The next morning, over a breakfast of muffins and oatmeal, Rainbow Dash smiled across the table at Cider. “Hey, what do you think about flying up to Cloudsdale today? I could show you the flight camp airfields, and make sure you know how to get around.”
Cider’s eyes lit up. “Ooh! Can I pack a lunch?”
“Ain’t enough sugar left in the house for her to pack another lunch,” Applejack muttered to Leaf, sitting next to her. She tore off a piece of muffin for Sky on her other side.
“How about if we get something while we’re there?” Rainbow suggested as she took another bite of muffin.
“Okay!” Cider grinned and bounced in her chair. “Can I wear my new flight goggles?”
Rainbow finished chewing and swallowed. “You don’t really need flight goggles for this trip…”
“But Mommy, I never get to wear my flight goggles!” Cider frowned and crossed her forelegs.
“You just got them two days ago,” Rainbow said, raising an eyebrow.
“And besides,” Leaf added, “you’re just gonna lose them.”
“Will not!”
“Will too.”
“Will not!”
“Kids!” Applejack shouted, causing both foals’ mouths to clamp shut. She went on calmly. “It’s up to you, Dash. But if she takes ’em, make sure she keeps track of them.”
“Please, Mommy?” Cider asked, her eyes wider than saucers, lower lip pushed out.
“You really don’t need—” Rainbow started.
“Pleeeease?” The lower lip quivered. It was totally unfair.
Rainbow sighed. “Okay. Sure. You can wear your flight goggles.”
Applejack smirked. “Ya big softie.”
“It’s the eyes!” Rainbow waved a hoof at the kid. “What am I supposed to do?”
“I know it. And so does she.” Applejack smirked and shook her head, then turned to Leaf. “Ya mind helpin’ me and Uncle Mac with settin’ up for zap apples?”
Leaf frowned. “Cider gets to go to Cloudsdale, and I’m stuck helping on the farm?”
“Two bits,” Applejack said, face flat.
“Five,” Leaf answered with the same expression.
Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Two, and I’ll cook whatever ya want for dinner. Take it or leave it.”
“Deal.” Leaf nodded.
Applejack returned her attention to her breakfast and took a sip of coffee. “Ya know, back in my day nopony had to bribe me just to help out with the farm.”
Leaf smirked. “Back in ancient times, when dinoponies roamed the world?”
Rainbow snickered, almost spraying juice across the table.
“Ha ha.” Applejack frowned, but a smile was twitching at the corners of her mouth. She eyed Rainbow. “Why’re you laughin’? You ain’t a spring chicken yourself.”
“Yeah, Mom.” Leaf grinned at Rainbow. “What was the first Hearth’s Warming like?”
“I wasn’t at the first Hearth’s Warming,” Rainbow said, mimicking a huff. “You can tell ’cause I would’ve finished off those windigos in one kick.”
Applejack chuckled. “What did Equestria do ’til you came along?”
Rainbow shrugged with a grin. “It was mostly boring.”
“Well that explains history class.” Leaf nodded.
“You know it.” Rainbow offered him a hoof for a bump, which he returned.
Applejack chuckled, then she glanced at the wall and her eyes went wide. “Sweet Celestia, look at the time. I gotta meet Mac.” She grabbed the baby carrier and strapped it around her trunk. “Leaf, first thing I need ya to do is clean up after breakfast when y’all are done.”
“No problem,” Leaf said with a wave of his hoof.
Applejack plopped Sky in the carrier, and headed toward the door. “Love y’all! See ya later!”
“Love you too, Mommy!” Cider called after her.
Rainbow just sat there, kind of awkwardly, wondering if she should respond. She knew it was probably habit for AJ, or maybe it just took less time than saying it to Cider and Leaf. Rainbow figured she should probably just say “later,” but by the time she thought of that AJ was out the door.
• • •
Rainbow and Cider took off after breakfast. The sky was clear and blue, and even flying at a foal’s pace the feel of air in her mane made Rainbow’s day a hundred times better. It was probably less than a foal’s pace, actually; Cider kept flitting around her and darting off to look at some view of the land below.
Watching Cider, Rainbow thought of her concerns from yesterday. Technically, Cider was an average flyer, maybe even pretty good at maneuverability. But even if she managed not to fall off the clouds, she flew like a ground pegasus. Pegasi raised on the ground always looked down or at the pony flying with them when they were flying high, like the blue expanse of sky was weird to them. Any Cloudsdale pegasus would notice that, and foals, well, they weren’t exactly cool about that sort of thing.
“So… looking forward to flight camp?” Rainbow asked Cider as they flew.
“Yup!” She grinned, flying over to Rainbow’s side. “I’m gonna make a bunch of new friends, and learn to fly good enough that I don’t fall off clouds!”
“Awesome.” Rainbow smiled. She tried to make the next question casual, she didn’t want to scare the kid. “Do you know what to do if other foals are making fun of you?”
“Why would other foals make fun of me?” Cider cocked her head.
“Because they’re dumb, and they make fun of everypony. They might… well, they might say mean things because you live on the ground, and because AJ’s an earth pony.” Rainbow cringed a little, she could almost hear it: Bet your feathers are all full of dirt ’cause your mom’s an earth pony. Careful, the ground filly probably got the clouds all muddy. It made her grit her teeth and want to punch some imaginary bullies right now.
Cider grinned and shrugged. “I’ll just tell them they’re dumb, and my Mommy was a Wonderbolt, and she lives on the ground now because our farm is so awesome! It has a clubhouse, and all kinds of apple trees to nap in, and twenty-seven different kinds of apples, if you include zap apples, which are totally magic! And we grow lots of food for ponies’ dinners, and make yummy apple treats, and we make cider, like my name! And I bet Cloudsdale doesn’t have any of that.”
Rainbow relaxed a little. Even if the kid wasn’t the best flyer, or as tough as a Cloudsdale foal, Rainbow was pretty sure she’d be okay. She had confidence, and that was the most important thing when dealing with bullies. She knew who she was, no matter what they said. Rainbow even had to laugh a bit, wondering if AJ had made the kid memorize that little ode to Sweet Apple Acres.
“You really love the farm, don’t you?”
“It’s the best place in Equestria!” Cider squealed. “Someday, I’m gonna be able to buck apples like Mama, and make cider, and pies, and fritters, and Mama and Aunt Bloom are gonna teach me to make zap apple jam.”
AJ had said Cider was gonna get a cutie mark in farming or cooking or something, and that was sounding about right to Rainbow. She thought of Leaf; it kind of sucked that Cider got wings and he was an earth pony. Of course, what did she know? She was a pegasus who loved flying, so that was easy, but maybe an earth pony who loved flying would still want to be an earth pony.
“Do you wish you were an earth pony?” she asked Cider.
“Nope!” Cider said, without even thinking. “I love it when Mama lets you take me up high to see the whole farm, all at once. It’s like… like a blanket. A really warm blanket that’s wrapped around me and Mama and you and Leaf and Sky. But I couldn’t see it from there if I wasn’t a pegasus. And I couldn’t sleep in apple trees, or fly around the branches… my wings are fun!”
Rainbow glanced over at her. “The Apples are mostly earth ponies, though.”
Cider nodded. “Except me and you and Sky. But we’re Apples ’cause we’re a family and we love each other, and we make Sweet Apple Acres a home. Mama says that’s way more important than if a pony’s got wings or a horn.”
That made Rainbow smile. It sounded like something AJ would say. “Your Mama would know, huh?”
The filly just grinned. “Yup! Mama’s an expert at Apples!”
They flew on, until they came to Cloudsdale. Once they got near enough that there were more pegasi sharing the sky, Rainbow made Cider fly next to her, and kept track of the drafts from the filly’s wingbeats. They circled the city until they came to the layers of clouds and skytracks where the flight camp was set up every year.
They landed, and Cider scampered across the clouds, hopping or flying between them, circling through the practice hoops. Rainbow kept a close eye on the kid; even if she had gotten bored, there were constant calls of “Watch me, Mommy!” to remind her.
Once Cider had been all over the camp clouds, and Rainbow had given her a quick primer on how to pull up from a fall, Rainbow led the way toward the rest of the city. Along the way, she made sure to point out cloud buildings and sculptures, and spots where a pony could see the weather factory and rainbowfall. She didn’t think the kid would need to know all this, but you never knew what foals would get into, and this way Cider wouldn’t get totally lost in Cloudsdale if she left the camp.
Rainbow kept an eye out for a traditional Cloudsdalian diner. There were a lot of unfamiliar businesses—she figured most of the places she knew would have closed like that café in Ponyville—but Cider spent enough time filling up on farm food; it was time she got a taste of some pegasus cooking. Maybe some lightning-fried falafels with some snowcream for dessert.
They came to a quieter neighborhood on the topside, the kind of place with homey awnings and nice perches outside the buildings. It suddenly occurred to Rainbow that this was a ton more flying then the little filly was used to; she was probably going to end up carrying the kid home. But for the time being, she spotted a little patch of clouds that pegasi would consider a park, where a few other pegasi were resting or eating their lunch.
“Hey, Cider, how about if we land for a while? I can ask around about a place to eat.”
“Sure!” Cider answered, still just as enthusiastic as she was that morning. Rainbow started to wonder if earth pony genes combined with the ability to eat her body weight in sugar could somehow give a filly infinite energy reserves. That would explain Pinkie Pie, come to think of it.
They landed in the park. Cider stretched out her wings, and Rainbow did a little minor preening on the girl, fixing feathers that had come out of place in the wind. Memories came back of her own mom adjusting her feathers in parks just like this one; it was such a mom thing to do. Rainbow looked around quickly, hoping nopony saw it, and patted Cider’s wings closed.
Then a pony in a Wonderbolts windbreaker landed in front of them and took off her sunglasses.
“Hey, Rainbow Dash! How’s it going?” Fleetfoot asked.
“Uh… great!” Rainbow said. She was startled, not just by the sudden arrival, but by the casual greeting. It dawned on her that not only was Fleetfoot a pony she knew, she was a pony she’d worked with for years. Rainbow had no idea how they’d worked together, so she tried to play it cool. “How are things with you?”
Fleetfoot nodded absently, smiling. “Not bad, not bad. Just keeping the ’Bolts out of trouble. You know how that is. It’s like herding sparrows sometimes.”
“Heh. Yeah,” Rainbow agreed. It sounded like Fleetfoot was captain now, which made sense. If Spitfire retired it probably came down to her or Soarin.
“Did you hear Rain Dancer finally got out of the hospital?” Fleetfoot grinned.
Rainbow had no idea who Rain Dancer was, but it seemed like she should be happy about this. “That’s awesome!”
“I know.” Her smile turned grim. “She’s Wonderbolt-tough, coming out of a crash like that in one piece. You should go to see her. She recognized Winger the other day when he went, and her husband was thrilled.”
The smile fell from Rainbow’s face, and she nodded. She might not know Rain Dancer, but hearing about a crash that bad was enough to make any trick flyer flash back to all of their own close calls and hospital stays, and thank Celestia it wasn’t them. This time, at least.
Fleetfoot sighed. “So, how’s the wife and kids?” She smiled down at Cider. “This is Cider Splash, right?”
“Yup!” Cider answered, fluttering into the air.
Rainbow looked down at Cider, then back to Fleetfoot. “They’re cool. Cider is going to flight camp, so I was showing her around the city.”
“Are you as good a flyer as your mom?” Fleetfoot asked Cider.
Cider shook her head, her ponytail whipping back and forth. “No way, nopony is as good as my mommy!”
Fleetfoot raised an eyebrow at Rainbow. “You’ve been teaching her, huh?”
Rainbow grinned. “Well…”
“Can’t argue with the truth.” Fleetfoot laughed. “You were one of the best ever.”
“I still am,” Rainbow said quickly, a heat rising in her. Even if she wasn’t a Wonderbolt, she hadn’t left because she couldn’t cut it. Her flying the other day had been as good as ever.
Fleetfoot raised her eyebrows. “You’re keeping yourself up? I haven’t heard much outta you lately.”
“I had a foal last year.” Rainbow shrugged. “Sky… um… Orchard Sky! A pegasus colt.”
“No way!” Fleetfoot’s eyes widened. “You really are in shape… if you ever wanna go out for the team, I can kick a few ponies out for you.”
Rainbow frowned. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
“I’m kidding.” Fleetfoot smiled. “I know you don’t have time, anyway.”
“What if… what if I did have time again?” Rainbow asked, her heart pounding. “Seriously, any chance you could squeeze in an audition for me?” Just asking lit a spark in her. For the past two days, she’d thought it was dead, but at that moment it might have been brighter than ever.
“Seriously? If it was anypony else, they’d need to wait for a spot like the rest of the newbies. But… between you and me, I’d give my left wing for a whole team of you. I think I can find some wiggle room in the roster.” She grinned. “Without screwing anypony over.”
“I’ll think on it…” Rainbow said, fighting the urge to squeal and hug Fleetfoot.
“Cool. You know where to find us.” Fleetfoot gave her a pat on the shoulder. “Anyway, great seeing you again, but I’ve gotta fly. Say hi to AJ and Leaf for me!”
Rainbow waved at Fleetfoot flew off. “Will do! Great seeing you, too!”
She watched as Fleetfoot flew off down the block. Once she was safely out of sight, Rainbow flew into the air and pumped her hoof. “Yes! Rainbow Dash is back, baby!”
Then she remembered she was in a public park, and landed as she smoothed her mane. This was awesome! She didn’t totally miss her dream! Even better, she could make a triumphant return to her probably anxious fans. She must have had a lot of fans, after all. And there was no reason she couldn’t be a Wonderbolt and still have time for the kids.
Kids. Oh yeah. She looked around for Cider.
Cider wasn’t there. She wasn’t on the cloud, she wasn’t in the air nearby. There were no foals of any kind to be seen.
Rainbow’s heart stopped.
“Cider? Cider?!” She rushed to the edge of the cloud. Had the kid fallen off? They were in Cloudsdale for Celestia’s sake, a fall like that could—
No. She couldn’t think of that. She yelled at the top of her lungs, “Cider Splash! Get your tail back here right this minute!”
“I’m right here, Mommy!” Cider called from below the cloud. She flew into view, and Rainbow let out what felt like all the breaths she’d ever held. “I was trying to find my goggles.”
Rainbow blinked as Cider landed in front of her. Sure enough, the flight goggles weren’t strapped around the kid’s head. “What happened to your goggles?”
Cider shrugged. “They fell.”
“They were on your head!” Rainbow pointed out, waving a hoof in disbelief. “How did they fall?”
She shrugged again. “I dunno…”
“For Celestia’s sake…” Rainbow slapped a hoof to her face. Now that Cider was safe, the frustration with the stupid goggles that she shouldn’t have brought mingled with the adrenaline of those frantic few moments.
“You scared the hay out of me!” she snapped. “Do I have to watch you, like, every second?”
“I’m sorry…” Cider looked down, her ears drooping.
Rainbow frowned. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was angry, or who she was angry with, and she really didn’t feel like figuring it out. She sighed and said, “Look, let’s just go get you some new flight goggles and go home.”
“We were supposed to get some lunch.” Cider peeked up at her hopefully.
“Yeah, well you weren’t supposed to drop your flight goggles off Cloudsdale,” Rainbow shot back. “Sometimes plans change.”
• • •
They got back to Sweet Apple Acres as Applejack and Leaf were finishing their lunch. Cider made a beeline for the table and started gobbling down apples and salad like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. Rainbow just stood in the door to the kitchen, a stormy look on her face.
It barely took a second for Applejack to notice, her eyes widening. “What happened?”
“She dropped her darn goggles over the edge,” Rainbow growled.
Applejack relaxed and smiled at Cider. “What am I gonna do with you?”
Cider looked down at her plate, but she went on eating.
“It’s not funny,” Rainbow snapped.
“Dash, it was an accident,” Applejack pointed out gently.
Somehow, that made Rainbow even angrier. “She always does stuff like this!”
Applejack shrugged. “I reckon she’s kinda absent-minded.”
“Yeah, like how she absent-mindedly packed all the dessert in the house for lunch yesterday.” Rainbow glared at the filly, who blushed as she pretended not to notice anything but her lunch.
Applejack shook her head. “She’s a foal, Dash. What do ya expect?”
“Leaf doesn’t do this stuff!” Rainbow motioned at the colt, who was staring slackjawed between her and Applejack.
Applejack shot Rainbow a look. “Leaf is three years older! He’s darn near gettin’ his cutie mark, I’d hope he’s more grown up.”
Rainbow crossed her forelegs and glared at Applejack. “Well, maybe she needs to grow up some.”
Applejack gave a short sigh. “What was she doin’ when she dropped her goggles?”
“She doesn’t know,” Rainbow answered.
“…But you oughta know.” Applejack regarded Rainbow with mild suspicion.
“I was talking to Fleetfoot for, like, a minute,” Rainbow explained. “When I turned around, she was flying down to look for them.”
Applejack raised her eyebrows, her expression flat. “So you didn’t have an eye on her?”
“It was one minute!” Rainbow waved a hoof in exasperation.
“Well that’s how long it takes a little foal to find some trouble,” Applejack pointed out.
Rainbow’s mouth dropped open. “Are you saying this is my fault?”
Applejack rolled her eyes. “It’s nopony’s fault, but neither of you were makin’ sure it didn’t happen.”
“Why is it my job to make sure she doesn’t do something stupid?” Rainbow asked with a wild shrug.
There was a pause as Applejack stared at her for a moment, before shouting, “’Cause you’re her mom, genius!”
Rainbow opened her mouth, but there was nothing she could say to that. She closed her eyes and hid her face in her hoof as she cringed.
“I gotta get outta here…” she muttered, then she turned and headed to the front door.
“Dash, wait—” Applejack called, but Rainbow was already out the door and in the air.
She flew away from Sweet Apple Acres over the Whitetail Woods. Green treetops spread below her, occasionally divided by meandering streams or paths. In the distance ahead she could see the faint gray landscape of Ghastly Gorge. She didn’t really care where she was going, she wasn’t planning to land, she just had to fly away.
The farther she got from the farm, the better she felt. Anger faded away with each mile of cool air.
The first thing to go was her anger at the world in general. The freedom of flight calmed her, and as trees and trails rushed by below her she realized that while she had every right to be angry at the world—she had gotten a raw deal after all—it wasn’t going to help anything. The world didn’t care if she was angry, and without something to direct her anger at there was no way to make it change.
As she soared over the path they followed for the Running of the Leaves, she stopped feeling angry at Applejack and Cider. AJ had been right, after all, it was her job to keep Cider out of trouble. That’s why kids had moms, because they were literally too dumb to live.
And Cider wasn’t really dumb, for a filly. She knew how to get what she wanted out of Rainbow and AJ for one thing. That was probably the smartest a kid could be, when you really thought about it; knowing the history of the Wonderbolts wasn’t going to get Cider any extra dessert. And Rainbow had to smile as she realized that for all of Cider’s food and farming obsession, she had a sneaky streak that she sure didn’t learn from AJ.
Yeah, this hadn’t been AJ’s fault, and even if it was kinda Cider’s fault she couldn’t really blame a five-year-old. And she definitely shouldn’t have been such a jerk to Cider. Being a jerk to a kid was a whole new level of jerkitude, and that wasn’t the kind of pony she wanted to be.
By the time Rainbow decided that AJ and Cider were okay, she was flying over the gorge. She decided against a deep run; she needed more open sky to try to clear out the last bunch of anger that was knotted in her chest.
She flew straight up. There was a long way to go up. And there was nothing there to distract her, just Rainbow Dash versus gravity. She fought and won with each flap of her wings, moving farther away from everypony and everything below. It was flying in the deepest, truest sense, moving up, into the sky.
But that knot of anger didn’t budge. If anything, with all the other anger gone, it started to grow. What was wrong with her? Cider fell off a cloud just yesterday. They were in Cloudsdale; if she had fallen off instead of those goggles, she could have died. There wouldn’t have been any awesome rescue—Rainbow didn’t even know how long she’d been gone before she noticed. All because Rainbow was busy trying to get back in the Wonderbolts? What kind of pony did that?
Nopony was asking the impossible, just pay some freaking attention to her own foal. There were plenty of idiots out there who managed to be good parents. There were no excuses. And if she couldn’t handle just finding out she had a shot at being a Wonderbolt and still keep her foal safe, well, maybe that was it—the reason she had left the team. Like it or not, they were her kids, and she didn’t deserve to be a Wonderbolt if she even thought for a second about putting that before ponies whose lives depended on her.
Rainbow stopped flying up, hovering there high in the air. She stopped trying to fight it, and hung her head. Equestria stretched below her, tiny and indistinct. To one side of the sky the sun was starting to set, while on the other side stars were appearing in the growing darkness.
There was only one pony to be angry at. One pony whose fault this was, from the very start the other day. The only pony Rainbow couldn’t fly away from.
But… it didn’t matter now. She still had to go home. As she turned and started to descend in the direction of Sweet Apple Acres, that thought did what flying away couldn’t: it made her feel at peace. She felt guilty and dumb, and kind of sad, but she wasn’t angry, even at herself.
She was a pony who would do whatever it took to make things right. Wonderbolt or not, she would make things right.
• • •
By the time she got back to the house the living room was empty except for Applejack, lying on the couch with a book open in front of her. Rainbow looked at her for a moment, not sure what to say.
“Hey,” she said, closing the front door softly behind her.
Applejack looked up, but her expression didn’t change. “There’s dinner in the fridge.”
“Thanks…” Rainbow said softly.
“And Cider made ya this.” Applejack moved the book, a photo album, aside and revealed a piece of paper under it. She offered the paper to Rainbow, who took it in her hoof.
It was a foal’s crayon drawing, the kind her dresser upstairs had dozens of. This one was a little brown pony hugging a bigger blue pegasus. Both ponies were smiling, and written below were the words “I’m sorry mommy.”
Rainbow swallowed a lump in her throat. “I really messed up, didn’t I?”
Applejack shook her head. “Me too. We shouldn’t have been fightin’ like that in front of the kids… I dunno what I was thinkin’.”
“It was my fault. I just suck at this mom thing.” Rainbow sighed and sat in a chair.
“It’s been three days, Dash. Nopony can blame you,” Applejack said, offering a sympathetic look.
Rainbow looked at the picture again, at the happy mother and daughter. “Cider can.”
“Cider don’t blame ya, sugarcube.” Applejack smiled. “She’s a foal, she figures all grown-ups are crazy and get mad at goofy stuff. If there’s a ma out that didn’t yell at a foal over somethin’ foolish sometime…” She paused and considered. “Well, okay, I reckon there’s Fluttershy.”
Rainbow frowned.
“Dash… a few years ago, when Leaf was around Cider’s age, we took the kids to the Crystal Empire. I must’ve asked Leaf a million times if he brought his snow boots, and he said yeah every time. Well Cider cried darn near the whole way up, and me and you took turns walkin’ her up and down the train the whole ride while she wailed in our ears. We got there, and our nerves were shot, and Leaf wanted to play in the snow right away. And when I looked in his bag, he had three snow boots.”
Applejack chuckled. “Woo-ee, I just about bit that colt’s head off. I couldn’t have been madder if he’d freed all of Tartarus. I was ready to turn everypony around and get on that train and head on home. But you came through for me. You took Leaf and bought him some new boots, and kept him out all afternoon. I took Cider to the palace and got her laid down for a nap, and by the time you got back I had my head on straight. And we all had a fine time, I reckon Leaf don’t even remember now how mad I was just then…”
She walked over and nuzzled Rainbow’s cheek. “Point bein’, it happens to everypony. It don’t mean you ain’t cut out to be a mom. I know what kinda mom you can be. We just gotta work together.”
Rainbow tugged away. “That was after years of figuring stuff out. By the time I figure all that out again, the kids are gonna have moved out.”
Applejack frowned. Her ears drooped, and she walked back to the couch. “I reckon you ain’t gonna be just the same. I’m… startin’ to see that. But I reckon you can be good enough, if ya work at it. I know all that’s inside you, even if you ain’t figured how to show it yet.”
“You’re okay if everything’s not exactly the same?” Rainbow said, her ears perking.
“Yeah.” Applejack sighed. “Ya gotta play the hand you’re dealt, ya know?”
“When I was talking to Fleetfoot…” Rainbow hesitated, not sure she should even bring it up. If she couldn’t handle it, there was no point. But… maybe AJ would know better if it was something she could handle; she did know more about being a mom. Rainbow went on. “I asked her about joining the team again.”
“Oh.” Applejack looked shocked. “She… said ya could?”
Rainbow nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t make a decision.”
“I always said it’s your choice…” Applejack said slowly. “But ain’t this kinda sudden? It’s only been three days since your crash. We ain’t even talked to Twilight to see how she’s gettin’ on…”
“I’m trying to play with the hand I was dealt, like you said.” Rainbow shrugged. “I mean, I hope Twilight can fix it, but if she can’t I don’t wanna waste a bunch of time… I already lost a bunch.”
“I guess that’s true…” Applejack agreed.
Rainbow bit her lip and looked down at the picture in her hooves. “But, what about the kids? They come first. Are they gonna be okay if I’m not around as much? I’m already so bad at this mom thing, I don’t wanna mess them up more. But… maybe me not being around would be kinda good. Less time to mess them up, ya know?”
Applejack sat back and considered for a long time. “I think Cider’d be okay. She’d miss ya, but you can’t keep that girl down. Leaf… he’d understand, but he’d take it harder when you ain’t around. You’d have to make darn sure to spend time with him when ya can. Sky’s just a baby, you’ll miss a lot, but he’ll grow up knowin’ ya however ya work things out. And—” She stopped. Then she took a deep breath. “Well, I think everypony’ll get by okay.”
Rainbow nodded. “I’ll go talk to Twilight tomorrow, to see if there’s a chance of getting this fixed, and… I guess we’ll see after that, right?”
“Sure,” Applejack said, glancing at the album she’d been looking through, now sitting abandoned on the back of the couch.
A noise from the stairs distracted both ponies. Rainbow looked over to see a little brown freckled face peeking down.
“Mommy?” Cider asked.
Applejack frowned. “What’re you doin’ out of bed?”
“I wanted to see if Mommy came home,” Cider explained. “I wanted to make sure she got my picture.”
“Of course I did.” Rainbow looked at it again, then smiled at the filly as she got to her hooves. “Come on, I’ll take you back up to bed.”
Cider waited on the stairs until Rainbow got there and gave her a nudge. Rainbow followed her into the bedroom that used to belong to Applejack. The light inside was dim; there was a softly glowing nightlight and moonlight coming through the window. It looked more or less like Rainbow remembered, except that the bed was full of plush farm animals, and a small play stove was against the wall, with fake food and foal-sized dishes in a bushel next to it.
Hopping in the bed, Cider snuggled in among the animals, smiling up at Rainbow.
Rainbow sat by the edge of the bed and sighed. Then she looked down and said, “Look, Cider… I wanted to say… I’m sorry. I said some really dumb stuff, and I was mad about things I shouldn’t have been mad about.”
Cider just looked up at her with those huge green eyes. “I didn’t mean to make you mad, Mommy.”
“I’m not mad anymore, and nothing you did was wrong.” Rainbow paused. “Well, I mean, you shouldn’t drop your flight goggles off Cloudsdale, but you didn’t mean to do that, right?”
“No, it was an accident,” Cider said.
Rainbow smiled. “I know. And I know you’re really a smart little filly. Smarter than you let on. You knew I forgot that playing on clouds by yourself was against the rules, didn’t you?”
“Yes?” Cider said.
Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “That wasn’t fair. But I’m not mad about that either. Can I tell you a secret?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I woulda done the same thing.” Rainbow and Cider shared a smile. Then Rainbow went on. “So… we’re good now? You know I’m not mad?”
“Yup!” Cider chirped.
“Cool,” Rainbow said, relaxing. The kid was okay, that was all that mattered.
Rainbow stood to leave. As she made it to the door, Cider called softly, “I love you, Mommy.”
She stopped and turned around, looking at the little pony surrounded by all her toys. It was weird to realize that was meant for her, that the little filly over there loved her, probably more than anypony had ever loved her in her life. It was scary, she still didn’t think she could live up to that. But… it was also really, really awesome.
Rainbow walked over and nuzzled the filly’s cheek, and whispered, “I love you too, Cider.”
She left the room, closing the door quietly behind her. Then she went and got the picture Cider drew, and took it upstairs to the drawer that held all the other pictures and clippings and her Wonderbolts flight suit. All of the other pictures in the drawer were still just stuff, but as she laid the drawing of her and Cider in there, it was hooves down the most important thing there.