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// I. The Shulammite 
// Story: Up From the Wilderness 
// by Cynewulf 
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Rainbow stood upon the great thunderhead like a lonely sentinel, overlooking the foothills of Ponyville. She was the only observer. Everypony else either scurried without seeing, or was too close to the storm to see. Only she could look out over it, could study it--or really, not study it but know it. There was a difference. Either way, she found herself watching things a lot these days. Saying less. Doing a bit less.


 It was, of course, a scheduled storm, and so only a few ponies were outside of the safety of their homes below in the brightly painted town, rushing from place to place, covering their heads against the inevitable hanging rain. Around her, the wind howled like a lion at the foot of its cool cave into the heated plain. Aggression was a part of the nature of storms. Lightning was fury, thunder was the universe’s heralding, and the thunderhead was its chariot. 


At least, that was what the book had said. Rainbow read books, when she could spare the time and a nap didn’t seem infinitely more appealing. To be fair, a good nap was perhaps one of the greatest things to have spun out of the Song, but even she knew overindulgence left a pegasus shaky in the air.


But nopony could sleep where she stood. Few could even stand it. The ancient pegasi magic that coursed in her veins as it had in untold generations of her kind sang, but feverishly. She could handle the electricity, the cold, the extremes of high flight, but even a pegasus had her limits. Even Rainbow Dash had her limits. Some were harder than others. Some were more nebulous.


They hadn’t been sure about letting her go back to handling weather teams upon her return. Not that her coworkers could really have done anything about it if Rainbow had been determined to work. She was the chief weather officer for the district, after all, long absence or not. To be fair, Rainbow hadn’t been all that sure either. Things were different now. Since Jannah.



Down below, ponies continued on, hoping to make it before the rain came down. Maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn’t. It wasn’t up to them. They didn’t know what was going to come—Rainbow couldn’t even tell for sure, and she was at the head of the gathering deluge.


She wasn’t dumb. It was all too emblematic, and she hated that. She also hated that her one place of safety, weather work, was being tainted by the anxiety of Rarity’s recovery. This was her place. This was where Rainbow could be Rainbow.


But she looked down at the boutique regardless. Waiting. Maybe, just maybe, she would catch a brief glimpse of that beautiful off-white coat in the window and know those blue eyes like sapphires would be looking up back at her. But maybe not. It was kind of hard for Rarity to get upstairs without help these days.


Lightning struck within the cloudmass, sending a shock up Rainbow’s spine. Besides a brief jerk, she allowed herself no sign of discomfort. A true captain rode the storm. Her father had told her this, and she would do as he had always dreamt of doing himself.


The thing about pain is that it is mental as much as it is physical. There is a dimension to suffering that was deeper than skin and bone and sinew. Knowing there was an end in sight gave Rainbow the strength to sit and wait and think. It was not knowing there to be an end or knowing there would never be an end that made suffering overwhelming.


Sitting in the doctor’s office years ago, she had waited for truth. Fly or don’t fly. Broken or whole or something in between and nebulous. Back then, in that chair, she had wanted feverishly to know something. She had foresworn any adventure with Twilight or anypony else and desperately clung to the hope that the unicorn beyond the frigid waiting room would have some sort of answer to make things make sense. And he had, but she had not left those dangers of misadventure behind. When Twilight had needed a companion and guard, Rainbow had jumped at the chance. Be like Daring Do; go out and see the great uncharted ruins and wastes of the West. And it had been fun, hadn’t it?


But then she’d been captured. Rarity had come. Rarity had paid dearly for her.


The first of the rain began to fall. Rainbow had not planned on it and could not stop it. She could only react to it, and instead she continued to watch the boutique in silence.