With a guttural snort, Rainbow Dash jolted out of the depths of far-too-little sleep. A restless night peppered with vivid and unsettling dreams had left her with a head that felt like it was packed with damp sand. She let out of a low groan and peeled up a reluctant eyelid. The small four-bed dormitory, empty save for Dash herself and the few possessions she had packed before coming to Canterlot, was lit by the brisk light of a clear dawn. She was about to roll over and sink back into a gentle doze when it struck her that it shouldn’t be light this early. The notion that Princess Celestia had for some reason decided to raise the sun in the middle of the night briefly crossed her mind, until common sense kicked in and she realised she had in fact overslept.
Five seconds later she was out of bed, hooves skittering on the wooden floor as she rushed to the window. Outside, several of her fellow Wonderbolts were already out on the training ground; she had maybe five minutes before all of them arrived and started wondering where the new recruit was. Then would come the accusations — she was lazy, she was undisciplined, she wasn’t taking her training seriously. She imagined Spitfire shouting at her — no, worse, quietly disappointed in her — and a sickly clot of guilt curdled in her stomach.
She darted to her locker, grabbed her flight suit and started struggling into it. There was no time for a shower, no time for grooming, no time even for breakfast; she had to be out there on time or she’d be letting the team down. As she flailed around trying to find legs and wing-holes that suddenly seemed to be in the wrong places, she bumped the saddlebag hanging in the locker and the package of nimbus buns from last night fell out, spilling one of the buns. She eyed it hungrily. As small as that bun was it was better than nothing to eat at all, and perhaps a taste of that sweet, nostalgic confection would calm her down. She grabbed the bun and sank her teeth into it.
At once the flavour flowed over her tongue, rich and soothing with a zesty bite from the cloudberries, refreshing yet mellow. She was reminded of cozy weekend mornings when her mother would bring a cup of tea to her bedside, of splashing carefree through Cloudsdale’s waterfalls in the humid peak of summer. Her drowsiness began to lift and her taut muscles unclench. She checked her appearance in the mirror — a little disheveled perhaps, but bright-eyed and energetic. “Bold heart, nimble wings,” she muttered to her reflection. She zipped up her flight suit, finished the last bite of the cake and walked calmly out of the dormitory, feeling relaxed and invigorated.
Despite the inauspicious start to the day, Dash settled into the morning’s training with ease. Once again she found herself enjoying the challenge, her teammates stretching her and she responding with newfound vigour and determination. Her manoeuvres were as clean and tight as they’d ever been, and she was growing increasingly confident of her grasp of formation flying, thanks in no small part to the attention and encouragement Spitfire was giving her.
A couple of hours into training, Spitfire called the team together to begin a run-through of the routine planned for their first display. It was one of their standards, a short routine that packed in a series of spectacular tricks, culminating in one of their most dramatic stunts, the Firefly Starburst. They had already covered most of the basic components of the display that morning, but the Starburst was a tricky and precise manoeuvre, requiring every pegasus in the formation to fly towards a single point in the sky, perform a sharp turn within touching distance of one another and swoop clear again. In an actual display they would fly with their smoke trails loaded with flashpaper chaff, and at the climax one member would set off a small powder charge that ignited the chaff to produce a spectacular fire trail behind each flier. Today they were going to rehearse the manoeuvre without the pyrotechnics, but it still required steady nerves and intense concentration.
Before the first run-through, Spitfire took Rainbow Dash aside.
“The trajectories are hard to visualise from the ground,” she said. “Dash, I want you to observe from directly above the crossover point so you can see how each member passes.”
Rainbow Dash nodded. She had seen the Firefly Starburst performed many times and it never ceased to impress her. The chance to watch it up close and understand how this complicated aerial dance fitted together was exciting.
The team took up their positions while Dash hovered alert and attentive overhead, then on a blast from Spitfire’s whistle they began. Nine brilliant blue streaks shot towards one another then, just as it seemed they were about to collide, each swung around one another in a tight orbit before flinging out in graceful arcs. But something was wrong: Lightning, who had exited from the top of the crossover closest to where Dash hovered, gave a ragged bellow of pain and began spiralling like a sycamore seed, his right wing hanging limp at his side.
“Dash!” yelled Spitfire. “Help him!”
A jolt of horror shot through Rainbow Dash at the sight of her stricken teammate. She lunged towards the tumbling pegasus, but a rising panic threatened to take hold of her wings. The sight of Lightning’s fiery mane and tail whipping back and forth as he tumbled earthwards filled her vision, urging her to screw up her eyes and block it out. She shook her head to try and drive away the deep and inexplicable fear that was suddenly choking her, fighting her, holding her back, and an unbidden howl of frustration escaped her throat.
Then in an instant it was over. Two of his teammates snatched Lightning out of his dive and gently ferried him to the ground. Dash circled them as they descended, trying to see if Lightning was okay. The shock and terror of a few moments ago had turned into a sickly shame at her own uselessness. Safe on the ground again, Dash found herself outside the circle of concerned teammates gathered around their fallen member. Already one of them had flown to fetch the team’s medic, a stern-looking unicorn who hurriedly pushed his way past to examine his patient.
Happy that her team member was now in good hooves, Spitfire stepped out of the circle to address the others.
“Alright everypony,” she said, “I’ll be accompanying Lightning to the hospital, so Soarin will be leading the rest of today’s training. Work on your solo manoeuvres and the smaller formations, and I’ll be back as soon as Lightning is comfortable.”
She led Dash aside and spoke to her gently. “You okay?”
Dash tried to find her voice, but could only summon a shaky nod.
“No, you’re not okay,” Spitfire continued. “Bit of a shock. That’s understandable, no amount of training can prepare you for that. He’s going to be fine. He dislocated his wing near the end of last season and it’s been a weak-point for him ever since. Damn fool hasn’t been doing the exercises the doc gave him, I’ll bet. The g-force in that turn just popped it right out again.” Her tone was curt, her diction clipped, a voice that maintained an outward professionalism yet, to someone who knew her, betrayed her distress. “Look, you’re in no fit state to carry on. Fly a few laps to cool down and take the rest of the day off.”
Dash’s pride briefly urged her to protest, but deep down she was relieved. The panic she had felt when she saw Lightning injured was alien and unsettling, and she needed some time to think about it. She flapped around a couple of half-hearted laps of the training ground and slunk quietly back into the dormitory.
Rainbow Dash’s afternoon was a sullen and dispiriting one. Puttering about in the dormitory with nothing to occupy her, she felt like a little foal being kept indoors with a case of the pony pox while her friends laughed and played outside. She brooded about her failure that morning, puzzled by the sudden bout of panic that had choked her; she had, after all, been through many more dangerous and frightening things, including an even more terrifying aerial rescue of no less than four ponies at once. Something about today’s incident sparked a deep fear, incomprehensible yet also strangely familiar.
Late in the afternoon Spitfire returned from the hospital and paid a visit, giving Dash a brief pep-talk in the vein she knew she responded well to, part reassurance, part encouragement. She avoided directly broaching the most obvious subject; with Lightning out of action, Dash was in the main squad with her first show just four days away. They both knew it perfectly well. Nevertheless, she had to discuss revisions to the routine for the show. Performing one of the Wonderbolts’ most dangerous stunts in a live show with a rookie member was unthinkable. Dash had anticipated the change, but it still made her feel like a dead weight dragging the rest of the team down.
As evening drew in, Dash felt the trials of the day catching up with her, a leaden weariness that made her wings ache and her eyelids droop. She flopped into bed soon after sunset, hoping to make up for the previous restless night, but in spite of her exhaustion she could not settle. Her mind continued to race, replaying the day’s events over and over, and after an hour of fruitless tossing and turning she finally threw off the rumpled bedcovers and got to her feet. She was faintly disgusted to notice the hair on the fetlock of one of her forelegs was wet where she had been absently chewing at it, a habit she thought she’d grown out of years ago.
As she paced about the darkened room, her eye was drawn to the corner of the wax paper packet of nimbus buns poking tantalisingly out from the bottom of her locker door. That was what she needed, she told herself, a little snack to calm her down. She opened the locker, took out a bun and brought it back to bed with her.
With time to relish it now, she drew out the experience, inhaling deeply the cake’s aromas: the smooth, creamy butter, the tart little cloudberries, a piquant hint of cinnamon. Already the frantic buzz of thoughts was slowing, and with the first bite they fizzled away leaving only a warm tranquility. She chewed slowly, savouring every crumb, the tension in her body dissolving and flowing away in the stream of fond memories the flavours brought. She closed her eyes as she swallowed the last morsel, and within moments she was asleep.
Soothing images from her life in Cloudsdale drifted through Dash’s dreams.
She was seventeen, at her high school graduation, trotting in line to receive her diploma. Her family was there in the audience, her father beaming with pride, her mother dabbing away tears of joy.
She was twelve, starting out at Junior Speedsters flight camp, showing off her moves to a gaggle of fellow campers, feeling so clever and grown-up when an impossibly cool older griffon said her performance was ‘pretty gnarly’.
She was five, watching a Wonderbolts show as a special birthday treat, gasping and cheering along with the crowd, her attention fixed on Spitfire and her stunning display of aerobatics. The climax of the show, the Firefly Starburst; the audience’s gasps turning to screams; a blue shape in freefall trailing bright flames; a little filly’s heart breaking. ‘Spitfire! Help her! Help her!’ A father’s strong legs holding her tight, a mother’s soft voice calming her, but tear-filled eyes seeing only her invincible hero ablaze.
“Spitfire!” Dash’s scream rang in the empty dormitory. There was a moment’s silence, then came muffled sobs in the dark.