Close the Curtains, There's a Breeze.

by All Art Is Quite Useless

The One Where Rainbow Begins Her Day

A large white cloud floated peacefully through the sky above White Tail Woods, until Rainbow Dash burst straight through it, leaving nothing but broken shards which dissipated in the afternoon heat, becoming vapour. The sun was radiant upon her, a smile was stuck to her face. She flew in an iridescent arc of bombastic colour, brightening the day of any woodland creatures lucky enough to be present.

If anyone had been there to notice, they would have likely found themselves in awe of her aerial skill, her ceaseless energy and showstopping ability. Rainbow performed with energy and determination, eager to please the nonexistent crowd, eager to please herself. When she was satisfied with her last quad spiral loop, which in her eyes felt like something from a sped up dance routine, she settled on one of the surviving clouds, pausing to take in the scenery, ever so briefly.

As usual, she quickly became bored of watching the world, as still as it was. While she couldn't argue with the fact that her surroundings were indeed beautiful, she longed to see them in transience once again, zipping past, glancing at each facet of natural splendor as she soared past it. Now, the world was still, which she felt she could only truly appreciate when she no longer felt like moving. Tired of the slow and lackadaisical woodland creatures, her eyes quickly settled on two hummingbirds, diving from just above her, hitting some pretty impressive speeds, considering their sizes.

Rainbow was easily able to keep up with the pair's movements, she could even count their wing beats if she really focused. However, she was more interested in the lead hummingbird, a female, she deduced, and the male following it. The female was flying with purpose and determination, only, she never got very far with the erratic male on her tail, bidding for her attention. Despite the male's continuous wiles, the female persisted undeterred. Rainbow giggled at this display, taking notice of how ruthless the female was in her rejection and dismissal of the male.

Ultimately, the male gave up in his advances, and sped off in another direction. The female continued flying as if nothing had happened. Rainbow's eyes narrowed at this sight, but she quickly shrugged it off, assuming the male would be back later. 'Are birds that fickle?' she wondered, before squinting at the female once more, now some distance away. 'Not to mention headstrong,' she continued to ponder, before kicking off the cloud and continuing with her routine, paying the spectacle she had witnessed no more mind.

Rainbow still had many moves to perfect, and sitting around bird watching wasn't going to help her do that. Suddenly, she had a brainwave, loosely inspired by what she had just witnessed. She took to the sky, rapidly gaining altitude before diving, wings streamlined to allow a faster descent. She pulled up moments before brushing the tallest trees, but found herself unsatisfied with the attempt. 'It looked cooler when the birds did it, 'cause that guy bird was circling the other one. Guess it's not the kind of thing you wanna do alone.' Gently flapping as she rose again, Rainbow mused on this a little longer. 'Guess birds aren't meant to be alone, huh? I mean, otherwise they'd have really cool flying moves that didn't rely on two of them to pull off, right?'

Rainbow then briefly considered the fact that being a bird consists of more than just 'cool flying', and decided to maybe ask Fluttershy a little more about birds at some point soon. 'Hopefully that guy bird catches up with her eventually, when she calms down she's gonna need a flying partner, and he's got the moves,' she laughed, briefly wondering why she was already thinking about the hummingbirds again.

This time, she was determined to keep the little creatures out of her head, and pressed on with her practice, creating twists turns and flips that would likely cause many pegasi to crash from pure dizziness, let alone lack of control. Rainbow truly was a master of the skies, but she didn't know very much about birds, it seemed.

Eventually, she performed the buccaneer's blaze, a move so awesome that she had never been able to describe it in a way that fully did it justice. She considered going for a sonic rainboom, but it really wasn't challenging any more. Besides, she thought the rainboom might disrupt the creatures below, and as brash and inconsiderate as she could be at times, she didn't want to do that.

Things continued in this manner until they began to fade, and a repetitive beeping sound filled Rainbow's world, scaring her half to death, forcing her awake.

"Ngghhhh..." A muddled and limp Rainbow Dash pawed at her soft blanket, willing the invasive sound to go away. When it persisted, she kicked out with her forehoof, hoping to silence her alarm once and for all. In her action she only managed to knock it onto the floor, where it lay, still beeping.

Rainbow sighed, her first half formed thought of the day dissipating as fast as it was conceived as she pushed her muzzle in the space between her pillows, repositioning one to cover her exposed ear, After another thirty seconds of nonstop beeping, she kicked her cover away before crawling over to the side of her bed, reaching for the alarm, which sat just out of her reach.

Gonna freakin' break you one day, she thought, stretching out, keeping her hind legs on the edge of the bed but pushing her forehooves forwards until she had shimmied close enough to turn off the infernal alarm. Relief poured through her, and she scrambled back into her bed, ready to fall back into the blissful and familiar lull of sleep.

Rainbow's return to the land of nod was cut short ten minutes later by another sound blaring, this one more intense than the first. Gee, I love my backup alarm, Rainbow punctuated her thought with a long groan, rolling to the other side of the bed, forgetting to kick off the covers this time and becoming tangled in a mess of duvets. It was annoyingly comfortable, but she pushed through it out of necessity. Was she really going to lose her job over a few extra winks?

That was Rainbow's first full thought of the day, and like every work day, it was enough to make her awake, but hardly alert. Rainbow clambered out of bed, her head as fuzzy as her fur, and turned off the second alarm, which was purposefully placed halfway across the room, so she had to stand up to get to it.

Alarm turned off and migraine averted, she slowly stretched, pushing her forelegs out and straightening her back, flaring her wings as she went, holding the pose for a second or two, then slowly coming back up. She then sat on her haunches, turning in a clockwise motion to bend to each side, touching her opposite fore and hind hooves together, one after the other. This woke her body up, bit by bit.

Rainbow enjoyed her daily stretches, they were invigorating and necessary, due to the performance work she did each day. About fifteen minutes of intensive stretching a day would be ideal, with a five minute cool down at night, but Rainbow only made time for five minutes when she woke up, favouring doing the rest at work. She knew that if she didn't stretch at all, however, her wings would be as stiff as a board, and she would never get anywhere.

Once her body was limbered up, and she felt her usual lithe self, Rainbow commenced with her routine morning exercises. Fifty press ups was nothing to her, so she had decided to implement a burpee, standing on her hind legs before returning to standing, assuming pressup position, slowly lowering herself until the side of her muzzle was touching the floor, then exploding back upwards. Rainbow liked to challenge herself a little in the mornings, it would prepare her for the extreme and trying work that would come later. It was, however, the only occasion that Rainbow wouldn't time herself. At this time of morning, she'd much rather give her alarms a dirty look than use them for anything else.

Satisfied with her efforts, she went to her bathroom to wash herself off, and prepare for the day. While in the shower, she hummed a little tune that she couldn't place, and spent a good five minutes trying to determine just where it came from, before giving up and thinking of other things, such as her itinerary for the day. The warm water had woken up her mind, clearing the haze around her brain and allowing her to think straight.

When she emerged from the shower, mane wrapped in a towel and tail dripping wet, she considered just allowing herself to drip dry, before sighing and beating her wings a couple of times, taking to the air and allowing herself more comprehensive access with her second towel. Rainbow disliked drying herself like this, no matter how easy it was to access most of her body from this angle, because her wings had a tendency to blow cold air all over her wet fur, which gave her the shivers. Still, she couldn't tread water all over the house, so, like the alarms, it was a necessary evil.

Once she was completely dry and her mane was suitably towel dried (she had learnt long ago that it had to finish drying naturally, in order for her to retain the 'I just woke up looking this awesome' look) she set out to the kitchen, where she prepared a bowl of vanilla oatmeal for herself, and also took care to fill Tank's food bowl. Through bites of her breakfast she twiddled with her mane with a free hand, before remembering that the adjacent colours would likely get mixed up if she played with it too much before it dried.

In a perfect world, Rainbow would be able to mess around with and fidget with everything that crossed her path, but unfortunately, this wasn't a perfect world, and she wouldn't have a perfectly imperfect mane if she continued to fiddle with it. Her free hand was restricted to tapping out a erratic beat on the table, this placated her.

Once she was finished, she moved to wash up her bowl at the sink. This was better for her, as it let her use two hooves. If Rainbow wasn't moving around much, she at least liked to be occupied.

She briskly trotted out of the kitchen after depositing the clean bowl in the drying rack, running into Tank in the front room, who was perched on one of his pillow beds. Pillow beds featured in most rooms of the house, so Tank could sleep wherever he felt like without too much of a journey. Rainbow was happiest when he decided to take the other half of her bed, usually once or twice in a week, but she never told him that.

She didn't need to tell him she was happy to see him though, her face said it all. Tank was always the first friendly face Rainbow saw when she woke up, and she wouldn't have it any other way. As she approached him, her vacant smile became caring, affectionate, and paternal. "Hey, how's my special little guy today? Did you sleep well, buddy?"

A short blink was the only answer Rainbow received, but she nodded in acknowledgement regardless.

"Glad to hear so, dude! Momma's gotta go to work now, but you'll be alright by yourself for a few hours, right, little guy?" She asked him this every single day without fail, and every day she would get a short, slow nod in return.

There weren't many things Rainbow would gladly slow her high velocity life down for, but Tank was one of them. He was caring, loyal, and he really knew how to listen. Rainbow felt quite lost without him, she was glad his hibernation only lasted three months out of the year.

"There's food for you in the kitchen, if you wanted some exercise, but I'm happy to bring it in here if you like?"

A head shake of seeming indifference answered her question.

"Alright then, buddy. I promise I'll set you up on another playdate with everyone's pets soon, and I could start asking Fluttershy to look after you more often? I'll see what I can do, I feel really bad when I keep leaving you here, it's not like when I was on the reserves, you know? Anyways, I've gotta go now, try and have a good day, okay?"

A slowly formed smile on Tank's part provoked a three second nuzzle from Rainbow, another daily occurrence.

"Love ya, little guy!" Rainbow called, drifting over to her foyer, where her fresh and clean uniform hung. She had meant to wash the flight suit she wore yesterday, but it had slipped her mind, so she was using a spare. Rainbow could end up pretty tired in the evenings. Once upon a time, she would routinely nap during the day to conserve energy, this was a rare pleasure these days.

She clambered into the suit, which she still found difficult to put on, as skin tight as it was, before fastening the internal zip, which ran from her neck to her flanks. "Would it really kill them to elasticate these?" she grumbled. When she was finally wearing it properly, she reached up to bring her goggles down to just above her eyes. Instead her hoof sliced straight through the air, feeling nothing.

"Argh, of all the friggin' things to forget," Rainbow growled, storming back into the house and then discovering her goggles, laying on her bedside table, as they usually were when she misplaced them, which was most days.

As usual, she checked the clock in her foyer, determining that she should be about five minutes late to work, meaning she would be ten minutes early with little to no effort. Caught between a smile and a snarl, she exited her house, locking the front door and depositing the key on the inside of her suit, before checking her mailbox, finding the routine bills and utilities, deciding to read them later, and closing it again.

With that, she finally took to the sky, flying east with some haste.

Rainbow would often appear irritated upon waking, as well as on her way to work, and, as such, it might appear to an onlooker that she hated her job. In actuality, Rainbow only hated mornings, and knew that once she arrived at Wonderbolts HQ, the magic of her day would truly begin to reveal itself.

Comments

[Purplefan9]

Finally a ZephyrDash story

[All Art Is Quite Useless]

8195627 You're welcome! I plan to proceed with this story at a steady pace, thanks for checking it out!

AAIQU

[All Art Is Quite Useless]

8196815 First off, thanks for the feedback! It's nice to see that some people have an open mind regarding this story, considering the amount of downvotes. (Not that I really mind them all too much.)

As for your first point regarding narrator perspective, I totally agree, I could do with rephrasing that segment, I don't want to jar people right at the end of the chapter, after all!

There are a couple of reasons the dream sequence appears as written, that I can't fully reveal without compromising future chapters, but rest assured the dream won't just be disregarded, Rainbow was just a little busy in 'getting ready for work' mode to really give it any thought at that moment.

The tangent with the buccaneer's blaze etc. towards the end is arguable unnecessary, but it was nice to bring that up, I'll bet a lot of Rainbow fans have forgotten about that move by now. I definitely see what you mean though.

Your nitpicks are very appreciated! I'll go and fix those right away, thank you.

Glad to see that I've piqued your interest, I'm excited to go forwards with this story,

AAIQU

[Ccleecia]

I am really liking this story here my friend. And now a new ZephyrDash story cool.

[Dusk Raven]

Through bites of her breakfast she twiddled with her mane with a free hand,

Her free hand was restricted to tapping out a erratic beat on the table, this placated her.

As you can see, couple of times you use "hand" instead of "hoof."

Meanwhile, this is the first time I've seen an entire chapter dedicated to getting prepared for the day. But as 8224006 mentioned, I'm not sure how much of the detail was narratively necessary.