilight’s cup of tea, was burdened with two enormous folders, one pink and the other yellow. Papers jutted out from each folder in all directions, covered in Twilight’s inscrutable pictographs and immaculate hoofwriting, with occasional photos also peeking out from under the cover. And this was supposed to be more organized than a scrapbook?

“All right,” said Twilight, “I guess we’re ready to begin! So, Rainbow, you were saying? Pinkie wants you and Fluttershy to go on a date together?”

“Yeah, something like that,” answered Rainbow Dash.

“Why?”

“I told you, she thinks we’re not making each other happy anymore or something. Pinkie being Pinkie, same as usual.”

“Is she?”

“Huh?”

Twilight frowned, and Rainbow Dash got a feeling she was about to be treated to a moment of insight. “Is she only ‘being Pinkie’?”

“What else? I mean, I see Fluttershy all the time.”

“Well, okay. Still… I agree that Pinkie Pie isn’t always the best judge of how other ponies are feeling.” Twilight reached for the pink folder and began to flip through it. “Remember the Cranky Doodle incident, when she didn’t understand why he didn’t want to be friends with her?”

“Heh, yeah.” She was long accustomed to being woken up at odd hours of the day by Pinkie’s overjoyed cries of “Guess what, Rainbow Dash! I made a new friend!”, but that time had been particularly overjoyed. “And the time she thought those stupid gala snobs didn’t want to party, but par-tay?”

“Exactly. And even before that, in Appleloosa, when she thought she could make everypony get along with her sharing and caring song.”

Rainbow Dash nodded hesitantly. “Did… did, um, you ever apologize to her for that? I mean, we all said some kinda obnoxious stuff about that song.”

Twilight looked surprised. “Of course! I think we all did, once things had calmed down a little. Didn’t you?”

Rainbow Dash’s heart sank. No, she hadn’t ever apologized to Pinkie for saying how horrible that song had been, and as time had gone on, it had gotten harder and harder to say anything. “So what’s your point?” she asked instead, ignoring the issue. “Pinkie misinterprets things, just like I said.”

“Yes, but…” Twilight pursed her lips for a moment. “But she has a very consistent pattern of misinterpretation which gravitates heavily towards the optimistic, befitting her role as hilarity personified.” She looked at Rainbow Dash’s blank expression and tried again. “What I mean is, Pinkie Pie tends to assume everypony around her is happy. It takes a lot to make her think somepony’s upset, which makes me worry that maybe you and Fluttershy aren’t getting along so well as you might want to think. I, um, actually have some recorded events in this other folder that might work to corroborate her beliefs, and…”

Rainbow Dash tuned out Twilight’s next several examples as she thought about the time she had never told anypony about, not even Fluttershy. The time she had come to Sugarcube Corner and found Pinkie gone completely insane. They had all seen Pinkie’s distrust after Rainbow Dash had brought her to her surprise party by force, but only Rainbow Dash had gotten to see the full insanity. That, though, had taken a full day of every single one of her best friends shunning her completely. Maybe Twilight was right? Pinkie Pie was random, but her randomness leant towards everything being all right, not sudden beliefs that the two ponies she cared most about were unhappy. Was it possible that Pinkie – Pinkie! – had noticed something that she hadn’t seen? Or something that she had seen, a long time ago even, but had refused to admit to herself?

“…and so,” concluded Twilight, “there is some evidence that the bond between you and Fluttershy may not be as strong as it used to be.”

Oh, right; she had forgotten for a moment that she was still talking to Twilight. Twilight, the last pony in Ponyville she wanted to know about this if it was true. “Come on, Twilight, is that all you got?” she asked weakly. “A bunch of stories that I was totally listening to? Fluttershy and I go back, like, super far.”

“I know that, Rainbow,” said Twilight, “and I think that’s what’s making it harder. I mean, I grew up with Twinkle, and that made it next to impossible for her to admit that we weren’t friends anymore, after I had moved to Ponyville. But she needed to admit that – and, okay, we had to take some time off too – before we could become friends again.”

“ ‘Admit’ that, huh?” Rainbow Dash tried to look haughty. “You calling me a liar?”

Twilight’s eyes went wide in alarm. “What? No! I wouldn’t…” She broke off and sighed. “Rainbow Dash, can I tell you a story?”

“What, about you and Twinkle?”

“No, a more exciting one. Did I ever tell you about the time I met a hydra?”

Rainbow Dash was instantly attentive. “A hydra? Seriously? Why didn’t you invite me?!”

“Heh, well, it wasn’t exactly premeditated,” said Twilight with an embarrassed cough. “It’s part of a larger story about me learning to trust Pinkie – so I guess it ties in to our conversation in that way, too! – but anyway, none of us expected to run into it. Applejack and Pinkie Pie and Spike and I were in Froggy Bottom Bog looking for Fluttershy, and we’d just found her when the hydra attacked us.”

“Yeah? So what did you do?!”

“We ran.”

“Boring.”

“Hey, it was really scary!” Twilight ignored Rainbow Dash’s eye-rolling and continued. “We all ran until we reached this ravine, and the only way across was a series of incredibly unsafe rock platforms. The others all made it across, but I was scared, and the hydra had gotten so close that there wasn’t enough room for me to get a good running start. What do you think I did next?”

Rainbow Dash pointed lazily at her friend’s horn. “You teleported across.”

Twilight looked confused. “Now that you mention it, that would have been a really good idea.”

“Heh, that’s me! Always good at thinking in times of crisis.”

“Well, exactly! See, what happened was I stood there and asked myself, ‘What would a brave pony like Rainbow Dash do?’ “

Rainbow Dash thought about it for a moment. “Against a hydra? I guess I’d dash in there and kick it where it wouldn’t forget me in a hurry!” She paused and looked at Twilight, eyes gleaming hopefully. “Wait, you didn’t…?”

“No,” said Twilight with a smile, “I didn’t. Sorry. But I pretended to for a moment. I charged at it as aggressively as I could, putting it off guard, and I ran around to confuse it, and then I used that extra space to make a run for it and try to jump across the ravine.”

“Huh,” said Rainbow Dash. “Well, that’s still kind of awesome, I guess. I didn’t know I was your go-to girl for bravery.”

“Rainbow, you’re Ponyville’s biggest hero, remember?” asked Twilight. “Who else would I think of? For that matter, I’m pretty sure I would’ve had a thing for you back then, if…”

She stopped, but Rainbow Dash had already caught on and was laughing uproariously. “Seriously?” she managed between guffaws. “You, a crush on me? The egghead and the superstar? Oh man, that’s so rich!”

“Yes, well,” said Twilight, a hint of Rarity in her voice, “I guess we can write off my theory about your not being such good friends with Fluttershy anymore, then. Clearly you are far too sensitive about other ponies’ feelings for that.”

Rainbow Dash forced herself to stop laughing, though it took a few seconds. “Aww, man, I’m sorry, Twilight,” she said. “Honest, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed like that. It’s just, we have so little in common, you know, back then especially, and I was really surprised…”

“It’s okay, Rainbow,” said Twilight, echoing her own girlfriend’s words of earlier in the evening. “I mean, you’re right: we’re very different. Besides, I didn’t actually have a crush on you, you know, the whole thing with Colgate was in the way.”

“Right, yeah,” said Rainbow Dash, still not entirely sure if she understood all the intricacies of her friend’s romantic history, helpful as she was pretty sure she had been in bringing them about. “So is that, like, the point of your story? I’m brave?”

“Mostly. You said yourself – you would have attacked the problem head-on. Or, um, maybe in some other part of the body.” She blushed a little. “I started out brave, but then I got strategic and ran around and eventually ended up running away. I think that’s what you’re doing here – you came into my house really aggressively, but now that we’re getting deeper into the issue, you’re starting to make compromises, and eventually you may run away from the conversation entirely. If you really want my help with Fluttershy, you’ll need to be Rainbow Dash, not Twilight Sparkle pretending to be Rainbow Dash.”

“…” Rainbow Dash stared at the table while Twilight took advantage of the silence to take another drink from her tea. Twilight did have a point: she was way too awesome and impetuous to be running away from things like this. Or, wait, what was it she was supposed to be running away from again? Fluttershy? Of course not. There was something wrong with her threeway relationship, but it sure wasn’t her and Fluttershy. Whatever it was, though, was still something she wasn’t comfortable letting Twilight learn about, which wasn’t brave at all, which meant…

“You’re wrong,” she said.

“Beg pardon?”

“You’ve got it all backwards. I’m no Twilight Sparkle pretending to be Rainbow Dash… I’m Rainbow Dash pretending to be Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight blinked a couple times, and then grinned. “Okay, you’ve lost me there! But I think we’re breaking new ground, and it sounds very exciting! Are you sure you don’t want the couch? I promise I wouldn’t even wear my glasses.”

“Totally sure.”

“Fine…”

“Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that you’re perfect. No, not like in that way,” she added, as Twilight was already pretending to look flattered and seductive. “Like, you and Colgate are so perfect together, and you guys always get along, and you’re always happy, and the idea of coming to you and saying ‘hey there Ms. Shut-In Librarian, I know you’re absolutely tops in love and everything, but I’m awful at it, can you give me some pointers,’ well, that’s what’s terrifying.” She paused in sudden reflection. “I guess it’s not quite so terrifying when I’m actually doing it.”

“Lots of things aren’t,” said Twilight, and looked at Rainbow Dash sadly. “Oh, Rainbow Dash… you really believe all that? You think Colgate and I have some sort of magical, fairytale romance and nothing ever goes wrong, and you didn’t want to seem, I dunno, inferior to me?”

“Well, yeah!” Rainbow Dash waved her hooves wildly in the air. “Of course you’d have this magical romance, you’re the Element of Magic! What else am I supposed to think, huh?”

“Rainbow Dash,” said Twilight again. “Did you ever wonder why Applejack is so distrustful of magic?”

Rainbow Dash shrugged, not really all that surprised by the apparent non-sequitur. “She’s distrustful of anything that’s not her own four feet. Earth Pony Heritage, Tradition, My Parents And Their Parents And Their Parents Too And So On…”

It looked for a moment like Twilight was trying not to laugh. “Ahem,” she said, “well, err… okay, that could be part of it too. But I had a talk with her after I got back from Canterlot that one time, and we came up with some really interesting ideas about magic, stuff that Celestia never mentioned. Magic… hmm. Magic’s kind of like lying to the world so well that the world believes you, and by the time you’re done, you aren’t lying to it anymore.”

“Huh. So illusions, like the Great and Snore-filled Trixie was doing back in the day?”

“Something like!” said Twilight. “Illusions are strictly about lying to other ponies about reality, while other forms of magic get into lying to reality itself. But there’s definitely a fuzzy boundary line, and I wouldn’t be surprised if her magic had gotten more powerful the more she could get her audience to believe in what she was doing. But my point is, you can touch this table, right?”

“Uh, of course.”

“Right! But then suppose I want to put a force field around the table. Now of course you can really touch it, it’s right there in front of you, so what I have to do is convince the world that you can’t. In fact, nopony can. If I’m convincing enough, it’ll believe me, and then you really truly won’t be able to touch the table. Does that make sense?”

“Some,” said Rainbow Dash. “It doesn’t exactly sound related to our conversation, though.”

Twilight’s eyes darted to the side. “Not completely, but isn’t it awesome?”

“Twilight…”

“Okay, fine. I’ll summarize. My special talent is Magic, and that means I can look at the world, see that it’s not the way I want it to be, and then make it the way I want it to be by telling it that it’s already that way. When I do that in the real world with other ponies, like with Winter Wrap-Up, it gets called Organization, but it’s really just another version of the same thing.” She chuckled. “The main difference is learning to treat the ponies you’re trying to organize a little more nicely than the raw physical matter. That’s why I got sent to Ponyville in the first place, I think.

“Anyway, you may have noticed that I sometimes… overdo things a little?”

Rainbow Dash grinned. “Like the time Princess Celestia herself had to come down to Ponyville to fix the blowup you’d caused when you enchanted that old doll and—“

“Ahem! Yes, I think we can definitely both think of plenty of examples and we don’t need to go over them in any detail. So in my relationship with Colgate, I want things to be perfect, all the time, just like you described. And I do my best to make them be that way, partly by acting as if they are that way, both with her and in public.” She smiled sadly. “We’re not ‘perfect’ together, Rainbow. But I don’t like other ponies seeing that I’m doing something wrong. It’s like the time I hoped I could fool the princess by making a complete and undamaged replica of Ponyville and pretending that was the real one, except in this case, the replica of Ponyville is the version of our relationship that I show to other ponies while we work on the real one in private. And Rainbow, I’m really sorry if that replica I erected made you feel worse about yourself.”

Rainbow Dash sat dazedly on her haunches. This was a lot to process. “So you’re saying in reality, behind this ‘replica’…”

“Or façade, if you will. Um, we do like any ponies do. We argue sometimes, and sometimes it’s about really petty stuff and sometimes it’s more serious. We have good days and bad days. Sometimes I try to fix things by pretending there’s nothing wrong, oftener than I really should, but we’ve managed to work around and past that so far. Colgate’s very supportive, and I’m lucky to have her, and she thinks she’s lucky to have me, so we keep on going. I mean, I’m not trying to say we’re not happy, because we are, in a broad sense, overall, there are just occasional blemishes that get, ah, concealed. What we have’s important, so we fight to keep it alive, even if it’s ourselves we’re fighting against.”

“Twilight?”

“…yes?”

“I get it, okay?” Rainbow Dash reached around the folders to give her friend a hug. “I’m not being sappy or anything, but thanks for saying all that. It kinda... takes a weight off my mind.”

Twilight gently nuzzled the side of Rainbow Dash’s head. “Anytime. So… about Fluttershy?”

Right. Fluttershy.

Still pressed against Twilight – and noticing guiltily for the first time how cold she was, since it was late at night and non-pegasi weren’t nearly so weather resistant – Rainbow Dash began to let in the thoughts and memories that she’d been pretending for months didn’t exist. The butterflies she never got to see, the rodeo victory that should have been better witnessed. The invitations that went to the wrong ponies. The conversation with Medley that she had known she was intentionally prolonging. The tornado where they’d ignored each other completely. The conversations that had taken place only through Pinkie, not directly, until they’d become really just conversations with Pinkie and Fluttershy had been forgotten. All the looks of pain and sadness and loss, from both of them, that she had ignored. The mess that she hadn’t made, not individually at least, but now had to find a way to fix. “I guess,” she said, “that you were wrong about us not having much in common, too. We both seem to act like things are awesomer than they really are.”

“For example, you and Fluttershy?”

“Not awesome at all. Not anymore.”

Twilight hugged her close.

“What are you going to do now?”

“What can I do? I’ll meet Fluttershy tomorrow for dinner, and I’ll find a way to fix things. Somehow.”

“Rainbow Dash…” Twilight’s words were soft, but in their position it was easy to hear everything she said. “I don’t want to get your hopes too high, and I don’t want to tell you not to bother, either, but… it’s possible you won’t be able to ‘fix things,’ you know. Maybe Pinkie’s right and you two really do have some long-ignored romantic tension. Maybe you need to take a break from each other. I don’t think you can really know before you talk to her.”

“I hate it when you’re right.”

“Yes, I think that’s obvious by now.”

“I also hate keeping you up so late when you need to get some rest. Loyalty, y’know?”

“Some nice warm covers would be nice,” said Twilight, with a sigh. “Nice and also warm. Are you going to be able to sleep?”

Rainbow Dash pulled back from the hug and gave her best impression of a confident smile. “Me? Ponyville’s number one champion napper? Just tell me which element to be tomorrow and I’ll get right out of your hair.”

Twilight yawned. “Huh?”

“You know, what should I do for my date with Fluttershy? This whole thing got started when Applejack thought I should try Honesty. Then later I talked to Rarity, and she came out in favor of Loyalty. Now everything’s gone haywire, but you’ve been bashing Magic tonight, so what’s left? Kindness, maybe?”

Twilight looked puzzled. “But Rainbow, they’re only the Elements of Harmony! You can’t expect anything harmonious from just trying one of them at a time. The point is to bring them all together, and that’s how you get to be –“ she paused, appearing to look for the right word “—a friend.”

Huh. That made sense. “Awesome! So I’ll go in there and just be Rainbow Dash, which I guess has worked well enough so far. Thanks, Twilight.”

“Mmhmm,” said Twilight, smiling sleepily. “I really am sorry if I messed up your relationship by pretending to have some sort of magically perfect life.”

“Hey, if I forgave you for that whole Mare-Do-Well crap, I can forgive you for something you didn’t even do on purpose.”

“I know. And Rainbow, I’m sorry about that too.”

Rainbow Dash echoed once more Colgate’s parting words. “It’s okay, Twilight,” she said, and sped into the night.