East, West, North, South
For most pegasi, the gentle flurry of snowflakes would have been seen as an art form. The little crystals didn't seem to fall so much as drift in a vaguely downward direction, softly caressed by the smallest of breezes. There was just enough crisp cold in the air to allow snow at all, not so much a bite as a nudge against the flanks: the promise that while winter was coming, in spite of all previous evidence, it would be possible to enjoy it. Ponies could caper about in such a snowfall, spirits boosted by the promise of the season and a deliberate blackout of all the memories which had come from the previous editions. Within the peaceful composition, it was possible to dream of winter as simply being a place to host what was coming up, approaching fast, as if the season would end at the same moment the holiday did, with spring a mere Wrap-Up behind. And for Rainbow, it was exactly like being inside a musical snow globe.
Shaken.
Tossed.
No control.
No way --
She glared at the holiday traffic on the streets beneath her. Not one of the ponies comprising it took any notice. This offended her on several levels, none of which she cared to think about.
Oh, they had noticed her efforts, some of them. Praise had drifted up from those streets, as ephemeral and fleeting as the flakes themselves, scant moments of very temporary attention paid towards the weather and, with one -- possibly two -- not that it mattered, anyway -- there might have even been the briefest of expressed thoughts regarding the effort required to create it.
Not that such actually came out as being complimentary.
"So how long do you think she overslept before doing this?"
"This time of year? With the Sun being raised so late? If she's even still here, then I'll give you even odds she's still in bed and this just blew in from the Everfree on its own!" And a giggle. "Or the rest of the weather team decided to do it all without her -- again..."
And they would trot on, laughing to themselves while continuing to take no notice of Rainbow's steaming form hovering above them.
It was unfair on so many levels. She'd gotten up on time with the rest of the team, labored for hours before that too-late Sun-raising in order to create the conditions which all those ponies were so quick to mostly overlook. And if they did notice? Using it as an excuse to mock her, after nearly a year and a half spent as a Bearer and all the things she'd personally done -- well, done with the others, but it wasn't as if that mattered to any of those ponies either -- to keep Ponyville and the realm safe?
It was offensive. Or would have been on pretty much any other day. But on this one... there was another sound which had Rainbow's attention, and it was far more irritating than any stupid commentary on her well-earned rest ever could have been. There were multiple sources of that sound: some stable, some traveling, a few flying through the air around her. None of that truly mattered, because at this point in the season, it seemed to come from everywhere. All the time. It never stopped.
Rainbow had investigated earmuffs. Plugs. Pillows piled all around her west-tilted body. (From her bedroom, it was west.) Tried to jam forehooves into ears during a hover and found that whatever idiot had designed pony anatomy (well, idiot after excepting the otherwise-perfection of her own sleek form) just hadn't figured on the need for a perfect seal. None of it did anything. The sound leaked through every time, somehow becoming magnified as it merrily bounced off each ineffective barrier, and it was happening right now and again and forever...
"We three tribes together
Huddled in the cold
Soul-bereft, the weather
Our stories end untold..."
Hearth's Warming Eve carols.
Rainbow hated them.
It was funny. She'd never realized just how much she hated them until this year. Oh, last year, there had been signs, as she'd been in Ponyville the whole time, and the settled zone seemed to have an unnaturally high percentage of spontaneous (and horrible) singers. Totally unlike Cloudsdale, which was filled with professionals and --
-- anyway, carols. They sucked. All of them. And Rainbow was the only pony on the continent who had figured that out. Trapped in Ponyville again with sound which could no longer be classified as 'music' and really needed to be switched into 'imitation goat bleating' coming from absolutely everywhere with no way out...
She wanted to flee. Head for the upper atmosphere, let the air thin out until it no longer carried sound at all, and the fact that it wouldn't be carrying oxygen either didn't seem to matter just now. Get outside the settled zone, head for fringe or wild, and the roars of cold-hungered monsters would at least provide variety, perhaps turn the perpetual illusion that the music was ripping her apart into reality. Or there was even the Diamond Dog warren to consider: surely she could find an entrance from the air -- except that when she considered what rebounds off enclosed tunnels might do to the cacophony...
Rainbow wanted to get away from it. All of it. And she couldn't.
It was exactly like being inside a musical snow globe. Right down to the invisible walls.
She had failed at several methods of distracting herself, all of which were the stupid carols' fault. Currently, Rainbow was failing at shopping.
Hearth's Warming Eve was the traditional gift-giving holiday in Equestria. It supposedly represented the pact which had been formed between the pony races once the Accords had been reached: we will give to each other freely, without threat or contract or obligation. We give of ourselves from ourselves, with no expectation of repayment or reciprocation born from oppression, orders, or demand. We give with no thought of seeing anything come back -- which makes it all the more precious when it does. They are gifts of welcome, and we pledge to always welcome each other...
Which, Rainbow decided, almost sounded fine until somepony made the mistake of setting it to music.
Shopping for gifts... Rainbow had a system. Typically, she would wander from store to store, looking over the various wares while considering how some of the best pieces might look within her own home. Every so often, she would make a small purchase (or a moderate one, or something truly spectacular) for herself because shopping was hard work and she clearly needed to be rewarded after doing so much of it. As for picking out presents for others... well, as she wandered, her subconscious was -- taking notes. All the time. Every wing flap past a store display was practically equivalent to six of Twilight's submissions to the Equestrian Magic Society and so deserved at least that much in compensation coming back.
Rainbow would just browse around all of Ponyville (and generally beyond, but it had just been Ponyville this year), making sure she was personally properly gifted for the holiday since presents of welcome sent from oneself to oneself showed a healthy level of self-acceptance and besides, she had to make sure she was covered in case a few of the several hundred hints she'd casually dropped with her friends, stuff along the lines of "You know, I just don't have a blanket which goes with my curtains any more," didn't get through. She wouldn't be thinking about buying things for anypony else -- not deliberately. Thinking was overrated. Instinct was the way to go. And that was what her subconscious would be doing: using every passive observation she made while weighing them against the things she'd sort of almost listened to during the year, until it all came together in a flash of instinct which told her exactly what everypony on her list should be getting. It could take weeks to bring that moment of insight together, along with a dozen self-intended full saddlebags -- but the process always worked out in the end.
(The fact that Rainbow's instincts generally kicked in about two hours before all of Cloudsdale's stores closed, on the night before the holiday itself, and always seemed to lead her towards the very last objects on the near-empty shelves, things coated in thick dust from years of still being rejected by ponies possessed by the heart of desperation... that was just bonus points. She could imagine the horror if her instincts had pointed her towards something which was out of stock, and always being directed towards the available just showed how truly brilliant her process was.)
But today -- or tonight, really: Sun-lowering was far too early... empty saddlebags. If any ideas were sinking into her brain, she couldn't feel them moving. Or hear them, because the stupid carols were drowning them out.
Barnyard Bargains was reasonably crowded. The store kept extended hours during the last week before the holiday (and there were but seven days to go now, seven endless days until the soundtrack of the winter would return to something which didn't make her want to hit everything around her with well-earned lightning), and it spread out the traffic a little.
Additionally, some ponies had already -- well, Ponyville was --
-- anyway, Rainbow could make her way down the aisles on hoof without bumping too many flanks, although she still felt far more confined than she was generally comfortable with. Collisions with rear-towed carts... somewhat more of a problem. Getting into the air would have solved most of it, but Mr. Rich generally asked pegasi to stay on the floor while in his shops, mostly because of complaints from other customers who felt that the ability to get that in-demand gift via swooping it out of somepony else's cart often offended, and 'land-swooper' was just about the last thing a pegasus wanted to hear around the anniversary of the Accords anyway. Rainbow cooperated, even when it made her fume all the faster and her tail flicked items off shelves without notice or care.
She looked at a grouping of scatterprisms and tried to picture how they would look if she hung them off her fountains and let them refract the light. The image wouldn't come.
"We are all ponies in the end
every heartbeat sounds a possible friend..."
It was so stupid. Mr. Rich had gramophones all over the shop, at least one on each aisle. Multiple employees scrambled about, trying to keep them wound and roughly in time with each other, which at best meant the syllables from the Perfume section arrived a breath after those from Jewelry. The same songs playing every year, from the same performers, in the same order, and somehow nopony had ever noticed that the meter in the current lines was totally off.
"The meter is totally off," Rainbow muttered, then wondered how she even knew what that meant...
...oh, right. Lyra screaming at Pinkie during one of their arguments, the dumb one which they had at least ten times a year about the delicacy of composition and performance versus whatever the Tartarus it was that Pinkie's clash of instruments kept breaking in with. That was how she knew, watching from overhead while Lyra abandoned her post in the open-air market to chase Pinkie out of the town square again, with the latter's cymbals banging all the way.
It was still a stupid thing to know.
She briefly glanced to the north. From here, it was north.
"Which meter?" asked a curious voice from behind her -- one which changed register twice in three syllables. Bon-Bon's allergies were acting up again.
Rainbow didn't bother glancing back. "Shouldn't you be in your shop?" It wasn't as if candy wasn't a perfect last-minute gift, which was why Rainbow was generally sure to pick up some for herself.
"Caramel has it," Bon-Bon said. There was a faint note of worry in that statement: Caramel liked to give things to anypony he took an interest in -- which meant that any behind-the-counter flirting came with an increasing expense in free-to-him samples. "I've got to hurry back, but we're out of taffy coloring and I can't find anything in this mess..." (This made Rainbow glance around in surprise: sure enough, she was in the appropriate aisle. So now along with everything else, the stupid music was hitting her eyes. If it went after her sense of direction, that would justify attack.) "Do you see any?"
"No," Rainbow said without looking and shuffled forward, hooves dragging from the added agony of being confined to ground with the music pressing against her coat.
Bon-Bon, apparently for lack of anything better to do, followed her. "So which meter?"
"On Ponies United," Rainbow grumped as two shoppers slipped by them. "It's like every other line doesn't match every other -- other line. And ponies have been singing it that way for centuries and nopony's noticed, bothered to try fixing it, anything, and Mr. Rich just keeps playing it all the time from those dumb gramophones where the timing doesn't match and the words just chase each other around and around and around and -- what's that called, anyway? I know there's a name for it, but I can't think of the thing with all this dumb music going --"
"A round," Bon-Bon answered.
"I just said that."
"I know," Bon-Bon replied with what seemed to be a rather odd patience for a very stupid practical joke. "That's what it's called."
"...yeah, very funny," an even-more-irritated Rainbow shot back. "Why hasn't anypony fixed it? Or better yet, stopped singing it forever, just like all the other stupid --"
"-- Lyra noticed," Bon-Bon said. "She says all anypony can do is try to slip past it as best they can. She just steps up her tempo a little on that one."
"But why not fix it?" Rainbow demanded, and shuffled forward a little more. Several glints of light harshly hit her eyes, and she welcomed them because it proved the prisms wouldn't have worked anyway.
"It's traditional."
Instantly, "Traditions are stupid."
"Sorry?"
"Somepony writes and sings something the wrong way, it's a mistake," Rainbow explained. "Somepony else sings that thing without fixing it, it's a habit. Two generations or more do it, and then it's tradition and nopony can ever fix it because if they do, it's the worst thing ever! Because you can't break tradition!" It was actually sort of nice to feel her volume increasing, even if it couldn't entirely block out the dumb out-of-meter carol. "And nopony can ever say why! Tradition isn't law -- it's worse! You can change laws! Carols are tradition, being off-meter is tradition, getting stuck in the store and having to stay on the ground while stupid off-meter carols keep going around and around and around in your head is tradition...!"
The last word had soared in the way she could not, become a full-fledged shout which took over the entire aisle and echoed through most of the store, excepting the ongoing scrum in the hotly-contested Toys section. And it still did nothing to block the off-meter carol. Only one pony could sing that dumb carol correctly, or at least make her laugh with how it came out, and she tried to hear that voice instead of the idiot singing in a dozen distorted ways from all the stupid gramophones, but it wouldn't come and --
"-- Rainbow?"
Huffily, "What?"
"...are you okay?"
"Yeah," Rainbow lied. "I'm fine." Why did the shop suddenly feel so confining? A bubble inside a bubble...
She could almost hear Bon-Bon frown -- along with the effort required to push it away. "Actually, I'm surprised you're here," the candy shop proprietor carefully said. "If you're going to make --"
Rainbow took off. There were shouts all around her, accompanied by the sounds of pony bodies desperately unhitching from carts before diving spread-griffoned over the exposed tops.
"I'm just going to the exit!" Rainbow shouted. "I'm leaving, okay? I don't want any of this stupid -- oh, Mr. Rich... right... I didn't find what I needed, I just want to get to the door and -- get out of everypony's way. I..."
The carol chased her all the way out. Twelve times over.
She could feel the snow brushing against her mane. White on red, white on green, none of it flashing into steam on contact.
Maybe if she fumed harder.
None of the stores had anything good for anypony at all. She was proving it. But the open-air market in the town square... it was keeping hours under Moon, and maybe there would be something there to take her mind off -- how stupid all the enclosed stores were. She decided to fly in that direction.
Of course, that would put her at risk of the gangs.
Music had a life of its own, but it only expressed that life through the possession of objects and ponies. For objects... some shop owners had put gramophones outside their shops, endlessly playing (between crank rewinds, anyway) in the false belief that it would get everypony into a holiday spending spirit instead of the one where... well, there were certain wondrous advantages to being a pegasus, ones Rainbow truly wished the other two races could get to experience. And then there was the fact that whipping up a wind to subtly knock a needle off the record just wasn't that subtle at all.
(Honestly, the shop owners had no reason to yell at her as loudly as they had. It wasn't as if anypony of sanity wouldn't have done the same thing, which currently seemed to mean just Rainbow.)
But at least the inanimate could theoretically be dealt with, even if doing so in the most satisfactory way would have the Weather Bureau investigating a totally-unscheduled and highly-accurate outburst of thundersnow. Ponies were more complicated, especially when it came to finding alternatives to sending lightning through them. Ponies formed gangs.
It was the fully accurate term for a wandering group of carolers and the best one anypony had ever used, even if she'd just silently come up with it a second ago and nopony had heard it yet. (If she said it aloud twice, it would probably become tradition.) Gangs extorted you. They harassed, threatened violence unless you paid them off and once you did -- they kept right on coming back to get more bits, recycling the threats along the way. And that was carolers all over. They sang at you until you donated to their chosen charity, which was probably just themselves. And once they'd discovered they could get bits out of you -- they would continue trying to do so.
Rainbow could probably escape, at least now that she'd found the actual need to. But there was only so far she could go before hitting the edge of the glass...
...and the sounds of the first gang reached her.
The music was both more and less offensive than usual. 'More' was because there were three distinct attempts within the failed effort to blend into an effective chorus, and only one had any idea what it was doing. The second voice was far too touched by accent to match with the others, while the third treated the lyrics as a fortress to besiege and whoever broke through first had won. It was a collective lack of style Rainbow had some familiarity with, having been effectively (and in the end, literally) lassoed by Applejack into attending the parent-torturing school festival, which her friend had brought her to in the name of spreading the pain around. To flee from this gang was not an act of sanity from the only pony who currently qualified, but a deed born from simple common sense, and much of the street emptied out as the trio advanced.
It was less offensive because she knew the source, and often mistakenly believed herself immune to it. Besides, they listened to her, as much as they listened to anypony. (Generally for about five seconds before carefully forgetting anything important and rushing off to their next mistake.) With adults... they were bound by tradition and would just keep on going no matter what she did, at least for those things which stopped short of blizzards and tornadoes and completely coincidental low-level electrocution. For fillies, especially those who kept trying the new no matter how many times it failed... maybe she could get them to stop.
Rainbow landed in front of them. There was plenty of space available for doing so. No other ponies were willing to get within ten body lengths,
"Squirt," she politely greeted Scootaloo. Then, "Other squirt," to Sweetie Belle, and "Farm squirt," for Apple Bloom, just so they wouldn't feel left out.
"Hi, Rainbow!" Scootaloo beamed. "We're singing!"
Sweetie Belle blushed and tried to hide behind her own mane, at a success rate of 0.0001% Fluttershy.
"I heard," Rainbow carefully offered while doing her best not to think about the reason-destroying mix she'd just heard having been described as 'singing'. "Is it for a mark?" Not that anypony other than her even had a chance of talking them out of any part of the Crusade and Rainbow had a few oddly-misplaced worries about her own chances, but...
"Naw," Apple Bloom sighed. (Sweetie blushed harder.) "We've gotta school assignment. Holiday pageant practice. An' we kinda figured we might get a few bits towards..." Her face twisted as she tried to work through the unfamiliar word. "Re-pair-ing-shun?"
"Reparations," Scootaloo crossly corrected, visibly irritated by the thought that other ponies would see the incidental (and often total) damages inflicted by the Crusade as something which required compensation. "We haven't even gotten a tenth-bit, though. Everypony just keeps leaving. Like they can't appreciate good music!"
Not that carols were 'good music', but when compared what the Crusaders usually produced... Rainbow tried not to sigh. Well, there was no point to talking them out of a school assignment: she was sure she could do it by giving them any other direction to race off in, but she didn't want to see the squirts flunk. "Better get back to it, then."
Scootaloo eagerly nodded -- then took a long, pointed look at Rainbow's saddlebags.
Oh.
Well, she'd set herself up, hadn't she? "...one," Rainbow slowly said. Surely she could keep herself from bolting that long. "I'll head-flip you something -- after one. But then I've got stuff to do."
Besides, they might go home after they were done. (West. From here, west.)
Scootaloo and Apple Bloom beamed. (Beneath the white coat, Sweetie had turned fire-red.) And then the not-singing began.
It made Rainbow long for Barnyard Bargains: at least there, the lack of synchronicity could be blamed on mechanical failure. Here, there was too much accent, too little ability, a total lack of rehearsal or caring about what that gap would do to the results -- and the only one who could sing was afraid to in public, even for an audience of one. The unicorn fllly's clear notes were half-whispered, almost entirely drowned out. The purest sound in the mix, something which almost made the carol tolerable and that would have been a miracle in itself -- but a miracle blocked by happily-belted travesty.
Rainbow, desperate for any degree of escape, focused her attention towards two-toned mane and white horn. Pitching her voice carefully, "Pick it up a little, Sweetie Belle."
The notes vanished, replacement words in full whisper. "...I can't..."
"I'm paying," Rainbow forced a smile. "What am I paying for?"
"...a -- chorus?"
"A performance," Rainbow corrected as the other two continued their relentless assault on hammer, stirrup, anvil, and rationality. "Let's hear one."
Sweetie shrank into her own withers. The other two got louder.
"Come on," Rainbow gently encouraged. "It's just you and me here, right? Nopony else is listening." Absolutely true: all the other adults had retreated out of what they saw as range, and Sweetie's friends were too wrapped up in their own ongoing travesty. "Nopony's going to say anything or criticize. Just -- let it out."
The little tremble in Sweetie's knees slowly departed, one joint at a time. When it left the fourth, the filly looked up at Rainbow, winced once, forced her mouth open -- and sang.
The notes were clear. They nearly blocked out the other two at the first moment of expression. The second breath made the other two Crusaders aurally vanish. The third took over the world.
Music sounded in that little part of Ponyville, with Rainbow the only one who cared to hear. Music became part of her, resounded deep within her, threatened to make tradition into something which almost made sense again, reached out towards those invisible walls and she could feel the cracks forming, the blockade being brought down by a siege of memory as everything she could no longer reach came towards her and it was almost enough to just stand there and remember...
Sweetie sang, and Rainbow remembered other songs, ones which became closer with every perfect note, along with the pony who had sung them. Sweetie sang, and distances were crossed. Sweetie sang, and the ground beneath Rainbow's hooves shifted towards vapor. And in the glow of the holiday illumination from the stores and prisms which were no longer offensive at all, there seemed to be a flare of light building on the filly's flanks --
"-- Sweetie!"
"Huh?"
The music stopped. The wall doubled in solidity. Wingbeats retreated to where Rainbow could no longer hear them. And dumb ground was far too cold against her hooves.
"You're out of harmony!" Scootaloo crossly insisted. "You don't sound anything like us! How are we supposed to form a chorus if we don't mirror each other?"
The blush all came back at once.
"Oh, right..." Sweetie muttered. "Sorry..."
The next effort matched the other two as precisely as possible, which probably wasn't the reason some of the lights in neighboring stores went out and no longer produced the reflection against the unicorn filly's coat, if it had ever truly been there at all.
In the end, Rainbow paid over five bits just to escape. And then, having seen (from that supposedly-safe distance) that she both had money and was willing to turn it over in the name of getting away, the other gangs closed in...
It was late by the time she reached the market. It had taken almost no time to lose the first group. Multiplying that figure by the ridiculous follow-up number had accumulated duration in a hurry.
Virtually all of the stands had been broken down: Applejack's space stood empty, with cart tracks leading away through the snow. Daisy was putting away the last of her unsold wares, a little smile on her face as she prepared to take the scant remaining blooms back to her greenhouse. Snowflake hadn't even bothered setting up his tent at all: he had been taken on earlier in the moon for an extended dam survey shift, checking for cold-induced cracks. Other ponies were home already, having a meal or wrapping gifts and doing both with --
-- and there were still carols, for Lyra had remained at her post.
The unicorn typically set up near the fountain. During most of the year, she played original compositions, trying songs out before selling the best-received ones to touring performers. The bits she received in head-flipped payment for her public concerts... she just used that to gauge reaction, and apparently had some kind of sliding scale as to how much the professionals should be charged based on what had accumulated in her instrument case. Most of the money she gathered from the market was supposedly donated to -- something: Rainbow wasn't sure just what and didn't really care right now. The point was that just about everypony had gone home or was well on the way there, the snow was still drifting down and nopony had properly thanked Rainbow for her part in that all day, everything Rainbow did was overlooked, unlike Lyra, who got bits tossed to her for what was seen as another form of art, one with ponies who actually appreciated it and said so in some form, even when that supposed art was expressed as carols, and they said it to somepony who had a place to go and a pony to be with and was still in this stupid spot playing the same dumb holiday music she played every single year because it was traditional.
Rainbow approached, the last pony to do so. It put her facing south. From here, it was more to the south.
Lyra looked up at the sound of hoofsteps. The golden eyes focused on Rainbow, while the music completely failed to stop. Green forehooves gently worked against the strings.
"Play something else," Rainbow softly said.
Lyra blinked. Winter In The Darklands vanished. Alone Together took its place.
"Something else," Rainbow harshly whispered, for only one pony was allowed to lead in Alone Together and Lyra wasn't him. She stepped closer.
Another blink, and then a smooth transition into We Three Tribes.
"Something else." Closer still.
Lyra stopped, and for a moment, Rainbow considered herself to have won.
Quietly, the soft-spoken tones which so often came when the performer was forced to switch back into words, "I don't know what you want, Rainbow."
"Something. Else."
"If you'd just make a specific request..." Lyra helplessly suggested. "I can play any of the standards --"
-- Rainbow's left forehoof stomped. Snow scattered. "No! No more standards! No more dumb carols! Play anything else, anything at all, anything from spring or summer or autumn, the starting line music for the Running, that's fine, I only hear that once a year, anything but all these dumb -- just -- something else!"
A slow blink was followed by something too close to a whisper. "How about -- the Cloudsdale city anthem?" With a little smile, "I can play you home --"
Rainbow's right forehoof instinctively slashed out.
The lyre landed six body lengths away. Three strings broke, and their death knell sounded the final music of the night.
Slowly, Lyra got up. She was a little taller than Rainbow, something the pegasus had lost track of: Lyra's postures seldom approached pony-standard and it was something which made her size difficult to judge. She was also unusually solid for a unicorn: not bulky, but built a little heavier than the standard.
She was also angry. That took an extra second to recognize, because Rainbow hadn't really seen it before, not directed at her. And didn't care.
"Explain," Lyra softly said. "Now."
"No more carols," Rainbow hissed. "Just go home, Lyra, go home already, you can go home and you're out here in the dumb snow instead, I'm doing you a favor. Go home and -- go."
But there were still carols. With the lyre silenced, Rainbow could hear them. From the stores, from the gangs, from ponies who simply felt they had to burst into spontaneous song. So many. Too many, even with so many ponies already -- and what remained echoed inside the walls, the sound building and building with nowhere to go. Just like --
"-- they don't understand," Rainbow muttered. "They have to shut up, they should all just --"
"-- Rainbow," Lyra quietly pushed in, "either you're going to explain yourself, or we are going to have a fight, and then neither of us is going home tonight --"
And then there was nothing left but the music Rainbow could no longer stand to hear.
"-- SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP ABOUT HOME! YOU DON'T APPRECIATE -- YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND -- YOU --!"
She didn't stop screaming. There was more to come, too much more, none of which she'd wanted to acknowledge, think about, do anything except resist the instinct, the one which kept making her face west and north and south and every other direction she couldn't go. But the rest of it was lost in the light, the sudden flare of corona around Lyra's horn as the unicorn's field surged through the market, radiating out for five body lengths past Rainbow's lashing tail and pawing hooves, and where the glow crossed --
-- there were no more carols.
There also were no screams, not that reached her own ears. The words died as they emerged, no vibration moving up through her skull, no sound of her own breath or heartbeat. The furious rear-back double stomp landing of Lyra's forehooves displaced snow, and that was all they did. Clouds of breath indicated life, movement showed purpose. But within the glow, that was all there was.
Every unicorn had a personal spell, a trick, something born from the core of their personality, never taught and always mastered. Lyra's was hardly ever used, only brought out during arguments which couldn't be allowed to go on any longer, or if Pinkie's total lack of musical stylings pushed that local unwilling audience over the edge...
Lyra's lips moved, the shifts carefully exaggerated to the point where Rainbow saw the silent words.
'Just shut up? Done.'
They stood within the death of sound. Lyra stared at her, body still again. Waited.
And Rainbow's tail... slowed. Stopped lashing.
There were no more carols. There was no more cheer around her, happiness she couldn't take full part in or even feel. But there was still a tug, precious instinct insisting that she not only face south, but fly that way, fly -- until she hit the wall.
Her head dipped. The first tear fell, and she had no strength left for denying it.
The field winked out. Music crashed back in, but it didn't seem important.
"Rainbow?"
"Just go home, Lyra..." Rainbow whispered. "Somepony... somepony should get to go home..."
Lyra's corona came up again at the partial level, surrounded the damaged instrument and brought it in front of her scrutinizing gaze.
She shrugged, let it float to the rim of the fountain. "You're..." struggling for words "...not usually still around at this time of year, are you? I think last year was the first time I've ever seen you in Ponyville this close to the holiday. And you're still here..." Lyra blinked. "It's the Bearers -- isn't it?"
"I..." was some residual part of the spell still going, to make her voice so soft? "...if something happens... it has to be six of us... with Discord, Spike tried, but the little guy isn't up to it yet. If it's only five... nothing happens. I thought about it last year, I thought maybe -- I could skip just once, they'd understand, but then we found out that it doesn't work without me and my whole body still knows that..."
Her hooves scraped at the snow and found no vapor there.
"South," Rainbow quietly said. "From here, home is south."
Lyra's eyes closed, and stayed that way for seven audible breaths.
"From here," the unicorn gently replied, "home is west. And north, east, south... maybe even moving towards me. I'm not sure, because I can't see it. But I know where to go... and eventually, I'll be there."
"That sounds dumb," Rainbow said, which was the only way of admitting her lack of understanding available.
Lyra managed a smile. "Home," she said, "is wherever Bon-Bon is."
Which Rainbow got. "But she's right here in Ponyville," she said. "Home is where my parents are -- and Cloudsdale is gallops and gallops away. Too far for getting back in a hurry if something happened. So I can't go. I can't ever go again, not as long as I'm Loyalty. And -- it's my family, and they were -- first. But with work, they can't come here..."
It produced a sigh from Lyra. "Torn between loyalties."
It's how Discord got me. The first year -- not so bad, or at least she'd been able to pretend it was so. But -- after the breakout from the stone shell... Luna had visited them all in their nightscapes, eventually pronounced them restored, but....
The bonds of family. The bonds of friendship. She could only choose one. Forever. And the Elements had made that no choice at all.
"Yeah," Rainbow said. "Do you -- do you ever... does anypony else ever feel like that?"
"I don't know."
Rainbow looked up. Blinked. "You don't...?"
There was a tiny smile on Lyra's face, and there was no mirth in it. "Bon-Bon is my family," she said. "Nopony else. But I'm a... special case. What about the others?"
"Others?" Not quite following.
"The other Bearers. Which way are their homes from here?"
"Rarity's northwest," Rainbow instinctively began -- then stopped. "That's friends, Lyra. They're not my parents."
Lyra took two hoofsteps back, settled her body down to the rim of the fountain. Her corona dipped into the instrument case, fetched three replacement strings. The laborious micro-adjustment process began, and threatened to continue for some time. "You've fought together," she said, not looking towards Rainbow at all. "Nearly died together, a couple of times. And you're all still together. Not blood-tied... but that's not what makes a family. They're not your --" and even to Rainbow's ears, the pause felt odd "-- parents. But... I think they're your family."
Nopony left in the market now: Daisy had fled at the first decibel increase. Nopony at all but them.
"I..." Rainbow forced a breath. "I still want to go south. I'm -- always going to want to fly south."
"I know," Lyra said, gaze fixed on her instrument. "Go northwest."
Rainbow turned.
"You have an interesting voice, do you know that?" came from behind her. "Sort of -- edged. Have you ever tried singing?"
"Not really. It's... usually stupid."
"Think about it."
Rainbow was staying low. Unfortunately, it let the music reach her, but... there was no helping that. There was no help for a lot of things.
She could feel Cloudsdale, on that instinctive level. The pull would always be there, especially at this time of year, and there would never be any way to cancel it out. But if she focused...
Did the others feel it? Rarity and Applejack would have no longing towards home: they were the only two Ponyville natives in the group, and their families were around them -- or, in Rarity's case, on the other side of town. Pinkie Pie turned to the family of her heart. Twilight occasionally mentioned her parents, and -- that was it. And Fluttershy had to have the instinct, but she was locked into ground and cottage: it was hard enough for the animal caretaker to arrange a short-term trip and she always had to worry about the chaos which might come in her absence. Spike... as with so many other things with the little dragon, there was no real way to tell, but Rainbow felt that for him, home was wherever Twilight was, or at least a sleeping basket close by.
Just her, then.
The walls would always be there, for as long as they all lived and Loyalty was needed to complete the set. Invisible to most and completely unbreakable. But... at least she was trapped inside with company.
So she could... drop by Rarity's for a while. Maybe a few other friends, too. Get dinner: surely somepony in the group had to be cooking dinner -- actually, maybe the Acres first, or Pinkie, but not Twilight because if Spike was anywhere but the library, there would be no free food of edible quality to be found there. And she wouldn't talk about the pull, or anything which came with it. She'd just concentrate on them, at least until they said something worth ignoring, or where she just had to send the conversation to a more interesting direction just to stay sane, which generally meant switching the topic to herself.
But she would ask them not to play any carols until she left. Or talk about the approaching holiday too much. Rainbow felt she'd be fine as long as she could just focus on something else for a while --
"Rainbow! Rainbow, down here!"
She glanced in that direction as her body instinctively dropped, wings flaring out for a landing. Within seconds, she had touched down in front of the beaming slim unicorn, who hadn't even bothered to put on a jacket before racing forth from the library. "Twilight? Aren't you cold?"
"I -- guess," Twilight ventured as the slender body wriggled with excitement. "But that's not important right now! I just got the scroll, and I went out to find everypony so I could tell them myself! You'll never believe what the Princess just asked us all to do!"
"A mission?" Rainbow guessed.
"Even better!"
Canterlot.
The heart of the Hearth's Warming Eve celebrations. The most expensive stores in the realm blaring the same old music at increased and totally unsynchronized volume. Gangs of carolers on every corner looking for high-end extortions, because it was Canterlot and five bits wouldn't even buy a pause. And at the end of all of it, she would have to be in the dumb play like a schoolfilly who hadn't been able to beg out in time.
Admittedly, it was the starring role. But...
Rainbow sighed as she flew home, script pressing against her right saddlebag with twenty times its actual weight.
Well, at least we'll all be in it together.
East. From here, the first group rehearsal would be east.
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Wow. Suck much?
5386890 Wow. Rude much?
Stop, Joe.
5386890 Says the user who has this as his bio:
That don't suck it's actually sad.
Sounds like somebody is channeling their seasonal overdose of Christmas music into productive measures.
Great!
Your Rainbow Dash is delightfully horrible
Well, that was a charming little story. I was sorta expecting to hear something tragic and touching about Rainbow's dad at the end, from the buildup, but eh.
The thought of a dozen slightly-out-of-synch gramophones playing the same song is like a new image of hell now.
When I was a kid, I would be assigned to narrate the nativity play every year. Because I apparently had a voice for reading out loud. I was also probably the grumpiest and least religious kid in the school, so I learned to hate nativity plays on a very personal level
Damn it, Scootaloo
....Way to cutie-mark block......
Yes, Rainbow Dash sounds like me during the Holidays-at a certain point, we'd like it to just BE OVER, please...
5386890 yeah says the sado who is desperate enough for attention he just can't help but make a complete ass of himself stop bullying others and get a life you sad prick.
Oh.... Oh goodness... I both hope Scoots, Belle, and Bloom never learn what Scoots did there...
Crusading is KEEPING them from their talents... not just because they aren't trying the right thing.... if they start getting it right.... they self-reinforce to KEEP them from sealing the deal, as 'twere...
Scathing commentary on societal conformity, there.
Christmas carols suck but funny story don't let pricks get ya down
This fic speaks to me on a cosmic level...I feel...deeply connected to the feelings portrayed here...
Ba Humbug!
5386890 Wow seriously....just wow. Are you on your period or something? Did mommy tell you to get off your xbox? Why be such an overbearing d**k to an author that clearly does not deserve it. I would sincerely like to see you write something better.
5387032 Exactly so, The author has written other stories that point out that not only is their refusal to believe that following their talents a hurdle, their need to make sure that the group stays on the wrong target makes them fail.
5387006
'Mark-block' has now been added to local vocabulary.
5387001
I just thought that for gift buying, Rainbow would frequently be the pony equivalent of the actual-day-of-giving 2:00 a.m. twenty-four-hour pharmacy raider. You get the really big bottle of shampoo, and you get the bag of red-hots, and you get the box of earplugs because those were both on her mind and really close to the sales counter...
With the gramophones... the local Equestria hasn't quite worked out 'sound system'. I was trying to get as close as possible and realized early just how much of a mind-breaker the results would be. (Around and around and a round...)
5387071 Feel free to work it into future stories about their need to stay on the wrong course.
Me thinks some friends need to arrange for a parental holiday visit for a certain pegasus.
Also, the little rant about traditions was pretty spot on. What people did before is important as a history, but shouldn't limit the Now.
Your take on Dash always has this hidden complexity that even she seems to forget about most of the time. All of your characters have fascinating depths, but with a pony as self-obsessed as she is, it really stands out.
Great stuff here, from the Crusader crab bucket to the true nature of carolers to Lyra's personal trick (which, given her CDA story, is rather ironic.) Dash's predicament is especially well done. Confinement is a terrible thing for her, and yet she finds herself in an invisible cage, where she can do nothing but struggle.
Thank you for this. Here's hoping you aren't driven mad before Christmas.
5387128
Lyra's trick... given her local background, I thought it was the ultimate way of getting her parents to stop yelling at her. (Or at least, something which would ensure she'd never have to hear it.) It's also handy for shutting down Bon-Bon during arguments, or just about anypony else. Although I'm guessing Bon-Bon's gotten pretty good at gesture and body language by now.
(If anyone's curious: Lyra's not blocking hearing, she's negating all vibrations associated with sound. Direct conduction through physical contact wouldn't work.)
For Rainbow's confinement issues... I think on some level, she recognizes that if she does reach the level of full Wonderbolt, she'll still wind up as a reserve who only performs with them when they're within close range. The ties of loyalty can come close to being chains, and Rainbow was always the most likely to feel the weight dragging her towards the ground.
*skullpalm*
Good job, Scootaloo...!
I really do love the way you write Dash. Such a nice mix of self-centeredness and that undying Loyalty her element is named after.
I like the way you write all of the bearers.
Today was the first day I had to cycle though radio stations to find music that wasn't Christmas stuff. So, for me It Has Begun.
Time to break out the CD collection.
the only thing I can say is thank god for bayanetta ost
5387044 I don't like Joe's comment either, but on the "on your period" comment: This poster is male, for one thing. Also, dismissing anything anyone says because they might be female and might be prone to extreme emotion is probably a bad idea. Women are fully capable of rational calm while on their periods, and they are fully capable of strong emotion while off them. Reducing women's feelings to a biological cycle is dehumanizing, disrespectful, and offensive. Please don't do it.
There is a very, very similar line in Good Omens about Crowley, a demon, and this line totally reminded me of that totally inappropriately.
Nothing wrong with the line - it is nice enough.
But man, it put me in the wrong mindset for this story.
This was a great line, and Fluttershy is a great unit of measure.
And Sweetie Belle was adorable here, but, alas, couldn't keep it up for very long.
There was quite a lot to like here, but the ending, with her not being able to go home, felt like it was a bit out of nowhere - I saw how it was being lead up to before, afterwards, but it still somehow felt a bit discordant, even though it was where the story was going. And then it didn't quite feel like it got satisfactorily resolved from an emotional point of view at the end, with me being left feeling like Rainbow Dash was just getting jerked around again, just like me, without end.
On the whole, though, worth reading.
I wrote a review of this story here.
5388385
So snow is actually an active agent of Tartarus.
...I knew it.
I tried to drop hints about the true nature of the issues, but I'm generally the worst judge as to whether they've been visibly planted or not. And as for the ending... I didn't want this one to have a real feeling of resolution, because the problem hasn't been resolved. No one gets to tie this sort of thing up with a bow and call it over: they just get to keep wrestling with the wrapping paper day after day.
Being a hero... that can be a privilege, honor, and joy. But in many ways, it's also a sentence. And the most you can hope for is to be imprisoned among those you care for.
5389109
TBH I think it was the feeling of dissatisfaction I got which bothered me more than the ending not feeling like it was alluded to enough previously in the story - Lyra's speech about family seemed like it was supposed to sort of resolve things, and then it didn't end up feeling that way emotionally at all, and thus I walked away feeling vaguely dissatisfied.
Still, I liked the story on the whole despite my feelings about the ending.
I feel for Rainbow in this one (and yourself, of course - I've read the blog post).
One of the great delights of taking most of December off and not really watching TV much is that I bypass much of the plastic Christmas celebrations. I have a couple of church services to deal with, but at least there I will be singing carols for the right reasons. And they won't be plastic.
Still, the only thing missing here was the "lame" -> "not lame" progression for Rainbow's opinion of the play, However, that, as they say, is another story...
Weary and exhausting. The narrator almost feels just as stressed as Rainbow is at the good parts. I, however, felt that some bit of passivity from certain paragraphs, I can't really remember many of them.
I liked it. Just a little bit too 'thick' for my tastes, a lot of descriptive paragraphs that kind of distracted from the characters, though that might be the appeal for some other people. Pacing could be slightly better. Many paragraphs felt important but they created a 'roadbump' causing readers to lose interest at the start. The description of the snow, and how commoners fail to appreciate them, was clearly an important aspect of Rainbow Dash's struggle to stay sane during the holiday, but I felt that it should have shifted towards the middle, as it came off as a generic 'dark and stormy night' introduction as first.
Estee
Really good fic that I think really shows off your skill as a writer, since I liked it despite disagreeing with or not really being able to understand so much of the main background of it(dislike of carols, dislike of tradition, feeling separated from home)
But as much as I enjoyed reading it, I have a problem with it, at least as a story that's part of a continuity.
Rainbow Dash feels that she's being kept away from home because of her duty as an Element Bearer. When she won Best Young Flyer she went to Cloudsdale planning to be separated from all the others except Fluttershy and had absolutely no problem with it.
Gotta figure that that's more than a day trip. You fly out, you want to be rested for the competition so you don't want that to be the same day. And there's apparently afterparties so you can't just leave straight after, even if you were rested enough to do so
5387032
you could view it as that but remember, Sweetie Belle at this point is pretty much against singing. She complains about ponies expecting her to be doing the singing in their talent performance after all. Maybe it's me, but I think that actually disliking something would block the potential cutie mark. Sweetie Belle won't get a musical cutie mark, until she's comfortable having a magical cutie mark or at least no longer uncomfortable with the idea
5390223
I can explain my perspective on that like this: Season #1 vs. Season #2. (I treat each season as taking place over roughly a year.) In S1, everything's fine. Being a Bearer is almost a casual thing. The Nightmare is defeated, we're all getting to know each other, maybe Rainbow can even skip going home just the once and spend the holiday with her new friends. And a trip out for the competition is just that: a trip out. No worries.
But after Discord... that's when Rainbow starts to understand the stakes. Spike's attempt to use her Element fizzled out. She can't be replaced. Without her, the whole thing doesn't work. Every time she leaves Ponyville, she's taking a chance that there will be a crisis where she can't get back in time -- and the group can't function without her. When you take somepony with Rainbow's ego and tell them that in fact, the world may not be able to get along without you, it's going to leave an impression. And the walls begin to close in.
(I have Cloudsdale as a decent distance out and the Wonderbolts' training camp as 'Close enough for an emergency speed run.' Eventually, someone might suggest to Celestia that a teleporter escort network might be necessary to let the Bearers assemble in a hurry. Eventually.)
But that's just my perspective. And we all know I haven't been right about anything yet.
5387199 Except Applejack. Estee's only written one story focusing on her, and that was a flashback, so it's not quite our AJ.
5390379
I suppose that would work. Though someone like Rainbow Dash would find it hard to hide having her worldview affected so dramatically. I mean just look how she reacted to realizing she enjoyed reading.
Also, if Dash knowing the meters of songs, but not knowing how she knows at first a nod to season 4?
5386890 Dude. Just...don't do things like this.
Well, this has inspired me to make a "Spite" bookshelf.
There's a lot I like here, and one point in particular was where Rainbow was thinking about how there were things about being a pegasus she wished the other pony tribes could experience. The scene in Triptych where Twilight tried thinking about Rainbow's perspective while she was teaching her to fly is one of my favorites in the story so far.
Sadly, this experience is slightly marred by a why don't the characters agree with my headcanon, dammit? (also kids, lawns, etc.) moment with Rainbow Dash: while I get where she's coming from in thinking that her being missing at the time was the point of failure, I've just always thought it was a lot more likely that the Elements would work if the others weren't Discorded and Spike took her place than if the whole Mane Six were there, but five of them Discorded.
so apparently i downvoted a comment already
but
this is the first time i've read this
how?
how did i downvote when i've never been on this page?
i....
wat
EDIT: oh, and the story was awesome, as usual
Late to the party, but I was thinking for the entire fic that Rainbow maybe had perfect pitch or something (although it turned out to be other issues, I still think she's got a hidden gift for picking out music, just based on her reaction to Sweetie Belle.)
Good fic! Her gift-buying strategy is.. I know people like that!
I really feel with our protagonist here, deeply at that. Also superb writing.
The really beautiful thing here is, as usual for you, the characterization written from Rainbows angle. It's alive and feels true.
Very well done.
This actually fits in with Ms. Faust's original vision of Rainbow: "brooding and moody...sometimes takes off for days at a time...nopony knows why."
I like this.
More than that; I'm touched by it.
This isn't a story that I read and enjoy and then immediately forget about or go do something else but a story that I read and which then remains behind in my emotions and thoughts for... oh at least a few minutes afterwards.
Of course, part of the reason the story touches me is that I'm never really going to be in the same position as Rainbow Dash. I'll never go too far from home, never reach out for something further than I can see or take myself too far away from those that matter...
Except I will be.
At some point I won't ever be able to go home again because she'll be some place I can't, won't go.
...Damnit.
You're a good writer. No matter what else might happen to you Estee, never doubt that.
Good story.
that part about conflicting loyalties reminded me of a quote:
"friends are the family you choose."
and i also get really sick of hearing crappy carols all month EVERYWHERE...one of the worst is this version of "the little drummer boy": the song is totally stupid, but that guy had to YELL the chorus because he thought extra volume would overcome his TOTAL lack of singing ability...sheesh.
So I was expecting a funny little something about how holiday music is awful, so I'm a little disappointed. Especially since around holiday time I'm the only one who seems to still be thinking it. The story itself was alright, just not was I was hoping for I guess.
You know, if you ever do get to season 4, I get the feeling the Mane 6 are going to have mixed feelings about finally being free of the Elements.
Fridge brilliance: Rainbow, a bird-pony, wants to fly south for the winter.
I'm assuming that was deliberate. Either way, it worked very well.
Thank you. There aren't many people who touch on (or even consider) the duality of Loyalty, and what it means for Rainbow Dash. This was heartbreaking in the best possible ways.
A paraphrased quote from I don't remember where.
Tradition: The reason you keep doing something once you've forgotten the reason you started doing it.
On the topic of Christmas music, I don't mind it too much, sometimes. I have a couple local radio stations that play some less overplayed varieties. Plus, I listen to CDs that are pretty good. Celtic Woman, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and some of the older stuff, like Buddy Holly. So I usually don't get too sick of anything. And as a last-ditch measure, I can always switch to a rock station, or something like that, if I really need a break.
Ancient typo spotted.
5406568
oh, you just reminded me of that crazy story Austraeoh, where terrible tragedy struck when they gave Loyalty to Spike...
That first paragraph is literally perfect. I mean, the rest of the story is well written too, but that first paragraph is just fantastic.