> An Expedition to the Crystal Forest
>  by Doubt
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Decisions, Decisions
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

An excerpt from The Ultimate Expeditioner's Handbook:

An expedition, as defined by The Canterlot Equestrian Dictionary, is: A journey undertaken by a group of ponies with a particular purpose, especially that of exploration, scientific research, or war. 

As far as this handbook is concerned, that more or less sums up the question of what an expedition is. The rest of this handbook strives to address the how and why of expeditions. That is to say, “How are expeditions conducted?” and “Why are expeditions conducted?”



•  •  ❖  •  •



Three distinct knocks shattered the silence within the Golden Oak Library. Its only waking occupant, a lavender alicorn, just so happened to be very ill, and consequently, not very happy.

“Go away! We’re closed!” shouted a irritated and sickly-sounding voice from the top floor of the library. Twilight Sparkle, the ailing pony in question, had discovered over the course of the previous day that living in a public library made getting any amount of quality bed-rest nearly impossible. Though why that should be the case, she didn't know; she'd already put up a 'closed' sign. Why did everypony still feel the need to knock? Were the ponies visiting her library illiterate?

“Oh… Um, okay then. I’ll come back tomorrow, Twilight. If you’re feeling better, that is,” came a quiet, muffled, voice through the wooden door. Quiet not so much because it was muffled but more so because of the pony it was coming from.

“Fluttershy?” Twilight croaked, her ears perking up to hear more clearly.

“Um, yes?”

Twilight reluctantly sat up in her bed. She was groggy and felt sick to her stomach. Her throat was sore, she had an intense headache, and any time she tried to walk she was overcome with intense dizziness. “Just a minute,” she called back. The volume she was having to speak at to make sure Fluttershy could hear her through the door only served worsen her headache, eliciting a groan from Twilight.

Abandoning the comfort her bed brought her, she slid out from under the covers and planted her hooves on the floor. She glanced over at a mirror across the room and could see that her mane was as far from well-kempt as it had ever been. She quickly levitated over a brush, and began working it through her bird's-nest of a mane as she made her way down the steps, hoping to achieve at least a modicum of presentability before anypony had to see her.

“You can come in,“ Twilight said as she approached the door. “I thought you were just somepony coming to use the library.”

The old hinges creaked as Fluttershy pushed open the door and popped her head in. “Actually, Twilight,” Fluttershy began, stepping into the library, a pair of saddlebags adorning her sides, “If it’s all the same to you, I did come to use the library.”

“Oh, well, since you're already here... go right ahead, I suppose.” Twilight was really trying to not sound annoyed, but she hadn't had much control over her tone for the past few days.

“I just need a few books and I’ll leave right away, Twilight. You’re obviously very sick, and I wouldn't want to be a bother.”

“What exactly are you looking for? Is there anything I can help you with?” Twilight inquired, beginning to adopt a more friendly demeanor. If there was anything that could make Twilight forget about her current physical state, it was books.

“Honestly, I feel like I should be the one asking you if you need anything.” Fluttershy said. “You really don’t look so well. Would you like me to get you a glass of water? Is there any medication you're taking that I could get for you?” 

“I think I’ll be fine.” Twilight said, raising a hoof to her forehead, slowly rubbing circles at the base of her horn, before moving down to rub her eyes. The incessant headache really was the absolute worst symptom of her illness. “I just tend to get a little moody when I’m sick.” 

“I can tell.”

“Watch it.” Twilight growled.

“Oops... sorry. I didn't mean to...” Fluttershy trailed off, withdrawing behind her draping mane. “Anyway, I was just looking for some maps, maybe some books on nature expeditions, and, well, everything you have on the Crystal Forest.”

Twilight’s eyebrows furrowed as she pondered why Fluttershy would need such an odd selection of books, but eventually she gave up, finding that thinking was much too difficult in her current state.

“I have absolutely no clue why you’d need those, but, since you asked: Maps,” Twilight pointed a hoof at a section of the library, “are over there. I think... Probably.” Twilight's hoof shifted to another set of shelves. “Books written by and about famous explorers are over there. And… What did you say about the Crystal Empire? Or forests? Or... what was it?”

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll be able to find everything just fine, Twilight. You should really just go back to bed and get some rest. And are you sure you don’t need anything from me while I’m here?” Fluttershy urged, trying her best to be as kind as possible to her sickly friend.

“I’m fine. Thanks.” Twilight said, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. The first time she’d smiled since she’d woken up. “If you need any help, you can wake up Spike. He’s pretty good at finding things. Just watch out, he isn't much of morning-dragon.”

“Thank you for all your help, Twilight. I think I can manage things from here.” Fluttershy said with a gentle, reassuring smile.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Fluttershy floated leisurely from shelf to shelf, taking her time to carefully examine each book. She moved quietly and deliberately in much the same way a stampeding elephant doesn't. Considering her circumstances though, Fluttershy's calmness was actually quite odd.

Fluttershy had been, for quite some time, faced with a decision. Either she could go to the Crystal Forest by herself, or she could take two friends. Strictly two because that was the number of extra train tickets contained within the letter Fluttershy had received from the Equestrian Society for the Preservation of Rare Creatures. The E.S.P.R.C. had also mentioned in their correspondences that they could mail Fluttershy extra tickets if she had more than two other ponies she wanted to take along with her, but the time for that had already passed. The date of departure was in just two days, leaving Fluttershy her with her current choices: bring two friends, or go alone.

Until now, Fluttershy hadn't found the decision even remotely difficult. She'd decided to go alone, just as she had when she went to see the breezies. But now, with the deadline looming, Fluttershy felt much more uncertain about her choice.

Her last expedition had been so great partly because she had been alone for the entire trip. That meant that she could take things as slow as she wanted to, do whatever she wanted, and most importantly, not do anything she didn’t want to. Everything went according to her plan on that trip. Something she enjoyed immensely, but couldn't see happening with other ponies in the mix.

However, what hadn't been so great was having all of those amazing experiences but not having anypony to share them with. Fluttershy had told her friends what the experience had been like, but there was nothing she could do to make them feel what she'd felt. No matter how she worded it, she couldn't evoke those same emotions she'd felt in other ponies just by telling them about it. The giddiness, the awe, the beauty, it was all lost on them because none of those things could really be put into words. And to keep another opportunity like that to herself... Fluttershy felt like that was selfish, especially because she already had two extra tickets.

Fluttershy’s hoof scanned across a row of books until it came across Tips for Traversing Treacherous Terrain. She removed it from it’s spot on the shelf and placed it on the pile of books she’d found so far, atop which sat The Ultimate Expeditioner's Handbook. The pile had grown more than she’d realised but not so large that she wouldn’t be able to fit all of the books into her saddlebags. Her absent-minded mulling had allowed her to get a lot done in a perceivedly short amount of time which was nice and all, but it didn’t bring her any closer to a solution to her predicament.



•  •  ❖  •  •



As Fluttershy made her way home, she contemplated what she would do about her situation. Twilight was in no shape to be going anywhere for the time being, so that excluded her as an option. And just as well too, considering Twilight's penchant for taking charge around other ponies, not that Fluttershy would ever wish discomfort upon anypony, but she did want it to be her expedition.

A sign swaying in the breeze drew Fluttershy’s attention. Sugarcube Corner, it read. Fluttershy’s heart sank a bit as she read the sign. She liked having Pinkie Pie around as much as anypony else but there was absolutely no way she could let Pinkie come with her. One of the things that made her last trip enjoyable was how peaceful it was. She loved all the little sounds of nature she could hear. From the sound of the wind blowing through the trees to the little hum of insects flying around. It was all so… serene. But as far as she knew, Pinkie Pie was incapable of sitting still. (unless she found herself at the wrong end of Twilight's horn in a room full of two dozen clones of herself.)

Fluttershy let her head drop disheartenedly. Excluding Twilight had been easy, fate had made that decision for her, but who was she to tell Pinkie she didn't want her to go. What would Pinkie do if she found out that Fluttershy had chose two of her other friends over her? Would she beg? Fluttershy didn't have the heart to say no to other ponies when the asked for mundane, everyday favours. If Pinkie begged her to go, how could she possibly tell her no then?

Unable to come to a conclusive decision regarding Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy shifted to a new train of thought. Ignoring Pinkie and Twilight, tat left her with Rarity, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash. Applejack stood out the most as the least likely to be able to go. Applejack was well-known for her strong work ethic and her tendency to take on more work than she could handle, and for Fluttershy right now, that was actually a good thing. Applejack could usually make time for a day with her friends, but a week away from the farm? Unless the fate of Equestria was hanging in the balance, that was almost certainly out of the question. To even tempt Applejack with the offer, it seemed downright irresponsible to Fluttershy.

The appearance of a door in Fluttershy's path took her by surprise, until she realized that it was the door to her cottage and she'd already made it home. She sighed before pushing open the door, saying aloud to herself. “I guess that leaves Rainbow and Rarity.”



•  •  ❖  •  •



A small bell chimed as the door to Carousel Boutique opened, signaling Fluttershy's entrance.

“Just a minute!” came Rarity’s customary sing-song reply. The thud of hooves against wooden stairs could be heard as Rarity made her way down to the main floor. “Fluttershy, dear, its so nice to see you,” she said as she reached to bottom of the stairs. “What brings you by?”

“Well,” Fluttershy began, ready to get straight to business. She was nervously rubbing one hoof against her other leg. “I was planning on going on a trip to the Crystal Forest and I was wondering if you would like you to come with me.”

“A trip?” Rarity raised a hoof to her chin as she pondered the prospect.

“Well, it's more of an expedition really. I've been asked by the Equestrian Society for the Preservation of Rare Creatures to document the animal life on the island, and I thought maybe you wanted to go.”

“Hmm.” Rarity hummed. “Who else would be going? Also, more importantly, when were you planning on going?”

“The train we'd take is scheduled to arrive first thing in the morning two days from now. We—”

“Wait, wait, wait. Just two days!?” Rarity stumbled back as if the words had physically struck her. “That’s a little last-minute, Fluttershy. I-I suppose it could be arranged, but...” Rarity sighed. “You really haven't given me much notice.”

“Well, you see,” Fluttershy started, hurt in her eyes from having caused her friend such distress. “I wasn't given that much time to prepare for this myself, and until today I thought that I was just going to go alone, but then I thought that maybe it would be nice to have somepony else to share the experience with... And… I’m sorry this is so sudden. I didn't want to be a bother, I was just really hoping you would go.” Fluttershy allowed herself to breath and tried to calm herself down.

Rarity stepped closer and raised a hoof to Fluttershy’s shoulder. “Would you like to explain to me what exactly it is that's really bothering you so much?” Rarity’s lips curved into a sincere smile.

Fluttershy conceded and began into a drawn-out and slightly rambling explanation. Rarity sat with her chin rested on a hoof. She listened attentively to everything Fluttershy had to say and only spoke up when Fluttershy had finished.

“From what I’ve gathered,” Rarity said. “The real issue you have here, Fluttershy, is that you don't want to have to choose anypony over Pinkie Pie, Is that right?”

“I-I suppose.” Fluttershy felt like that was a bit of an oversimplification, but it wasn't definitely the biggest issue.

“Alright then, If that’s what’s bothering you, then I’ll take care of it,” Rarity said. “Also, should you choose to have me along, I promise to not interfere with whatever plans you have for your expedition, and I’ll also make sure the same goes for Rainbow Dash,” she added. “Assuming you're planning the remaining ticket to Rainbow, that is.”

“If you really mean that then I would be glad to have you along. Oh, and um, you weren't wrong in assuming it was Rainbow Dash”

“Excellent. Then there you have it.” Rarity stated with a smug grin.

“But what about Pinkie? You haven't said what you plan to do.”

“I’ll figure something,” she said. “I promise.”



•  •  ❖  •  •



Fluttershy touched down at the front door to Rainbow Dash's cloud-house. She raised a hoof to knock, then lowered it again, suddenly feeling nervous about what she was doing. It hadn't even occurred to Fluttershy before now that Rainbow Dash might not want to accompany her on her expedition. Rainbow Dash certainly hadn't enjoyed going with her to see the butterfly migration...

Fluttershy took a deep breath, then let it out. She'd let her anxieties rule her thoughts enough for one day. It was just Rainbow Dash she was going to be talking to. Nothing to worry about.

Without a moment’s consideration further, Fluttershy knocked on the door, but the only sound it emitted was a quiet poof noise. Fluttershy felt slightly foolish for having knocked on a cloud, especially since she was a pegasus, but luckily nopony had been around to see her embarrass herself. She looked around for a bell to ring instead, but there wasn't one.

"Rainbow Dash!" Fluttershy called out.

No response.

"Rainbow, are you in there!?" She must have been. It was still too early in the morning for Rainbow Dash to be out and about. Rainbow Dash never was one to wake up early and certainly wasn't one to wake up early and do things.

Fluttershy flew over to a window and peered through it. She couldn't see Rainbow Dash anywhere but she could see her pet tortoise.

Fluttershy knocked on the window. "Tank, is Rainbow in there?"

Tank slowly nodded.

"She isn't still sleeping, is she?"

Again, Tank slowly nodded.

Fluttershy flew up one floor and around to the opposite side of the cloud-house to find a window to Rainbow Dash’s bedroom. Looking through it, she saw Rainbow Dash sprawled out on her bed.

Fluttershy alighted on the ledge of the window then knocked on the glass three times.

Rainbow Dash fidgeted then turned her head to face the window. Slowly, she opened one eye. An expression of confusion ran over Rainbow Dash’s face but she swiftly shrugged it off.

Rainbow Dash sat up on her bed and stretched her wings. “Come in,” she said, shaking her head to wake herself up more fully.

Fluttershy hesitated for a moment before pulling open the window which swung open on a pair of hinges. “It’s not everyday I use a window as a door,” she remarked.

“It is for me,” Rainbow Dash said. “You should try it. Pretty useful if you ask me.”

“I’ll think about that,” Fluttershy said, but she had no intention of doing so.

There was an awkward pause in the conversation that went on a little too long for comfort, so Rainbow Dash broke the silence by being the first to speak up.

“You must really like small talk if you came all the way to my house to wake me up for it.”

“Oh, right... actually, I did have something I needed to ask you about.” Fluttershy’s expression lit up at the thought of it. “I was planning on going on an expedition to the Crystal Forest and I’d like you to come with me,” she stated. “And, um, Rarity's coming too.”

Rainbow cocked her head sideways and stared off into nothing as she thought about the offer. “Yeah, I’m down.” She said after a moment.

Fluttershy looked at Rainbow Dash as if she were waiting for her to continue. “Really?” She said. “You don’t even know when it is. Or how long we’ll be gone.”

Rainbow Dash scoffed dismissively. “I can make time whenever. It doesn’t matter to me.”

Fluttershy did a mental roll of her eyes. It was blatantly obvious that Rainbow Dash trying to act cool. Even so, Fluttershy still found that very aspect of Rainbow Dash's personality to be a little endearing.

Fluttershy took the time to explain to her new companion everything she would need to know ahead of time, such as where and when they would be meeting up beforehand, and what Rainbow Dash would need to bring with her.

“That’s all okay with you, right?” Fluttershy inquired.

“Yeah, sounds good.” Rainbow Dash said with a yawn. “Now can I get back to my nap?”

Fluttershy gave Rainbow Dash a stern look. “You were napping? Rainbow, it’s not even lunch time yet.”

“I know. It's just that eating breakfast this morning really wiped me out.”

Fluttershy rolled her eyes. “Well, in that case, I’ll leave you to your napping.”

As she made her way out the window, Fluttershy turned around to shut it. “I’ll be by here tomorrow to wake you up.” She said with a cheery grin before she closed the window.

“Hey! I can manage a simple task like waking myself up, y’know!” Rainbow Dash shouted through the glass.

Fluttershy maintained her grin. “I'm sure you can.”



•  •  ❖  •  •



Two ponies, one yellow, one white, made their way onto the train platform and took a seat on a bench adjacent to the station wall. They removed the saddlebags they were carrying and placed them beside the bench. The two busied themselves with small talk as they waited for the train that would take them to the first stop on their trip. A clock fixed to a wall on the outside of the train station displayed the current time: 7:32. Two minutes past the time that Fluttershy had told Rainbow Dash to meet her there. She had already stopped by Rainbow Dash’s house earlier to make sure the mare was up which she wasn’t at the time, so Fluttershy had woken her up, but now thinking back on it, there really wasn’t anything keeping her from going back to bed, which wouldn't be an entirely un-Rainbow Dash thing to do either.

“If you don’t mind waiting here by yourself for a minute, I’d like to go make sure Rainbow Dash is getting ready,” Fluttershy said, interrupting Rarity. Rarity had been explaining the travesty that was her latest fashion line. She had been going on and on to no end since they had left Carousel Boutique about how she didn’t know what come over her to choose such a hideous colour palette and how the whole ensemble looked like something her mother would wear. (no offense intended to her mother.)

Rarity glanced at the clock. “Normally I would protest the notion of checking up on somepony who's only two minutes late, but... well, this is Rainbow Dash we're talking about,” Rarity said. “Go ahead. I'll be waiting right here.”

Fluttershy flashed Rarity an appreciative smile. “I promise I’ll be quick. Oh, and would you watch my things while I'm gone?”

“Certainly.” Rarity said with a nod. And with that, Fluttershy took to the skies, heading in the direction of a certain blue pegasus’s residence.

Arriving at the illustrious cloud-house, Fluttershy made straight for Rainbow Dash’s bedroom window, and looking through, there was Rainbow Dash herself, snuggled up under the covers, fast asleep. Fluttershy entered through the window for the third time, as of recently, and made her way over to the side of Rainbow’s bed. She leaned down and spoke directly into Rainbow Dash’s ear.

“Wakey-wakey Dashie! You-”

“NGH-NYEGH!” shouted Rainbow Dash, making no effort whatsoever to articulate. She brought the covers above her head and buried her face in a pillow.

Fluttershy’s voice took on a rigid tone. “Rainbow, you’ve already overslept. Get up or we’ll miss the train.”

“I’ve got an alarm clock so quit worrying.” Rainbow said, eyes still closed.

Fluttershy picked up the clock sitting on the nightstand. “This clock is broken Rainbow,” she said, “That explains why you've never woken up on time for anything before, but more importantly, we only have ten minutes. Now get up.”

“I can make it there in under five!” Rainbow retorted quickly.

Fluttershy scowled, she wouldn’t be making any progress through diplomacy. “If that’s the way you’re going to act, then so be it.” Fluttershy grabbed hold on the blanket in her mouth and, with a swift tug, tore it from Rainbow Dash’s clutches. “There. Now I didn’t want to do that but you made me.” 

Rainbow Dash, however, wasn’t particularly perturbed. She pulled her legs close to her chest and used her wings to cover her body. At this point, she was just trying to be stubborn, made evident by the way she peeked open one eye for just a moment to get a look at Fluttershy's reaction.

“Rainbow Dash! Get up!”

“I will. Just give me one more minute.” Rainbow pleaded, amused with herself for being such a nuisance. The grin on her face said it all. “Pleeeeease!”

“We don’t have a minute.” Fluttershy insisted, but Rainbow Dash was more insistent on staying put. “Fine then. You leave me no other choice.” Fluttershy said with a devious grin of her own. She reached out a hoof and gently ran it along the underside of Rainbow’s wing.

“Hey! Stop it!” Rainbow Dash instinctively retracted her wing from the tickling sensation, but Fluttershy kept at it, going for the sensitive spots on the other, unretracted wing. “Quit... heheHaHA... tickling my wings!”

Fluttershy narrowed her eyes and she went in for the kill. “Stop! Hehe!” Rainbow giggled. “Okayokayokay! I’ll get up! I'll get up!” But Fluttershy continued, and she had no plans of stopping until Rainbow Dash was out of the bed. “Alright! I’m getting up! Stop!” Rainbow Dash begged, rolling off the bed, laughing hysterically. Fluttershy wasn't going to let her prey get away that easily though. She pounced on the troublesome pony, going for her neck, then her sides, and then the crooks of her legs. Rainbow Dash kicked uncontrollably as she squirmed around on the floor. Eventually Rainbow Dash found herself in the position to end the barrage of tickles by rolling Fluttershy off of her and herself onto Fluttershy, pinning Fluttershy to the floor, and diffusing the tickle frenzy.

“If we weren’t in such a rush I’d return the favour,” Rainbow said, out of breath, but with a cocky grin. She got to her hooves and stepped over Fluttershy.

Fluttershy then got to her hooves as well, still smiling widely. “You were a lot easier to wake up earlier.”

“That’s because I knew I was going to go back to bed when you left.”

“You really shouldn’t have done that. We might not make it to the train station in time.”

“Oh, we'll make it. Even if it means I have to fly you there myself,” Rainbow Dash said. “I didn't wake up, then go back to sleep, then wake up again to miss this train.”

“Did you pack last night like I told you to?”

“Yeah, I’ve got it right here.” Rainbow Dash said as she darted over to a pair of large saddlebags thrown carelessly into the corner the previous night. She adorned them and made her way for the window. “You ready?” She said turning her head to call back to Fluttershy.

Fluttershy nodded.

“Then let’s go!”



•  •  ❖  •  •
 


“All aboard!” shouted the conductor in a loud, bellowing voice.

Uh oh. This was bad. Fluttershy hadn’t yet made it back with Rainbow Dash, and Rarity was beginning to panic.

Rarity was standing in the middle of the platform trying to think of the best course of action. She looked to the sky, trying to spot any signs of Fluttershy or Rainbow Dash but they were nowhere in sight. Ponies passed by Rarity as they filed onto the train.

“Aaaaall aboard!” the conductors voice rang out again.

The conductor! She would simply convince the conductor to hold up the train for just a few short minutes until her friends arrived. Easy enough. She would put on her ladylike charm and get exactly what she wanted, just like she had done so many times before. She adjusted her mane, making sure that it was at maximum fabulosity, then trotted over to the conductor.

“Hello!” She raised a hoof to her chest. “I, am Rarity. And it appears that some friends of mine aren’t going to make it on time. I was just wondering if you wouldn’t mind waiting for just a few moments as they arrived. Would you be so kind as to do that for me?” Rarity finished her request with a few flutters of her eyelashes.

“Not gonna happen, Miss,” the conductor replied while rubbing his large, puffy mustache. He hadn’t even bothered to look at Rarity. His only concern was with making sure that the ponies at the station were on board.

“Whyever not? I’m sure they won’t be long.”

The conductor looked down to Rarity instead of over her head like he had been doing earlier. “Listen. We run a tight schedule, and if I held up the train for every pony that couldn’t be bothered to make it on time, I’d be out of the job. Now either you can get on the train, or you can stay here. It doesn’t matter to me.” All of the ponies at the station were now on the train and, if it weren’t for Rarity, it would have been ready to depart.

“I’m not asking you to hold up the train for every late pony. I’m asking you to hold it up for me,” Rarity shot back.

The conductor sighed in agitation. “You see this?” He held up a pocket watch. “It’s a pocket watch in case you couldn't figure that out on your own, which wouldn't surprise me since you don't seem to have a concept of time. Now tell me, what time does this pocket watch say?”

Rarity examined the watch. “Sev—”

“Seven forty-five. That is absolutely right.” He said. The pace at which he talk had increased noticeably. “Would you like to tell me when it is you think this train is supposed to leave here?

“Sev—”

“Seven forty-five. Right again!” the conductor interrupted for a second time. “You may have already noticed this, but those times are exactly the same, and they’re going to stay the same, so either get on the train, or stay here!” His voice had raised substantially in volume for the last part. He was now staring down Rarity, seething at her with clenched teeth.

Rarity hadn’t liked his tone in the slightest. Nor did she particularly enjoy being interrupted. “Listen here, you!” she spat. “That is no way to talk to a lady!”

The conductor, having had just about enough of listening to Rarity, decided she was no longer worthy of his consideration. He spun around and made straight for the train, leaving Rarity red-faced with anger.

“Get back here!”

The conductor, though he undoubtedly heard Rarity, gave no indication that he did.

“I am demanding that you hold up this train!”

The door to the train slid closed as the conductor boarded.

The panic that Rarity felt earlier kicked in again. It looked like the train would be leaving without her, but, as a successful fashion designer, Rarity knew a thing or two about not giving up, and she certainly didn’t plan on giving up that easily. She ran to the front of the train to speak to the pony in charge of driving the train. The engineer was a cream pony wearing a red neckerchief and an engineer’s hat. He had an apathetic look about him in his posture and his eyes, and was slouched over with one of his front hooves hanging out the window. Rarity continued her tirade with him.

“You will not be leaving this station until I say so! Do I make myself clear!?”

The engineer looked over to Rarity. His glance lingered for a moment but he otherwise didn’t acknowledge her demand. Before another moment further could even pass, orders to set off then reached the engineer, so, with as much apathy as his appearance indicated he possessed, he reached for the controls to set the train in motion.

Rarity used her magic to grab him by the neckerchief and pulled him back away from the controls. The engineer's eyes went wide at this in the first display of emotion Rarity had yet seen him make. The conductor had been watching Rarity through a window to make sure she hadn’t planned to cause anymore trouble, but what he could see (Rarity's horn glowing and the train still not moving) suggested otherwise. He stormed back off of the train to confront the problematic unicorn.

“Hey! Hey! HEY! What do you think you’re doing!” called out the conductor.

Just then Rainbow Dash forcefully landed on the train platform next to Rarity. “Whoa now! Easy girl, or they’ll make us keep you on a leash!” Rainbow Dash said to Rarity with a grin. Fluttershy touched down not long after and Rarity sighed with relief at the sight of her companions.

“Thank Celestia!” Rarity said. She turned to the conductor and levitated three tickets over and into a pocket on the front of his uniform. She said nothing more to him and simply walked by him over to the entrance of the train.

“Fluttershy your bags are over by the bench. Do be sure to get them,” Rarity chimed, giving no impression of the agitated state she had just been in. The conductor, however, was still fuming, and was even considering not letting Rarity on the train, but having just witnessed how well that worked out the first time, decided against it.
> En Route
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The pony trio made their way onto the train together and promptly chose their seats. Rainbow Dash was the first to take her seat, and across from her, Fluttershy and Rarity took their own.

The fiasco with the conductor was still on the forefront Rarity's mind, and now that they were settled in, she was quick to let Rainbow Dash know. “Rainbow Dash, I can’t believe you would almost ruin this trip for Fluttershy!” Rarity crossed her forelegs and raised her chin at Rainbow in contempt.

“Hey! It wasn’t my fault!” Rainbow Dash shot back instinctively.

“Oh, I doubt that!” Rarity spat, jerking her head back down to glare at the object of her reprimand with narrowed eyes. “But, I'm all ears, darling. I'd love to know how you, yet again, aren't responsible for your consequences of your actions.”

The only reply Rarity received was a scoff from Rainbow Dash who, despite her best efforts, couldn't think of an excuse to shift the blame away from herself. Most times she could come up with something to blame it on, but this time it really had been entirely her fault she had been late.

“Um... Girls…?”

Rarity continued her scolding. “Go on, tell me, what's your excuse this time? That it was Fluttershy’s fault that you were so late?”

“Girls...”

Rainbow wasn’t hugely invested in defending herself since she was, in fact, quite clearly in the wrong, but she also wasn't one for just sitting back while being berated, or doing the unthinkable and apologizing. “Well... I did have to fly slower so Fluttershy could keep up with me.”

“Oh, and I assume you would have been right on schedule if Fluttershy hadn't gone to get you? Pardon me in saying this, but that doesn't sound anything like the Rainbow Dash that I know. How is it, dear, that you're the fastest flier in Equestria, but still unable get anywhere on—”

“GIRLS! Stop!” Fluttershy scowled back and forth between both ponies. “Is that how you want to spend this trip? Bickering and angry with each other the whole time? Or do you want to enjoy yourselves and appreciate the time we’re going to be spending together?” Fluttershy said, her tone softening near the end.

Fluttershy looked back and forth between the two other mares waiting for one of them to respond. Rainbow Dash chose not to. She had a guilty look about her but otherwise refused to admit to any wrong-doing, instead choosing to reposition herself so that she was lying down across the bench with her hooves behind her head. Rarity had the same look about her, but unlike Rainbow Dash, she chose to apologise. “I suppose you have a point there, Fluttershy. That whole incident on the train platform has me rather high-strung at the moment, but that doesn't excuse the way I lashed out... Forgive me?”

“I forgive you, but what I really want is for you two to apologize to each other. We’re stuck with each other for the next few days whether or not we get along.” Fluttershy shifted from speaking just to Rarity to both of her companions. “So as I said, you two need to apologise to each other, not me.”

“Very well,” Rarity began. “Rainbow Dash, I'm sorry. The way I acted was uncalled for, and in no way how one should talk to a friend. Can you find it in yourself to forgive me?” The tone Rarity spoke with was mostly sincere, but not entirely.

Rainbow Dash was lying on her back with her head facing the aisle and her hooves folded behind her head. She stared out the window on the far wall of the train, thinking about nothing in particular, watching as the scenery passed by outside, the landscape still familiar since the train hadn't yet traveled more than just a few yards from the station. It was the same terrain that they were greeted with when they took the train to Canterlot or the Crystal Empire. Evidently they were heading in the same direction.

“Rainbow Dash.” Rarity said, looking at the cyan pony expectantly.

Torn from her absent-mindedness, Rainbow Dash glanced over to the pony addressing her. “Yeah?”

“I apologized.” Rarity leaned forward, trying her hardest to maintain a friendly demeanor. “Is there anything you would like to say?”

“Apology accepted.” Rainbow Dash did her best to play it off as though she was genuinely oblivious. Hoping that, even if Rarity knew what she was doing, she would just give up and drop the subject anyway—but she didn’t.

“And…?” The waning of Rarity’s patience was apparent in her tone.

Rainbow Dash was well-acquainted with apologies due to her reckless personality, and if there was one thing that she had come to know about apologies, it was that she didn't like them. But more than that she had learned that she really didn't like to give them to Rarity.

It was always weird to Rainbow Dash just how inordinately unforgiving Rarity was to her. Especially over the small things. For whatever reason, Rarity didn't hold back when Rainbow Dash did something she disapproved of, and rarely did she accept her apologies. Which was somewhat annoying for Rainbow Dash, but mostly... it kind of hurt.

“And...?” Rarity repeated.

Rainbow Dash's opinion on apologies was that they were best compared to pulling teeth; not very fun generally, but less painful when done swiftly. She did her best to look Rarity in the eyes, then spoke. “And I’m sorry.”

“For what, exactly?”

Dash clenched her teeth. Rarity had to be kidding...  "I'm sorry..." she continued as best she could, breathing slowly through her nose. “For being late.”

Rarity pressed on. “I'm sorry, darling, I'm not sure I know what you mean. Would you care to elaborate on that?” She did in fact intend to 'pull that card.'

Rainbow Dash cringed, then, with a sigh annoyance, got it over with. “For staying up all last night, even though I knew I needed to get up early, for going back to bed this morning like an idiot, for never being on time to anything, for avoiding responsibility when I screw up, for making you act like a crazy-pony then just laughing at you, and for every other little thing that I didn’t do right in your eyes that I can’t think of! Ugh, are you happy now!?” Rainbow Dash turned onto her side to face away from Rarity, crossing her hooves and letting out a huff. She was met with an eyeful of cushion which, all things considered, was a much less spectacular view than the one she had looking out the window, but infinitely better than having to see Rarity out of the corner of her eye. It wasn't exactly a comfortable position either, but she had already committed to giving Rarity the cold-shoulder, so she had no choice but to stick with it.
“Thank you, dear, and apology accepted.”

Rainbow Dash gave a huff then fell into an unfriendly silence which persisted for several painfully awkward moments until Rarity finally spoke up. “Do you think that maybe... I pushed her a little too much?” Rarity said, looking to Fluttershy. She could see that Fluttershy was trying to suppress a smile. “Why are you smiling? You should be upset right now,”

“It’s nothing.” Fluttershy turned away, hiding her face from Rarity.

“Tell me.”

“I really shouldn’t...”

“Tell me!” Rarity begged, prodding at Fluttershy's side with a hoof. “Pleeease!”

"I mean... I wouldn't want to—"

“Pleeeeeeease!”

“I-I...”

“Pleasepleasepleasepleeeeease—”

“Oh, alright.” Fluttershy relented. “It's just... when Rainbow gets all pouty like she is now, I just think it’s the most adorable thing in the world.”

Rainbow Dash clenched her teeth at the thought of being “adorable.” It was such a condescending word. It undermined everything she strived to be. And worst of all, it was totally uncool. “I am not adorable!” She shouted over her shoulder, then proceeded to glare even more intently at the cushion. Such a stupid shade of green.

“It reminds me of when we were fillies and Rainbow Dash would pout like this all the time,” Fluttershy said. “I used to call her Ms. Pouty-pants.” Rainbow Dash tried to hide her face as her cheeks flushed a bright shade of crimson. It was hardly a creative nickname, but it sure worked its intended purpose on her. “Isn’t that right Ms. Pouty-pants?”

“Whatever,” Rainbow Dash said, leaping up to open the window nearest to the three ponies. “I’m gonna... get some air.” She said, then leapt out the open window, taking to the skies.

The two remaining mares sat together in silence, staring at the spot where Rainbow Dash had just been, neither knowing quite how to react to the sudden exit.

The mild surprise quickly evaporated though as Rarity's lips curved upward into a grin and she shook her head from side to side. “Fluttershy?” she said. “Sometimes I’m astonished by the way you act around Rainbow Dash.”

“How so?” Fluttershy's eyes lingered for a moment longer on the open window, that is, until a new thought occurred to her and she shifted her attention fully to the mare beside her. “Did I do something I shouldn't have?” Fluttershy cowered behind her mane.

“I don't know if I would say it's wrong, but it's certainly different from what I've come to expect of you.”

“What do you mean?” Fluttershy asked, still hiding within the security of her mane.

“I mean the way you were just teasing Rainbow Dash,” Rarity said. “I can’t imagine a single other living creature that you would tease. Come to think of it, I can’t imagine you teasing an inanimate object.”

Fluttershy thought about what Rarity had just said; it was definitely true. But why? Why did she act differently around Rainbow Dash? There must have been something about Rainbow Dash that made her act differently. Some aspect that was unique to Rainbow Dash and Rainbow Dash alone, because no other pony could make Fluttershy behave as she did when she was around Rainbow Dash.

It couldn’t be that she was just closer with Rainbow Dash than she was with anypony else, could it? It seemed unlikely, considering that Rarity was a better friend than Rainbow in some—most ways, and she spent far more time with Rarity than Rainbow Dash. Although there had been a time when Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were the others' only friend, but that was a long time ago when they were just fillies. Maybe that had something to do with it, or maybe it had nothing to do with it at all, or maybe it was just Rainbow Dash's brashness rubbing off on her. Fluttershy didn't really agree with that last notion though. It didn't feel to her like it was just Rainbow Dash's personality rubbing off. It felt much more natural, like who she was around Rainbow Dash was her real self, and the pony that she was around anypony else was a mask that she wore to hide all the things that she didn't feel comfortable revealing to other ponies.

Fluttershy's thoughts continued uninterrupted for several more minutes, as she sat staring out the window. In the midst of Fluttershy's continued mulling, another (albeit completely unrelated) thought occurred to her.

“Rarity?” Fluttershy said. “I almost forgot to ask, what did you end up doing about Pinkie?”

Rarity was almost shocked to hear Fluttershy speak up. From the way Fluttershy had looked while she had sat there thinking, Rarity had half-expected her to not say another word for the rest of the train ride. “Oh, that? It was easy, really. Remember when Maud came to visit?”

Fluttershy nodded.

“I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you of how well that went,” Rarity said. “So, being the generous friend I am, I bought her a train ticket to her family's rock farm so that she could go see her sister. At first she didn't seem to want to go; she kept going on about not wanting to have too much fun without us, but I managed to talk her into it in the end.”

“She... she wasn't mad about not getting to go with us was she?”

“No, not as far as I could tell. If anything, she seemed happy to have the opportunity to visit to her sister without worrying about us missing her.” Rarity pulled Fluttershy in for a sideways hug. “You really do overestimate just how offended ponies will be by the things you do, dear. Especially from us, no less. We're your friends, Fluttershy, and we know that you would never try to hurt our feelings.”

Fluttershy leaned into the hug. “I guess I just worry so much that I forget that sometimes.”

“I imagine the way you seclude yourself from other ponies doesn't help with that either. If you spent more time around us, you wouldn't be able to forget that we're all your friends. And you could ask us for advice any time you need it.” Rarity looked Fluttershy in the eyes. “If anything, remember that second part. If you ever have something on your mind, you can come and talk to me about it. You don't have to wait for our weekly spa date either, just come over any time, day or night.”

“I'll remember that.”

“Good.” Rarity broke the contact between the two then shifted to a lighter topic of conversation. “So tell me, darling: how have your animal friends been holding up?”

Fluttershy noticeably perked and an appreciative smile formed on her lips in response to Rarity allowing her the opportunity to talk about her favourite subject.



•  •  ❖  •  •
 


The train pushed onward. Passing through one tunnel, then a second on its way up a mountainside. Rainbow Dash was back inside the train, napping in what appeared to be a world-first of a sleeping position that involved having her forehead pressed against the seat cushion and her back legs in the air. Rarity had also, rather ungraciously, nodded off, while Fluttershy sat quietly reading a book on the destination of their voyage.

Just like everything else she had read on the Crystal Forest, the book talked in detail about the extensive folklore surrounding the forest, which really wasn't what Fluttershy was looking for. What she had been trying to find was something a little more scientific, a little more factual, but the authors seemed more interested in the fairy tales. Magical wisps, giant stone monsters, forests that had minds of their own, even a sea monster that preyed on boats that approached the island, they were interesting stories no doubt, but Fluttershy reasoned that most of it must be made up. The fact that, for hundreds of years, ponies hadn’t inhabited the island that the Crystal Forest resided on, and the disappearance of its pony residents being a complete mystery made the abundance of theories and camp-fire ghost-stories all of the more understandable.

Out the window, hanging on the mountainside high above the train, Fluttershy could see Equestria’s splendorous capital city approaching. The sun shone behind the tall, ornate towers, silhouetting them and illuminating the space in between, creating an absolutely stunning spectacle.

Fluttershy gently prodded the mare next to her. “Rarity... Rarity, wake up.” 

“Huh?” Rarity blinked her eyes several times as she awoke. “What is it?”

“Sorry for waking you up, but I thought that you might want to see this. Look.”

Rarity's gaze followed the direction of Fluttershy's outstretched hoof to the window behind her. “Oh my! That's... breath-taking!”

“We're going to be getting off there in just a minute, so you should probably try to not fall asleep again. Unless you want to, that is... I wouldn't mind waking you up again if you do,” Fluttershy said.

“Wait, why are we stopping in Canterlot?”

“It's a surprise. I think you’ll enjoy it.” Fluttershy gave an enthusiastic grin. “I don't know about Rainbow Dash, but I think she'll like it too.”

The train continued onward up the mountain for a short while longer until arriving in Canterlot. Rarity was buzzing with excitement, and the fact that the train had gotten increasingly stuffier over time it had taken them to arrive in Canterlot only served to make Rarity even more eager to get off the train.

Rainbow Dash, on the other hand, had yet to wake up and realise that they were, in fact, in Canterlot.

Rarity grabbed for her things as Fluttershy woke their sleeping companion with the slightest of nudges. “Rainbow Dash, wake up. We’re here!” she said.

“Huh…? I must have really zonked out,” said Rainbow Dash as she discontorted herself out of her painful-looking sleeping position. “Or this place was a lot closer than you made it sound.”

Rainbow rubbed her eyes and stretched her wings, then peered out the window to see a vaguely familiar train station. “Hold on a second…”

“Canterlot, darling,” Rarity said. “And please, do fix your mane.”

Rainbow Dash looked up. Her mane was indeed a mess. She shook her head then ran a hoof over her mane a few times before calling it quits. It probably looked fine, and if it didn’t Rarity would take matters into her own hooves, no doubt.

There was an easy way to find out whether or not her appearance was passable. Rainbow Dash shot her signature cocky grin Rarity’s way, then raised an eyebrow as if to say: “How do I look?”

“No,” was all Rarity had to say in response. She levitated a comb out of her saddlebags which she was now wearing across her back and got to work. She brushed Rainbow Dash’s mane, making sure to be thorough without completely eroding Rainbow’s patience. “Aaand there. Your mane looks… as good as it usually does.” She worded her remark carefully to avoid insulting Rainbow Dash. It’s not as though Rainbow Dash was particularly concerned about looking pretty, but she was rather fond of initiating conflict at the first sign of confrontation. In fact, if Rainbow Dash were to ever make it into the history books for doing one thing better than anypony else, that thing would either be flying, or bickering. (some ponies also think that she makes an O.K. Element of Loyalty.) Rainbow Dash even had the gall to consider messing her mane up again as soon as Rarity had fixed it just to be difficult, (which she oh so loved to do,) but decided that it would probably be best if she didn't. Rarity probably deserved a bit of a break considering the way her morning had gone.

“Now,” Rarity added, gesturing toward the exit. “Shall we?”



•   •   ❖   •   •



“Where exactly are we headed for this ‘surprise,’ Fluttershy,” Rarity questioned. She glanced from one store-front to the next as they walked down a street lined with small shops on each side. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s going to be wonderful since it is here in Canterlot!” A wave of glee passed over her as she spoke the final word.

“It isn't far. I mean, it is on the other side of the city, but Canterlot isn't very big so it should only take us a few minutes.”

“Can we get lunch on the way?”  Rainbow Dash interjected. “Or brunch or whatever? I didn't have time for breakfast.”

Fluttershy considered the request. They would have some time to kill if they went directly to their next stop. “Um... Sure, I guess. Where would you like to eat?”

“Where shall we eat indeed!” Rarity chimed in. “There a so many good choices. For starters—”

“I'm thinking Donut Joe’s,” Rainbow Dash interrupted.

Rarity stopped in her tracks, having trouble comprehending what she'd heard. “You can’t be serious,” she said flatly, the other mares stopping as well. “We’re in Canterlot, darling. You don’t eat at an old doughnut shop when you have all of this at the tip of your hooves.” Rarity motioned to the city around her with a hoof to emphasize her point. “Fluttershy, tell Rainbow that we’re going to eat somewhere a little more classy than Donut Joe’s.”

“Well, if you have something else in mind... maybe we could do that. Preferably something that we all agree on...” Fluttershy said, though she knew how unlikely it was that Rainbow Dash and Rarity would agree on something.

In no mood for foods with names she couldn't pronounce, Rainbow Dash did the one thing she knew would ensure Fluttershy's favour. She got down on the ground in front of Fluttershy and clasped her front hooves together, staring up into Fluttershy's eyes. “Please, 'Shy. Just this one time can we eat at Donut Joe’s?” She finished her plea by sticking out her bottom lip.

Fluttershy nervously looked from side to side, but no matter how hard she tried to avoid looking, she could still feel Rainbow Dash's begging. Especially the stuck out bottom lip. “Well… Okay.”

“Fluttershyyy” Rarity whined. She had chosen to not acknowledge that the reason Rainbow Dash hadn't had time for breakfast was entirely her own doing, but eating at such a low-quality establishment without voicing her objection? That she would not do.

“You can pick the restaurant next time, Rarity.” Fluttershy tried to ignore the fact that they probably wouldn't be visiting another restaurant on their trip as she continued on ahead, while Rarity scowled and muttered under her breath her doubts about the existence of a 'next time.' 

Rainbow Dash trotted over to Rarity and threw a hoof over her shoulder playfully. “Yeah, Rarity. I get to chose where we eat now, and you can pick the restaurant when we're out in the middle of the wilderness”

“Two can play at your childish games, Rainbow, dear.” Rarity muttered.

Rainbow Dash made no attempt to contain her laughter at Rarity’s remark. “Oh yeah?”

Rarity raised her chin and looked away from the pony of which her scorn was directed. “You won’t be laughing when I get my way.”

“Oh, please…” Rainbow Dash lowered her voice to a near-whisper, and made sure that Fluttershy was far enough away that she wouldn’t hear what she said next. “I'd be willing to bet that if Fluttershy ever has to choose between the two of us, I'll always get my way.”

“And what makes you so certain of that?” Rarity said incredulously.

Rainbow Dash shrugged. “I'm just super persuasive, I guess.”

“You know what? I've decided that I'd rather be the bigger mare, and not partake in your shenanigans.” Rarity trotted ahead to catch back up with Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash’s hoof sliding off her back as she did so.

“You're just saying that to throw me off my game.” Rainbow Dash stood there for a moment then took to the air to catch up with Fluttershy as well.



•  •  ❖  •  •
 


The stop at Donut Joe's was made swiftly, despite the shop-owner's tendency to chat for just a little too long for comfort, and the three were now back on the street, happily munching their doughnuts as they walked. There had been a brief moment before entering the shop when the thought of refusing to get anything at all had crossed Rarity's mind, but such petty obstinance was nothing if not unladylike, and Rarity was feeling rather embarrassed to have ever spawned the idea. True, she had had her reservations about the eating establishment—valid reservations, she might add—but in the end, the  pastries were delicious, and Joe took pride in making the best doughnuts in Canterlot.

As the only one who knew where they were heading, Fluttershy lead the way to their way to their next destination. The abundance of storefronts soon gave way to well-maintained lawns embellished with stone statues and water features as the ponies made their way into a very prestigious residential area. With a little more walking the high-class neighborhood transitioned into apartments, which then further transitioned into the less-talked-about industrial district near the edge of the city.

As the three passed around the corner of an old building, so old-looking that the bricks that made up its walls appeared to have a sag to them, the sight of a dozen or so large floating airships came into view. Below the ships, under the massive, balloon-like envelopes, hung elaborate wooden gondolas, some adjoined directly to the envelope, and others suspended on ropes, allowing for open-air decks that mimicked the appearance of traditional sailing ships. The ships sizes varied widely from small vessels that required only a single pony to pilot, to massive commercial airships that could carry more than a hundred passengers. Several ships that were either just arriving, or beginning to leave, drifted about lazily over the edge of the city. Most however were moored to large spires, their gondolas hanging just over the edge with their doors equal in elevation to the ground so that, with the aid of a gangplank, ponies could board the ships.

Rarity gaped taking in the sight before her. “We aren't, are we...?”

“Mhmm.” Fluttershy pointed to one of the docked ships. A fairly large one with an attached gondola. “That one over there.”

“Oh, Fluttershy, This is wonderful! Airships are only the most classy way to travel! We'll be like the Canterlot elite!”

“Alright, I'll admit, the airships are pretty cool, but why didn’t we just take the train all the way there?” Rainbow Dash didn't want to sound ungrateful, but the airships did seem a bit over-the-top.

“There’s no way to get there by train,” Fluttershy stated. “The Crystal Forest is on an island in the middle of the ocean.”

“Okay, so why didn't we take a train to the ocean then a boat the rest of the way?”

“This way is a lot faster,” Fluttershy said, then added quietly, “and... I'm... afraid of the ocean.”

“Oh, Well...” Rainbow Dash looked away and rubbed the back of her neck with a hoof. “I can't say that I disagree with you on that.” 

“Wait... You're afraid of the ocean too?” Fluttershy asked disbelievingly.

“No! I'm not 'afraid' of the ocean. I just... don't like it...”

“Because it's scary?” Rarity said snidely.

“No, because... I just don't like.”

Rarity remained unconvinced. “Is it a pegasus thing to be afraid of large bodies of water?”

Rainbow Dash growled. She would have liked to have said something in defense, but found herself in absence of a retort.

“Um... How about we just go ahead and get on the ship.” Fluttershy suggested. “If you’re both ready, that is.”

Rarity would have preferred to have revelled in her argumental victory over Rainbow Dash for a little longer, but conceded anyway. “Certainly, Fluttershy. Lead the way.” she said, a residual smirk still on her face.

Lead the way. It was still foreign to Fluttershy, the concept of being in charge of other ponies, but she was beginning to grow accustomed to it. She was even beginning to like it. So, in an outward display of confidence, Fluttershy puffed out her chest and marched for the boarding-ramp of their airship.

At the ramp upon arriving there, was a brown-coated unicorn behind a wooden booth. He wore a pale, yellowish-brown vest under a fancy dark-brown coat. The vest was embellished with a subtle paisley pattern in a slightly lighter yellow-brown than the colour of the rest of the vest. Atop his head he wore a peaked-cap similar to that of a police or military officer's—He was quite obviously the ticket inspector.

After a short (and reluctant) conversation with the ticket inspector, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity were granted entrance to the ship. Upon boarding the ship, the three mares were immediately greeted by a doorpony wearing a black suit who proceeded to show them to their room. As they walked, he informed them of important information they would need to know for their stay, starting with the layout of the ship, then finishing with the estimated time of arrival.

“Provided that the weather conditions remain fair, it looks like we be arriving at your destination sometime just before sunrise. If you're interested, we can send somepony by half an hour prior to wake you.”

“Yes, that would be much appreciated,” Rarity said. “But, do make it a full hour prior, would you?”

“Certainly, madam. Is there anything else you will be needing?” The doorpony stopped in front of their room, unlocked the door, then gave Rainbow Dash the key.

“I think that will be all. Thank you,” Rarity replied.

“Then may I finish by saying, on behalf of the captain and the rest of the crew, that we are honoured to have affiliates of the ESPRC on board, and that we hope you have an enjoyable flight.” After giving a modest bow, the doorpony trotted off back the way they had come.

Rainbow Dash waited for the doorpony to round a corner before saying what she said next. “What a schmooze.”

Rarity rolled her eyes. “It's called being polite, Rainbow,” she chided.

“No, polite is saying 'thank you,' and 'please.' That whole 'it's an honour,' thing is complete horsefeathers. He's probably paid to act like that for everypony who comes through the door.” 

Rainbow Dash put on her best posh-face then mimicked the doorpony's voice. “May I say on behalf of the princesses themselves that it is a very great honour to have somepony with such a purple mane on board,” she said, batting one of Rarity's curls with her hoof. “Complete. Horsefeathers,” she reiterated, resuming her normal voice.

Rarity let out a disparaging chuckle. “And who, pray tell, crowned you princess of politeness? Here you are claiming politeness is simply saying 'please' and 'thank you,' yet you don't even bother to do that most of the time. It would do you well to take some time to learn what real civility is.”

Rainbow Dash laughed. “Oh yeah? And why would I need to do that? What's in it for me to learn what 'real' civility is?”

“A spot on the Wonderbolts for starters...” Rarity mumbled, mostly to herself. The topic of 'what it takes to be a Wonderbolt' was something that she had wanted to bring up with Rainbow Dash for a while, but had avoided it, imagining that the response she would receive would be... arrogant... frustratingly so. It was true that Rarity wasn't a pegasus, and as such, Rainbow Dash would have had good reason to be doubtful of her, but for her to dismiss her entirely, in every regard, including those that don't require wings to be knowledgeable about? The thought of it alone was enough to make Rarity grind her teeth.

“What was that, Rarity?”

“Absolutely nothing, darling.” Rarity trotted past Rainbow Dash then pushed open the door to their room. The time would come when she would have that conversation with Rainbow Dash, but it was not this day.

Inside the room were two bunk beds, a nightstand, and a single circular window above the nightstand, as well as a few other furnishings. The wood of the furniture in the room matched that of the rest of the ship, a rich dark-brown, and all of the woodwork had an intricate, ornate, detailing to it.

Rarity was a bit disappointed to find that they had received a second-class room, but considering that the room was not only paid for by someone else, but that that someone else was actually a non-profit organization for the preservation or rare species, she could hardly complain.

“I call bottom-bunk!” Rainbow Dash shouted, trotting over and plopping down on the bottom-bunk on the right side of the room.

Rarity turned to look at Fluttershy. “You wouldn't mind if I took the other bottom-bunk would you?” she said. “Getting up and down from the top bunk would be a bit more of a challenge for me, considering my lack of wings.”

“Not at all.” Fluttershy lied. In truth, she would have preferred to not sleep so high off the ground, but she was more than happy to let Rarity and Rainbow Dash have their way.

Rarity levitated her bags up to the bunk above the one she would be sleeping on. “Here, let me have your bags, I''ll put them up out of the way,” she said, taking Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy's bags before they could even respond and levitating up to the bunk above hers just as she had her own.

Suddenly the floor rumbled and the ship lurched forward as it set off on its journey. This caused everything that could creak to creak, and being a mostly wooden ship, that meant quite a lot of creaking. The dangly drawer handles clanged and jingled, and the floor panels moaned before falling back into silence, the only remaining sound being the faint, rhythmic, two-beat thunk of the steam engine providing the propulsion.  The three ponies looked at the ship around them expectantly, waiting for something more to happen, but everything had seemingly returned to normal.

Rainbow Dash did a quick search for anything in the room with any entertainment value, but came up short. The room, as she saw it, was boring.

“So do either of you wanna see if there's anything to do on this ship?”



•  •  ❖  •  •
 


“I'm assuming you'll be reading a Daring Do book?” Fluttershy said, turning the brass doorknob, then pushing open the door to their room.

After a mostly uneventful, and highly disappointing excursion throughout the ship, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash returned to the room, both intent on reading the books that they had brought with them. Rarity had stayed behind in a library they had found, claiming that inspiration had struck, and that she would need to be left alone while she drew up some sketches.

“Nope. I finished those a while ago now,” Rainbow Dash said as she threw herself onto her bunk then propped her head up onto onto one of her hooves. “When I first started reading them, there were so many that I didn't think I would ever read all of them, but, here I am. It kind of sucks not having any more Daring Do to read.”

“What did you bring to read then?” Fluttershy asked.

“It's a book that Twilight recommended to me. I'm not sure if I'll finish it. I just started it, but so far it's been pretty boring.”

“Mind if ask what it's called?”

“I think it's called The Saddle Arabian Assassin.” Rainbow Dash said. “It sounds cool but the author won't just get to the action! I don't need to no what the door knobs look like! I mean, come on!”

“Well I hope it turns out to be good.” Fluttershy said as she rummaged through her things to find the book she'd brought about the island they would soon be setting hoof on.

“Me too.” Rainbow Dash said. “So what are you going to be reading?”

Fluttershy found the book she had been searching for. “This book here.” She held it up so Rainbow Dash could see it. “I've only read the first few pages, but it turns out that ponies have pretty much forgotten about this Crystal Forest place completely, and the only information about the place is in old manuscripts written in a dead language. So the author mostly had to piece things together from second-hand accounts.”

Rainbow Dash squinted at the cover of the book. “What's with the title? It looks like gibberish to me.” She narrowed her eyes further as if she could will the words into making sense.

Fluttershy turned to book to look at the cover herself. “Oh, that's the name of the island that the Crystal Forest is on.” On the cover was an artists painted rendition of what the island looked like based on the accounts of those who had gotten close enough to see it, and on top of that in large letters were the words Lliannwn: The Lost Island. “I don't really know how to pronounce it so I just haven't been saying it.”

“Let me see it again.” Fluttershy decided to just pass the book to Rainbow Dash. “Lie... Luh-Lee-uh-n... Lee-an-nuh-wuh..." Rainbow Dash looked at the word as if it had learned to talk and called her a dirty name. "I see your point.” She opened the book then flipped through a few pages to see if there was anything of interest, but nothing caught her eye. Rainbow Dash handed Fluttershy back the book then got up off of her bed to find the book she'd be reading.

Rainbow Dash searched through her things until found her book then she plopped herself back down onto the bed. She scrunched up a pillow to rest her head on, and once she found herself in a reasonably comfortable position, she cracked open the book and began reading.

Seeing that Rainbow Dash was now occupied, Fluttershy did the same and began to delve into her own book. She sat with her back against the wall across from Rainbow Dash on the other bottom bunk, and began reading. The two sat there in silence for several hours concentrating intently on their books, Fluttershy determined to be as prepared as possible for their coming journey, and Rainbow Dash immersed into the fictitious universe of The Saddle Arabian Assassin. Occasionally Rainbow Dash would snicker at a funny part or mumble “Wow!” to herself if something particularly impressive happened, (the latter of which Fluttershy found to be remarkably cute sheerly because of the unadulterated enthusiasm involved,) but for the most part, neither pony said anything. Until that is, Rainbow Dash got to the twist midway through the book.

“Oh my gosh, are you kidding me!? Ha! This is great!” She laid the book down for a moment, simply reveling in the glory of the turn of events. “I bet you wish you hadn't chucked that pendant into the river now, Princess. Have fun going back for it!”

“I'm guessing Twilight was right to recommend that book to you?” Fluttershy said, momentarily looking up from her own book.

Rainbow Dash responded without taking her eyes off of hers. “Yeah. And I guess this means I'll never have to read a bad book. I'll just keep having Twilight tell me which ones are worth reading.” She said. “I think that's why I didn't like reading in the first place. Every book I ever read was terrible so I assumed that they all were.”

“Well I just found out that there might be a breed of bunnies called the 'chestnut lop' living on the island that went extinct hundreds of years ago on mainland Equestria. It also says that there might be timberwolves too,” Fluttershy said. “'When the grey fox was introduced to Equestria,'” she read, “'the chestnut lop went extinct virtually overnight!'” The momentary enthusiasm that Fluttershy had felt had vanished. “Those poor bunnies!”

No matter how important Fluttershy tried to convince herself it was for her to read about other aspects of the island than just the wildlife, she simply couldn't. Not that she was disinterested in the other aspects, she was just more interested in the bunnies.

“Only you would be more worried about seeing bunnies than running into timberwolves, Fluttershy.” Rainbow Dash said. “Anyway, I've gotta find out what happens to the assassin's daughter. Why didn't she just keep her mouth shut?”

Just before Rainbow Dash could get back into her book the door to the room swung open and in stepped Rarity. She was carrying with her her sketches, and on her face was a smile, yet her eyes had a sheen of fatigue.

Rainbow Dash peered over the top of her book, “How did your sketches come out?” she asked.

“Poorly,” Rarity responded frankly, in complete contradiction to the smile she wore. “But I did get to have a chat with the captain. She said she'd like to talk with you Fluttershy.”

“Is something wrong?” Fluttershy said, worry in her tone.

“No, she just wants to meet the mare that organized this trip of ours,” Rarity said. “She was very nice, very friendly.”

“Does she want to talk to me now?”

“She said she would be there to see us off in the morning, so I imagine that's when she was planning on getting to know you.” Rarity said in a particularly tired voice.

“Are you alright, Rarity?” Fluttershy asked. “You look awfully tired.”

“I am. I've been trying to force ideas in existence, and that never works,” she said. “It always ends up stressing me out, but I never seem to learn.”

“Would you like to lie down? Here I'll move, this is your bed anyway.” Fluttershy said. She jumped up from her spot then gestured toward the empty bed with a hoof.

“Thank you, dear.”

“You're welcome.” Fluttershy flew up to the bunk above Rainbow Dash that she would be sleeping on when night fell.

“So what are you gonna do now Rarity?” Rainbow Dash asked. “It better not be 'take a nap' 'cause the last thing I want to do is listen to you snore some more.”

“I do not snore,” Rarity growled through the pillow that her face was now buried in.

“Tell that to my ruptured eardrums,” Rainbow Dash quipped. “The last time the six of us had a sleepover you snored louder than anypony else I've ever known.”

“That must have just been that one time then, because normally I sleep like lady.”

“Whatever you've gotta tell yourself…”

“If I were tired enough to take a nap right now I would, just to spite you. But I'm not—not quite anyway—and I can't really think of anything else to do,” Rarity said.

Fluttershy peered down from the top bunk where she was sitting. “We could just talk,” She suggested. “But without bickering like you two always do…” 

“I suppose it's the best thing I've got,” Rarity said. “Rainbow Dash, How is that book of yours? Actually, scratch that, I couldn't care less about what you're reading. So, how about... Ah, I know! Rainbow Dash, what have you been up to lately. It's been so long since we've 'caught up,' so to speak.”

Rainbow Dash closed her book, finished with being interrupted every five seconds. “Nothing. The only thing that I've done for the past month or so is my job.”

“Found yourself in a bit of a rut, have you?”

“More like a ditch. Actually, no, it's more like canyon,” she said. “It's been a whole lot of boredom everyday for quite a while now.”

“What about practicing your flying tricks?” Fluttershy interjected. “You still love flying, don't you?”

“Yeah, but it gets repetitive doing the same stuff over and over. I mean, flying's still great, I love it, but what's left for me to do? There are only a few tricks I still can't do, and working on the same ones over and over and getting nowhere is just... ugh... I've pretty much just been walking around town in my free time to keep myself occupied. I used to go over to Sweet Apple Acres every once in a while to mess with Applejack, but Applejack started to get pretty annoyed with me showing up all the time and bugging her while she was working, so that was the end of that. Then just a few days ago I complained to Twilight about how I finished all the Daring Do books and she recommended this book here, and it's good, but it's nowhere near as good as Daring Do. And, yeah... That's pretty much it.”

“We've all been there, Rainbow Dash,” Rarity said. “Just keep your chin up,something will capture your interest soon enough. Although, if you'd like, you could always stop by my boutique and we could chat whilst I work.”

“Or you spend time at my house and get to know the animals. I could make us tea too,” Fluttershy said.

“No offense, but those both sound way too boring for me.”

“Well, maybe they're exactly what you need then,” Fluttershy reasoned. “Maybe what you need to do is learn to appreciate the slower side of life.”

“Fluttershy might have a point, darling. If you gave it a chance, you might grow to appreciate such things.”

Rainbow Dash shrugged off the remarks. “Eh,” she simply said, before changing the direction of the conversation completely. “Anypony else hungry?”

Rarity shook her head. “I already ate. I thought a full stomach might help jog my creativity.”

“I'm hungry,” Fluttershy said. “You wanna see what they have to eat, Rainbow Dash?”

“Yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking. Come on, 'Shy.”

Rainbow Dash jumped up from her position on her bed as Fluttershy hopped down from her bunk, flapping her wings to slow her descent, her hooves making an audible thud as they hit the floor.

Fluttershy opened the door then she and Rainbow Dash headed to the stairwell and made their way down to a the lower floor where, exactly as the doorpony had told them they would, they found the dining hall. The first thing that both ponies noticed, was that calling it a dining hall was high praise. Calling it “the most dull room ever designed that also happens to serve food,” would have been more apt. The thing that made the room so dull was, to a great degree, its utilitarian design philosophy. While it may have incorporated the same beautiful wood found throughout the rest of the ship, it did so with an apparent reluctance. The geometry seemed intentionally uninspired, and It was quite clear that the architect of the ship had been in a terribly resentful mood whilst designing this room in particular.

The duo made their way through what would have been the line if anypony else had happened to be getting food at that time, and each picked up a tray. It was a self-serve food line, so they chose what they wanted from the selection at hoof which, all things considered, wasn't spectacular, but it was no where near as dull as the décor, and that in itself was enough to liven things up considerably. They then took a seat at one of the perfectly square tables which, along with the other tables in the room, was arranged into grid pattern on the floor. There were a few other ponies eating at this time since it was, more or less, the time that ponies ate dinner, and Rainbow Dash could only imagine the kind of misery that they must be in. It was well known that Rainbow Dash wasn't one to obsess over aesthetics, but this “dining hall” was beyond even her low standards to the point of being uncanny.

“Alright, this place officially sucks...”

Fluttershy had just unwrapped the daisy sandwich which she had gotten for herself and was about to take a bite before she had been interrupted. “It's not so bad.”

Rainbow Dash stifled a chuckle. “Come on, it's awful! I mean, you immediately knew what I was talking about when I said it sucks, so you have to agree at least a little bit.”

“Yeah, you're right it is pretty bad.”

The two spent the rest of their time exchanging their general impressions about the journey thus far before finishing their brief and unsatisfying dinner to retreat to the agreeable atmosphere of their room.

As they reached the top of the stairwell Rainbow Dash peered down the hallway and noticed a number of ponies enjoying themselves in a manner that indicated a moderate to high blood-alcohol level. “I wanna see what they have to drink in that bar we found earlier. You wanna come?”

“Umm... No thanks.” Fluttershy, like Rainbow Dash, noticed the enthusiastic vibe emanating from the bar down the hall, but decided that she could do just as well without it.

“Suit yourself. I'll be back in... probably less than an hour.”

“Be safe.”

“I will.”

With that, Rainbow Dash made for the bar and Fluttershy for the room.

Fifteen minutes shy of an hour later Rainbow Dash too returned back to the room. She barged in quite proud of herself for what she had managed in the time.

“I just drank... the most disgusting thing... in my entire life,” Rainbow Dash proclaimed, pausing for dramatic effect. Rainbow Dash firmly held that any statement that could be ended with “in my entire life” was worthy of celebration, but neither of the other two mares seemed particularly interested. “Come on, doesn't anypony want know what it was.”

Rarity was asleep on her bed. From her appearance, it seemed she hadn't planned on falling asleep since she was still on top of the covers. Fluttershy however, was wide awake, so it fell upon her to respond. And Rainbow Dash wasn't blind so it was quite clear that she'd fully expected her to from the beginning.

“What was it?” Fluttershy asked.

“I didn't know it at the time, but basically it was snake juice.”

Fluttershy shot Rainbow Dash a quizzical look.

“It was just a regular bottle of booze... with a dead snake in it.”

“That's horrible!”

“I know! The bartender said that it's a zebra thing, but I think more of a no-taste-buds kind of thing, because it tasted just like a dead snake in a jar.”

Rainbow Dash proceeded to climb onto her bunk and make herself comfortable.

The sun was beginning to sag in the sky, the vibrant hues it created on the horizon shining through the tiny window into the room.

“So,” Rainbow Dash began, calling up to Fluttershy on the bunk above her. “Are you ready for bed? 'Cause I am,” she said. “I've got snake juice in my belly and a comfy pillow under my head. Everything I need for a good night's sleep.”

Fluttershy looked out the window at the darkening sky, then assessed just how tired she felt. Her eyes were getting a little tired, and the whole day had been rather eventful by her standards. She could feel the pent up anxiety in her chest that a good sleep would surely remedy, and decided also that getting to bed early wouldn't be such a bad idea since they had a big day ahead of them, as well as having to get up early.

“I think that that's probably a good idea.” Fluttershy threw her book down onto a pile of her things laying on the floor then curled up under her covers. “G'night, Rainbow.”

“Night, shy.”



•  •  ❖  •  •
 


A mysterious combination of mumbling and what sounded like whimpering tore Rainbow Dash from her sleep. As soon as Rainbow Dash opened her eyes though, the sound stopped, making her think that maybe it had just been her imagination.

She waited, her eyes open and alert but having nothing to look at, listening in the quiet pitch-blackness for the soft noise to make a reappearance. After enough time had passed that Rainbow Dash felt confident in deeming the noise as either insignificant or imaginary, she began to drift toward sleep again, but just as she closed her eyes, she heard the sound again. It was coming from above her.

“Fluttershy?” Rainbow Dash whispered.

The whimpering continued.

“Fluttershy,” she said. This time a little louder.

Still no response.

At that, Rainbow Dash crawled out from under her covers and flew up to the higher bunk. Fluttershy was facing away from her toward the wall when Rainbow Dash alighted on the edge of the mattress. Space was scarce but she managed to find a comfortable sitting position without any problems. Rainbow Dash reached out a hoof, placed it on Fluttershy’s shoulder, and shook gently. “Hey, 'Shy, wake up.” Fluttershy stirred then craned her neck to look at the pony behind her.

“What’s wrong, Rainbow?”

“I’m pretty sure you were having a bad dream. It was keeping me awake.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don't be,” Rainbow Dash said in an even raspier voice than her usual. “Are you okay? Is there something on your mind you wanna talk about?”

Fluttershy turned around then sat up, assuming a more conversation-friendly position. “I think... I think I’m just really nervous about leading this whole expedition thing...” she said. “Actually,” she corrected, “I know I’m nervous—but I think that’s why I was having a bad dream.”

Rainbow Dash wrapped a hoof around Fluttershy and pulled her in for a side-ways hug. “Well you’re doing fine. I don’t see what you’ve got to worry about.”

Fluttershy leaned her head against Rainbow Dash neck. “It's not what I’ve done that I’m worried about. I’m worried about what I will do. What if something happens where I just don't know what to do, then I make the wrong choice and something really bad happens. It would be all my fault, I don't know if I could handle that.” Fluttershy stared down at her hooves in the darkness. “Oh... and um… Rainbow, you were being kind of loud. You should try to keep it down. You might wake up Rarity,” Fluttershy said with a pleading tone. 

“You’ll be fine. Trust me.” Rainbow Dash wrapped a wing around Fluttershy and pulled her in closer. “If you ever have to make a decision and you don't know what to do, just choose something. If that thing doesn't work, then oh well. You learned that that thing doesn't work, so try something else. Nopony will be mad at you if you make the wrong choice. We can't be mad at you for not happening to know something.”

“You're still not being very quiet,” Fluttershy said, concerned more about that than anything Rainbow Dash had said.

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about waking up Rarity. She sleeps like a rock,” she said. “See, watch.” Rainbow Dash raised her voice to a level somewhere between a normal talking voice and shouting. “Hey, Rarity, I accidentally set your mane on fire.”

Rarity remained still.

“Told ya.”

Fluttershy’s eyebrows furrowed at the display. “How did you even know that?”

Rainbow Dash chuckled. “Hehe... You remember the last time the six of us had a sleepover, right?” Fluttershy nodded. “Yeah well—” Rainbow Dash burst out into a fit of laughter at the thought of the story. She tried to hold it in as to not wake the ponies in the other rooms but her restraint only did her so much. “Hold on… gimme a second.” Eventually she calmed herself and, wiping a tear from her eye, she began again. “Okay… So anyway, at our sleepover Rarity was snoring really loudly, so I nudged her to get her to knock it off, but she just kept snoring. So I did it again but harder, still nothing. Then I started poking her face, and then I got the idea to make her make funny faces by pushing her cheeks together and stuff—You want me to show you, I could go do it right now?” Rainbow Dash said with a devious smile that stretched from ear to ear.

“You shouldn’t invade her privacy like that.”

“Eh… fine, whatever,” Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Anyway it ended with me and Applejack turning her into a puppet. I moved her mouth and did the voices, Applejack controlled her forelegs.”

Fluttershy stared at Rainbow Dash with a look of disapproval.

“What? It’s not like she cares; she doesn’t even know.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

“You would have laughed if you saw how great it was.”

An uncomfortable silence grew between the two, neither pony having anything more to say, until Rainbow Dash broke it. “So… Uh… I guess I’ll get back to bed. Are you gonna be alright?”

“I think I’ll be fine.”

“Alright, well... Night, 'Shy” she said, making her way back down to her bunk.

“Good night.”



•  •  ❖  •  •
 


Again Rainbow Dash awoke to soft mumbling. And again she tore herself from the warm bedding and half-wakingly flitted up to the higher of the bunks. Fluttershy lay before her, much as she had before, except that this time Fluttershy had pushed the covers off of herself. Rainbow Dash was much too tired for conversation, so instead she gently placed a hoof on Fluttershy’s quivering shoulder. The sleeping pegasus jolted at first, but then warmed to the contact, the whimpering stopped and Fluttershy's breathing slowed from a sprint to a stroll. Seeing the affect her actions had had, Rainbow Dash lay down beside Fluttershy and pulled the covers up over the two of them. As soon as she was comfortable she closed her eyes, then pulled herself in close.

Fluttershy awoke from the tugging sensation. "Rainbow Dash?” she said wriggling around to face Rainbow Dash. “Did I wake you up again?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“What… What are you doing?”

“Shh… Sleep”

Fluttershy didn't know if Rainbow Dash had answered her question, or if she was making a demand, but it didn't matter, she would have obliged either way. Fluttershy stared at the sleeping pony with a hoof draped across her body. She still felt like there was more that needed to be said but at the same time, nothing worth adding. She also wanted to apologize, but more than that, she didn’t want to disturb Rainbow Dash.

Fluttershy felt like a foal from having woken Rainbow Dash twice in one night, and looking at the situation she found herself in, expected Rainbow Dash thought the same. That’s what everyone thought of her wasn’t it? Fluttershy the mare-foal. They were either annoyed with her or pitied her. She could see it with everyone she'd ever met. Rainbow Dash belonged to the first category, and, now that she thought about it, she preferred it that way. It meant that Rainbow Dash thought that Fluttershy could do better. That she expected more from her. But when a pony pitied Fluttershy, it meant that, in a way, they'd given up on her. They thought of her as a lost cause. A 'poor little thing' that suffered from her own inadequacy and couldn’t be helped. And maybe, in some ways, she couldn’t, but there were some ways in which she had improved over the years. Rainbow Dash could see it, Fluttershy knew she could. She was her oldest friend, so she knew better than anypony else just how far Fluttershy had come, and in a strange way, simply for having been their to see her get better, Fluttershy was thankful.

Fluttershy tried to think more on the topic, but the nagging of sleep began to pull at the edges of her consciousness and coherent thought became impossible. She tucked her hooves close to her chest and closed her eyes.

“Thank you,” Fluttershy whispered.

“... Sleep,” Rainbow Dash whispered back.

Fluttershy giggled.

"Okay."
> Arrival
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

An excerpt from The Ultimate Expeditioner's Handbook:


It is an all-too-common blunder to think that disaster and devastation can be avoided through careful planning and preventative measures. This sentiment is now The Ultimate Expeditioner's Handbook's official position on the subject of planning.

It should be noted however, that this wasn't always the case.

In previous editions of the Ultimate Expeditioner's Handbook the second rule went as follows: “Rule Two: Do not prepare for a worst-case scenario; prepare instead for a situation far worse than the worst possible worst-case scenario, then be pleasantly surprised when what actually happens on your expedition is only slightly worse.”

The aforementioned rule has been amended in light of a recent, strange, and frustratingly paradoxical discovery. As it turns out, the act of preparing for adversity is as much a cause of adversity as not preparing for adversity. To put it another way: The more you prepare, the more likely you are to encounter problems as a result of your preparation. And the less you prepare, the more likely you are to encounter problems as a result of a lack of preparation. When graphed this relation looks something like this:



Notice how at any given point the values of the two lines add up to a tidy 100%, making any amount of preparation completely useless.

If this still seems outlandish, despite the visual representation provided above, there is a useful hypothetical for understanding how preparation for disaster can result in disaster, and it goes something like this:

There is a stallion visiting a land known to be heavily populated by dragons. He spends so much time watching the skies to avoid a perilous encounter with the flying beasts that he completely fails to notice a massive ravine just ahead. As a result of his misdirected attention, he falls down the ravine and meets an untimely demise soon after.

This grossly oversimplified view of what is meant by 'preparation for disaster can result in disaster' fails to mention the many nuances of the concept, but all in all, it conveys the idea rather nicely.

In the end it all comes down to personal preference; one can either choose unforeseen calamity, brought about by thoroughly preparing for problems identifiable in the present, or one can choose to do nothing and guarantee complete and utter disaster through no fault of their own. The second option, however, has the added bonus of taking no effort whatsoever, an advantage which cannot be overstated.

This all leads quite nicely into the amended version of the first rule which is: Don't bother preparing. Limitation is a precondition for existence and tragedy is its consequence. Ho hum.



•  •  ❖  •  •



The sound of two distinct knocks, hoof against wood, reverberated through the room.

“Wake-up call, ladies. We’ll be arriving at your destination shortly,” called a voice through the door.

Rainbow Dash’s face contorted at the unpleasant noise. She opened one eye and in a squint and took in her surroundings. It wasn’t a sight she was used to waking up to, but she quickly found her bearings and tried to sit up. “Um… Alright. Thanks.,” she said back through the door.

The room was dimly lit with the soft rays of dawn light. Rainbow Dash glanced out the window and speculated that it was sometime just before daybreak.

Fluttershy awoke next, blinking her eyes a few times as she did then looking up to Rainbow Dash.

“Sleep well?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Fluttershy shrugged then buried her head deeper into her pillow. 

Rainbow Dash leapt down from the top bunk. Her hooves impacted heavily, drawing out pained creaks from the floorboards. She trotted over to a still-sleeping Rarity and flicked her horn. “Rise n’ Shine,” she said.

Rarity whimpered and threw her blanket over her head. “Why can’t we just… not go?” She said, muffled by the covers.

Rainbow Dash tore away the covers from Rarity and threw them on the floor. “Come on. No whining. I wanna see those hooves on the floor.” Rainbow Dash said in her best drill sergeant voice.

“I am not whining... yet.”

“Just hurry up and get your flank out of bed or you’ll be getting the same treatment as your blanket.”

Rarity extended a hoof, signaling Rainbow Dash to halt. “I’m getting up. Just let me go at my own pace, would you?”

Rainbow Dash looked over her shoulder at Fluttershy who was now sitting up on the top bunk. The wordless gesture still prompted Fluttershy to respond. “I’m getting up.”

“No rush,” Rainbow Dash said. 

“Really? No rush? How come she gets ‘No rush’ and I get whacked in the horn!?” Rarity huffed.

Rainbow directed her gaze back to Rarity. “Because I know how long your morning routine takes. Is that a good enough answer?”

Rarity gave a harrumph then continued getting ready in silence.

Seeing that Rarity and Fluttershy were getting ready, Rainbow Dash took the opportunity to relax on the empty bottom bunk that she had began—but not finished—the night on. 

Today was the big day. Or as Rainbow Dash saw it: her big day. Today was the day she would finally be free from the gigantic flying cage that currently held her prisoner. Other ponies seemed convinced that it was a luxurious mode of transport, but it might as well have been a sarcophagus for all Rainbow Dash was concerned. But once she was outside again, she could finally do thingsagain! Like actual, real, active things. Like flying, and walking, and flying. And flying.

Sure nature wasn’t exactly Rainbow Dash’s cup of tea, but there was one thing that nature did better than airships, and that was freedom. Rainbow Dash could feel the itch of captivity in her spine, an itch that she so desperately wished she could scratch, but couldn't. Just a little longer though…

After spending the better part of an hour primping her mane so that it could properly be destroyed during the day ahead, Rarity announced its completion.

“Aaand there. Now I'm ready to take on the world!” Rarity gave a smile of utmost determination, but it quickly faltered. “Including all of it's icky, nature-y bits”

Rainbow Dash launched up off of her bed where she had been impatiently waiting for Rarity to finish. “Good. Now can we finally get off this stinking ship?”

“Well, no, we haven't actually arrived yet,” said Fluttershy. “But if you're both ready, we can go get some breakfast first.”

“That sounds like a wonderful plan,” Rarity said, standing up from her sitting position. “I, for one, am starving,”

“Fine, we can do breakfast first." Rainbow Dash pouted. "I guess I could use a little anyway,”

“Alright then, breakfast it is.” Fluttershy said, making for the door.



•  •  ❖  •  •
 


After a short and only moderately delicious breakfast excursion, the trio of ponies traveled down the long hallway leading to the main entrance of the ship. The main entrance was simple in its design: a set of double-doors on one wall with tall, narrow windows on either side, a stairwell across from that, and two archways opening up to long hallways on the adjacent walls.

Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity each tossed their bags down against a wall and walked over to the windows, hoping to catch a peak of their destination. It became apparent immediately, that they had arrived. Two towering mountains rose up from the land on the far side of the island, standing side-by-side. At their base, a lush blue-green forest that ran down the incline toward the cliffs that made up the coastline. The forest covered nearly every inch of land, except the mountains, the occasional sheer rock formation or river, and one particularly large bare spot which seemed wholly out of place.

“There it is!” Rainbow Dash said, face pressed to the window, stomping her front hooves with glee. “Finally, FINALLY! we're almost there!”

“By Luna's stars,” Rarity called from the other window. Wide eyes were fixated on the glimmering blue-green forest, “It's gorgeous!”

“Yeah. And you know what else it is?” Rainbow said, grinning across to Rarity. “Not an airship.”

“I'd gathered as much.” Rarity was far too interested in the sight before her to concern herself with anything Rainbow Dash may have been hinting at.

“Seriously though, Rarity, I'm soooo excited to be getting off this stupid ship.”

“Got a problem with my ship?” came an unfamiliar voice.

Rainbow Dash, as well as Fluttershy and Rarity turned around to see a white-coated mare wearing a dark blue uniform standing at the top of the stairwell. “You're the captain?” Rainbow Dash asked, to which the uniformed mare nodded. “Well since you asked, yeah, I do have a problem with this ship.”

“Go on, tell me,” the captain implored, clearly amused.

“It's a prison! There's nothing to do, the rooms are tiny, and I couldn't even get outside to fly! You call that luxury!?” The opportunity to speak her mind to the pony in charge was one that Rainbow Dash had been more than happy to take, and having done so, she actually felt quite a lot better.

The captain smiled at her. “Now imagine working in those conditions every day.” She removed her cap, ran a hoof through her golden mane, and put it back on. “You wouldn't happen to be Fluttershy, would you?”

“Nope. That's Fluttershy,” Rainbow Dash said, pointing accordingly.

“Um... Hello. It's nice to meet you.” Fluttershy tried her best to look at the captain as she spoke but ended up staring at her hooves halfway through.

“You're the leader of the expedition?”

“I guess so...”

“You guess so?”

“I mean, yes. I am.” Fluttershy stammered.

“Well, I just wanted to wish you luck. I can't say you're the kind pony I had in mind when I was told about this little expedition, but I hope everything goes well for you nonetheless. It takes a brave pony to do what you're doing.”

“Oh, no, I'm not brave. Communicating with animals is my special talent, so I'm not to worried about the wildlife.”

“I was more referring to the all stories about the supernatural side of the island. I've run this route a hundred times, so trust me, I've heard them all.”

“Well, I did a lot of reading on those stories beforehoof, and they all sounded... kind of... made up to me... Not that I would think any less of you if you believe in them.” Fluttershy pawed at the floorboards. “I mean, if you do that's fine, I just don't think that they're true, personally.”

“I'm not saying I buy into them either, but I wouldn't want to find out first-hoof.”

Fluttershy rubbed one hoof against the other foreleg, looking away from the captain. Carrying a conversation with a stranger was something she still hadn't mastered. “Um... I guess that's one way of looking at it.”

There was a lapse in conversation where neither mare said anything. The captain glanced out the window and saw that they'd come to a complete stop. “Well, I'd love to talk more,” she said, though it was a lie. She was happy to have an excuse to walk away from the awkward situation, “but we're here, so it looks like I'm gonna have to cut this conversation short. There are other ponies aboard who've got places to get to.” She walked over to the doors and opened them, letting in a torrent of high-altitude wind. “Do you want me to get a pegasus stallion from my crew to help with the unicorn?”

Rarity looked down out the door to the ground far below. They were hanging just over the edge of the island. Cliffs, hundreds of feet tall, jutted from the ocean directly below them.  “Yes, I think that may be in order.”

“Nah, don't bother. I'll get her.” In an instant Rainbow Dash had swept Rarity off her hooves and was carrying her down to the ground at a far faster speed than Rarity would have preferred. 

“Would you slow down!?” Rarity clambered for a secure position in the pegasus’s grip, finding a decent enough one that involved wrapping her hooves around Rainbow Dash's neck. Rarity looked down to the ground then back up to the mare who was now carrying her bridal-fashion. “Would it have killed you to have given me a little forewarning?”

“Pssh, you're fine,” Rainbow Dash said in a cavalier tone. 

“Well, I am in your hooves right now,” Rarity smirked. “I could certainly be doing better.”

After placing Rarity securely on the ground at the top of the cliffs, Rainbow Dash made her way back up to the ship to retrieve their bags, passing Fluttershy on the way who had just begun her descent. 

Rainbow Dash made it to the ground with the bags just before Fluttershy made it there herself. She tossed Rarity's saddlebags across her back and adorned her own.

Fluttershy waved to the ship as it absconded to go defy the law of gravity somewhere else, and ruminated on the fact that within a few minutes, they would be well and truly cut off from the rest of pony civilization. She turned to look out over the edge of the island at the endless ocean that reached all the way to the horizon, awe consuming her as she thought about the distance they had traveled. It was further than they had ever traveled before. 

Rarity, on the other hoof, stared in the opposite direction at the forest they would soon be trekking through. The thought hadn't bothered her so much earlier, but now, seeing the tree-line just a few dozen yards away, the sentiment hit her in full force.

She would soon, and inevitably, be coated in layers upon layers of dirty, nature-y filth.

Fluttershy turned around to face the island. “Well, if everypony's ready, let's get moving.”

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves now. Do we really need to get going just yet? Maybe we could just stay right here for a little longer. You know, take in the view, feel the cool ocean breeze, appreciate the... other stuff...”

“What's with the cold-hooves all of a sudden?” Rainbow Dash said, “The captain didn't scare you with all that talk of supernatural stuff did she?” 

Rarity thought about how happy she would have been to swat the smirk that had landed on Rainbow Dash's face. “I can handle spectres, and ghouls, and what-have-you perfectly fine, thank you,” she said. “My problem is that this forest trekking is going to wreak absolute havoc on my mane.”

“Is that so?” Rainbow Dash said. “Y'know,” Rainbow Dash started, digging a hoof into the spongy sod, pulling up a clod of grass, dirt, and roots. “I could help you get it over with right now.”

“A tempting offer, but I think I'll pass,” Rarity chuckled.

“If you say so.” Rainbow Dash cast aside the clod.

Fluttershy took point in front of the two other mares then turned around to speak to Rarity. “I know you don't want to mess up your mane, Rarity, and I don't want to push you if you're not ready, but I'd like get moving as soon as we can.”

Rarity felt the silky smoothness of her mane one last time, rubbing it against her cheek. She admired each individual strand and the way the light gleamed off of it. “I'm... ready.” she said with a downcast tone.

“It's not to late for me to rub some dirt in your mane. The offer still stands.”

Rainbow Dash's self-amused attitude irritated Rarity to no end. Especially at dire times like these. She looked at her mane once again, the woe she had felt just a moment ago was no longer present. It had been replaced with frustration and anger that had initially been caused by Rainbow Dash but was now directed at the emotional turmoil that having such a magnificent mane had caused her. “Oh, to hell with it. Go ahead!”

“Wait, wait, what!? For real?” Rainbow Dash could tell that Rarity wasn't joking, but it was still hard for her to grasp the notion that Rarity was inviting her to mess up her mane. “You want me... to rub dirt... in your mane. Your mane.”

“Yes.” Rarity steeled herself for the incoming defilement, her eyes clenched shut and shoulders tightened. “Go on, do it, before I lose my nerve.”

Rainbow Dash picked up again the dirt clod she had previously cast aside. “This day just gets better and better,” she remarked to herself with a snicker.

“Stupid beautiful mane,” Rarity muttered. “Try to not enjoy this too much, Rainbow Dash.”

Rainbow Dash scanned Rarity's mane, trying to decide on the perfect placement for the unholy mixture in her hoof.

“Would you hurry up!?”

At Rarity's request, Rainbow Dash plopped down the dirt clod at the crest of Rarity's mane then rubbed it in for good measure. Rarity quivered and bit her lip. She gasped when a cold lump of dirt rolled off of her head and down her neck.

“There,” Rainbow Dash said, hovering backward and admiring her work. “Don't you better now knowing that you already got it over with?” Rainbow Dash could do little to keep her tone from sounding utterly condescending.

Rarity blinked away tears that had begun forming at the corners of her eyes. “It's—” She was cut off as a moist chunk of dirt fell directly into her ear. “very... liberating,” she managed out through her whimpering.

“That's the spirit.” Rainbow Dash chuckled, giving Rarity a playful shove on her shoulder.

Fluttershy tried, then failed, then tried again to formulate a response to what she had just witnessed, but eventually she just gave up.

“I'm ready now, Fluttershy” Rarity said, trying to scramble together whatever composure she could find.

“Okay... well, let's go then.”

Following a short jaunt across the field, the three arrived at the edge of the forest and continued in, following the path of least resistance. Unlike the field that they had come from, the ground in the forest was much more solid, making walking considerably easier. At this point there was no indication as to why the forest was called the 'Crystal Forest', as the trees looked, by nearly every measure, like ordinary trees. The leaves were slightly more teal than what one typically envisions when thinking of foliage, but they definitely weren't made of crystal, and nor did they particularly resemble gemstones.

As they walked, Fluttershy pointed out every creature she spotted with a accuracy of vision that was normally reserved for bird of prey, and mostly she succeeded in fitting a name to each one. It fell upon Rarity to add each identified animal to a notebook which Fluttershy had brought along for the singular purpose of animal documentation. And for the animals Fluttershy couldn't identify, Rarity took down a description of them as well as a sketch. With any luck, the Equestrian Society for the Preservation of Rare Creatures might determine one or two of the species to be yet unknown to Equestrian zoology. At least that was what Fluttershy hoped, though she fully recognized that her role wasn’t precisely to discover new animal life. In truth, the ESPRC had paid her way expecting nothing more than a slightly more complete picture of the animal life in territories surrounding Equestria. Although if any discoveries were to be made, they would be more than happy to take credit for them on Fluttershy’s behalf.

Fluttershy mulled over what they had seen so far as a means of passing the time. “Lets see, that makes two species of rodents, six birds, eight arthropods—“

Fluttershy was interrupted by a shriek from Rarity. “Make that nine!” she shrieked, backpedaling away from a lump of treebark.

Upon closer inspection, Fluttershy saw that it wasn’t, in fact, a piece of bark at all. “Wow Rarity, that’s a really good catch! These little guys are known for their impeccable camouflage.”

“Little!? That thing is massive!”

“Well, Wood Scorpions are the largest scorpions known to ponies, but this little guy here is barely average.” Fluttershy kneeled down to get a closer look and tell apart the scorpion’s anatomy.

“Oh for the Love of Celestia, they get bigger!?”

“Not only do they get bigger, but they never stop growing! There was one Wood Scorpion that lived to be as long as a pony. Can you imagine how old it must have been?”

“I’d rather not imagine it at all…” Rarity shivered. “They aren’t dangerous are they?”

“Only if they sting you.” Fluttershy stated. “But I wouldn’t worry about that. You would have to get pretty close for them to feel threatened.”

“Oh well that’s a relief! It’s not like was about to step on it just a moment ago or anything.” If Fluttershy was as bothered by this fact as Rarity, she certainly didn’t show it.

“Where was I, anyway?” Fluttershy said. “Oh that’s right, Nine arthropods, one amphibian, and one cute little hedgehog. I think we're doing good so far.” 

Rainbow Dash, for her part, found herself unable to muster even a fraction of the interest necessary to follow along with the conversation, which wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t the only thing she had to occupy herself with. Giving an annoyed groan, she briefly looked around to double-check that nothing of any interest whatsoever had materialized in the last sixty seconds. When her search came up predictably empty, she groaned again. “Here’s a question: Why call it the Crystal Forest when that name is only half true. Like, I was kind of expecting something at least a little bit cool…”

Fluttershy slowed her pace so that Rainbow Dash, who had been lagging behind as a result of her crippling boredom,  could catch up to her. “Hmm?”

“I was just saying that this place is nothing like it’s name. I mean seriously, where are the crystals? You can’t even tell that we’re not in Equestria for pony’s sake!”

“Sure, that’s how it looks like right now,” Fluttershy said. “but we’ve only just started. There's still a lot left to explore.” 

“I know… I just hope we find something cool soon… I’d even settle for magical, sparkling swamp-gas or something.”

Fluttershy, in a state of high-spirits rarely seen from the pegasus, leaned over and gave Rainbow Dash a one-legged hug to cheer up her curmudgeonly friend. “Just try to keep an open mind. Please?” Not requiring a response, Fluttershy resumed her jovial pace from before, looking high and low for animals in need of archival.

It was all Rainbow Dash could do to smile and pick up her own pace. It wasn’t everyday Fluttershy smiled like that, and if that cost was suffering through some animal related boredom, then Rainbow Dash would make the best of it, because that smile was worth it.


•  •  ❖  •  •
 

After a few hours walking through the ever-thickening forest searching for animals, Fluttershy suggested that a lunch break was in order. She found an old fallen tree and sat on it, placing her saddlebags down beside her and pulling out a paper bag. Inside the bag were granola bars that Fluttershy had prepared ahead of time, each one individually wrapped in wax paper. Then out of the bag came a jar of peanut butter, a smaller jar of blackberry jam, and some tortillas, as well as a knife for spreading the peanut butter and jam. She handed Rarity and Rainbow Dash each a granola bar then got to making the PB&J tortillas.

“I've never heard of a peanut butter and jelly burrito,” said Rainbow Dash through a mouthful of honey-glazed oats.

Fluttershy dipped the knife in the jam and started spreading on the first tortilla. “Well I couldn't bring bread because it would have gotten squished in my bag, and it takes up too much space.” 

Rainbow Dash thought for a moment before responding. “Hang on, isn't that what a tortilla is though? Pre-sqiushed bread?”

“Not quite.” After adding the peanut butter, Fluttershy finished the first tortilla and gave it to Rainbow Dash, setting the knife down horizontally across the top of the jar of peanut butter. “Here, try it.”

Rarity picked up the knife and got started on making one for herself. With the aid of magic, it was done in no time at all.

Rainbow Dash took a bite of her tortilla. “It's alright, I guess,” she said. “It's not all that different than a regular peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

Fluttershy seemed satisfied enough with that answer. “It’s actually quite challenging to think up recipes that are easy to prepare, nutritious, non-perishable, and don’t take up too much space. It’s just not something you have to think about when you live right next to a market.”

Rarity prepared another tortilla while she ate hers and levitated it to Fluttershy who accepted it graciously and thanked her.

After finishing their lunches, the three ponies got moving again in the direction of nothing in particular, first trudging up a hill, then breezing down a hill, only to walk up another, even steeper hill. Their forward progress was considerably reduced because of how generally hilly things had gotten, but eventually the hills ceased and the landscape leveled out, the forest very suddenly giving way to a meadow. The unusual thing about the meadow was that every available inch was covered in blueish-purple mushrooms with green and yellow speckles.

“Well that's different,” said Rainbow Dash. “Still not crystals though.”

“That's strange...” said Fluttershy.

“Certainly not something you see everyday is it?” agreed Rarity. “Should I write it down in the journal?”

Fluttershy nodded to her, not taking her eyes off of the sight before them. She walked closer to the mushroom field. “I don't know much about mushrooms, but I'm pretty sure that these ones aren't normal.” Fluttershy lowered herself down to the ground, trying to get a closer look at one of the mushrooms on the edge. “I've never heard of entire fields of mushrooms growing in direct sunlight.”

“Don't touch them!” Rarity cautioned. “They could be poisonous!”

“It’s okay, I wasn't planning on it.” Fluttershy picked up a stick in her mouth and poked the mushroom she had been eyeing. In an instant, it withered into a dried, blackened heap right before her eyes.

Fluttershy stepped back in alarm. “What happened?”

Curious, Rainbow Dash picked up a stone and skipped it across the tops of the mushrooms. Each one it touched shriveled up and died, leaving behind rotted darkened remains. Some of the mushrooms had been touching other mushrooms, which meant that, as soon as the first died, so too did their neighbors, in a chain reaction of decay.

Rainbow Dash's eyes went wide. “Whoa...”

The sight was completely bizarre and off-putting enough to make Fluttershy want to turn around and go some other way... that is, until she spotted a tiny salamander on one of the mushrooms, no longer than the width of her hoof.

“Hey there little guy.” Her voice wavered with concern. “Are you alright?” The salamander didn't move.

“D-do you need help?” she said shakily.

Nothing.

Rainbow Dash looked on at the scene unfolding before her. She could see just as well as Fluttershy that the salamander wasn't alright.

“Can you move at all?” Fluttershy reached out her stick to the salamander, she was almost certain that nothing good was to come, but she refused to leave until she knew for sure. “Jump on.” The salamander made no acknowledgment of her request.

“Um... Fluttershy.” Rainbow Dash put a hoof of Fluttershy's shoulder.

“Go on.” Fluttershy felt moisture coalescing at the corners of her eyes. “Jump,” She said with a shaky voice. The salamander remained perfectly still. “Please... jump.”

“'Shy, maybe we should go.”

“This salamander needs me, Rainbow...”

“I don't think there's anything anypony can do to help it.” Rainbow Dash winced. “I think it's... already gone.”

Fluttershy blinked, clearing her vision that had blurred to the point that she could no longer clearly see shapes. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She inched the stick the tiniest bit closer until it came in contact with the salamander which swiftly withered away followed immediately after by the mushroom it had been sitting on. The only thing that remained was a perfect skeleton of delicate white bones atop a rotten black lump.
> Looks Like a Waterfowl
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fluttershy walked parallel to the mushroom field, Rainbow Dash and Rarity at her sides. She took in only a fraction of her surroundings as she stared exclusively at the ground in front of her.

Neither Rainbow Dash nor Rarity had said much of anything to her, and Rarity thought that it was probably for the best that they didn't.

Rainbow Dash's eyes were fixated on Fluttershy's downcast form as if the act of looking away was a form of betrayal. Unlike Rarity, she was determined to think of something to cheer up Fluttershy, despite the fact that talking to upset ponies was probably the single thing that Rainbow Dash was least talented at.

Rarity's focus alternated from Fluttershy to the curious field of mushrooms beside her. She wanted desperately to figure out how exactly they worked.

Being the only one focusing on the mushrooms, she noticed some things that the others didn't. Firstly, the two edges of the field that they had walked along were perfectly straight, and presumably the other two edges were also. From a distance, they certainly looked to be. Which meant that, as far as Rarity could tell, the mushrooms formed a perfect square.

She also noticed, to her even greater bewilderment, a single dead leaf floating, unmoving, several feet above the ground. Her initial instinct, just as most scientific endeavours begin, was to prod it with a stick. So using her magic she grabbed a dead twig and levitated it over to the leaf to poke it. One quick jab and the leaf was knocked out of its frozen state. It began to sway back and forth, slowly descending, until it landed on top of a mushroom, killing it. The leaf did not wither and decay after being touched since it was already that way to begin with. Taking what she'd just witnessed into account, Rarity concluded that the passage of time over the field must have been halted some how, making some kind of bubble of frozen time. When the things within the time-bubble were disturbed, time resumed. Quite simple, really.

Except, time hadn't resumed for the things that had been touched, resume was the wrong word for it.  The mushrooms and salamander seemed to have just aged to death. It would have been more accurate to say that time caught up with them than to say that time resumed for them. Except, shouldn't the leaf have fallen to the ground very quickly if time was catching up to it? Or does it not work that way? And what about wind? Wind touches things. Surely that should have made all of the mushrooms rot by now...

Rarity derided herself internally for having gotten so analytical of something so far out of her depths. What chance did she really have of figuring out something of such complexity? This kind of thing was more on the level of Starswirl the Bearded than an aspiring dressmaker with minimal knowledge of magic.

Rarity continued, despite the futility of figuring it out that she had established in her mind, to scan over the field. There was one last thing she noticed before she decided that maybe she should give it a rest.

She saw a bunny, frozen mid-leap, halfway across the field.

As casually as possible, Rarity moved to strategically obstruct the sight from Fluttershy, using her body as the obstruction. Fluttershy showed no signs of looking up anytime soon, but Rarity didn't want to take any chances. She assumed that Fluttershy had probably already deduced on her own that there were other animals in the field, but even if Fluttershy did know, actually seeing a cute little bunny that was as good as dead, knowing that the only thing the future held for it was an inevitable and unpreventable mortification would certainly send her over the edge.

Before long, they made it around the mushrooms and back into the forest, teal leaves overhead, dirt below, and moss growing on every surface that it could find. As they continued to walk, Fluttershy raised her head and took in her surroundings once more, but she still didn't speak. Rainbow Dash took this as her cue to say something. Even though she had no idea what to say, and her judgement told her that not saying anything was her best bet, she was a mare of action and the Element of Loyalty, she had to say something.

“Fluttershy?” Her voice conveyed fully her lack of resolve. She really had no idea what to say. “Uh... You okay?”

Fluttershy inhaled as if she were going to respond but didn't. She let out the breath then shook her head from side to side, letting it hang lower than it had before.

"Look, I know that was rough for you... and uh..." At a complete loss for words, Rainbow Dash leapt up into the air and flew over to Fluttershy's other side: the side that Rarity was on. Still hovering, she eyed Fluttershy who hadn't changed at all in the short time that had passed then whispered down into Rarity's ear. “Rarity, you're smart about this stuff, what do I do? What do I say?”

Rarity pulled Rainbow Dash down to the ground and walked her a modest distance away from Fluttershy before speaking to her. “I don't think that you should be saying anything to her just yet. Just give her a minute first. If she wants to talk, she'll do something to let you know.”

“So you're saying I should basically just ignore her? Not gonna happen, Rare.” Rainbow Dash's short statement conveyed fully her unbudging firmness.

Since it was clear that Rainbow Dash was insistent on being loyal to a fault, Rarity begrudgingly went along with what she wanted—although she was more inclined to call her a moron. “Fine,” she huffed. “I don't see why you need my advice, though. She goes to you when she has something on her mind just as much as she does me. So just say whatever it is you usually say to her when she comes to you for consolation.”

“She doesn't usually come to me like this, though. I'm not sure she goes to anypony when she's like this...” Rainbow Dash glanced over again at Fluttershy's downcast form. “She might come and talk to me if she's nervous about something, or if there's something she's excited about and wants to tell somepony about it, or whatever, but she doesn't come to me when she's like this. Not when she's actually, y'know, sad 'n' stuff.” Rainbow Dash sighed and hung her head. “Because... it seems like every time I try to talk to her when she's like she is now... I just make things worse. I've never been good at cheering her up, and now that she has better friends than me... she probably just goes and talks to you guys instead.”

As much as she didn't agree with Rainbow Dash's choice to forcibly attempt to make Fluttershy feel better, Rarity couldn't help but feel sorry for her. Rarity's eyes darted about thoughtfully, stopping at points of no particular significance as she ruminated briefly, searching her mind for useful advice until she came up with something she felt reasonably confident in. “Firstly,” she finally said, “don't put yourself down like that. You're a great friend to Fluttershy.

“Secondly, if you're going to be sad, be sad with her and not sad for yourself, you mare-foal.

“And thirdly, don't expect to be able to fix her. If you want to cheer her up, that's fine, but she's sad, and she's going to be sad for as long as she needs to be, because sometimes ponies need to be sad. Do not demean her for it. To you it might have been just a lizard, but it wasn't to her.”

Rainbow Dash dragged her hooves in the dirt with an annoyed scowl on her face as she contemplated Rarity's advice. She found it unsatisfactory. “But what do I do though! You're just telling me what not to do,” she grumbled. “And I'm supposed to 'be sad with her'? What does that even mean? What does that look like?”

Rarity breathed out her frustration in the form of a sigh. “Just do whatever it might be that she wants of you.”

“Alright, how am I supposed to know—“

“If you don't know, then ask.” Rarity said plainly. "I can't grant miracles, Rainbow. This kind of thing is just something you feel. And if you don't know how to feel then there's nothing I can say that will help you."

“So... like... what do I say then? 'Fluttershy what do you want from me?'”

Rarity's patience was thinning considerably. Although Rainbow Dash seemed to be taking the conversation seriously, Rarity still felt she was holding back from becoming totally invested, which Rarity found wholly inappropriate. As far as she was concerned, even if it was only five percent of Rainbow Dash that was being standoffish, that five percent needed to go in the corner, take a time-out, and altogether just shut up.

“Oh, don't get too poetic now.” Rarity couldn't help but give a roll of her eyes with her sarcastic remark. “She might lose the meaning in all those flowery inclusions.”

True, she did want to help Rainbow Dash, but she found it hard to help a mare who only wanted a quick fix to the problem of emotions, and who wasn't serious enough to truly tackle the problem she claimed to want to solve.

Rainbow Dash scowled. “Rarity, I'm serious.”

Rarity had to stay her tongue at that remark, and simply exhaled sharply instead. “Just let her that you understand that she's sad and you're there for her. 'If there's anything I can do to for you, let me know.' Something like that. And it should come from the heart, not whatever it is that you've been thinking with.” With a bump of her flank, Rarity knocked Rainbow Dash toward the still-moping Fluttershy. “Now go, no more questions, just do it.”

Rainbow Dash stopped just short of stumbling into Fluttershy before she righted herself. Her incoherent grumbling directed at Rarity's unnecessary use of force ceased suddenly when she turned to look at Fluttershy and was met with her normally beautiful eyes, but which were now two teal pools of hardened despondency. “Oh, uh... Hey, I was just... I just wanted to say... or,  uh... ask you... Uh...” Rainbow Dash suddenly couldn't remember anything Rarity had said to her. She said the first thing she could think of to try to salvage the situation. “You okay?”

Rainbow Dash didn't need to turn around to know that Rarity's hoof had made contact with her face, the sound had made it quite apparent.

She took a deep breath then let it out. “Don't answer that,” she said, then gave herself enough time to collect her thoughts. “Listen, I know you're sad about what happened earlier, whatever the heck it was. I still don't really know what was going on with those mushrooms, but that's beside the point... Where was I? Oh yeah, you being sad. So anyway, I can tell you're pretty beat up about it. But when you're sad, it makes me sad, so if there's anything I can do to help make you not sad, just tell me.” She paused for just long enough to see that Fluttershy wasn't going to say anything in reply before starting again. “Not that I'm only doing this to make myself not sad, or that you have to be not sad right now, you're allowed to be sad when sad things happen, I'm not judging you or anything, It's just—“

Rainbow Dash's ramblings were cut off when Fluttershy leaned into her and placed her head underneath her chin, resting her head against Rainbow Dash's neck. Rainbow Dash was caught off-guard by the affectionate gesture, but instinctively she threw a wing over Fluttershy's back. After the initial surprise wore off, she pulled Fluttershy in for a hug.

Rainbow Dash looked over to Rarity, her chin ruffling Fluttershy's mane as she turned her head, and was met with a small smile from her. She smiled back.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Time passed slowly as the ponies continued ever-onward. Even though time seemed to have slowed, it never felt boring. Especially for Rainbow Dash. She'd grown fond of this newfound slowness, as foreign as it was to her. It was almost like napping, but without the whole sleeping part, which was odd considering how sleeping seemed to play very much a central role in napping.

And that truly was the odd thing out to Rainbow Dash now. Whilst she normally blocked out the outside world to de-stress and relax, right now she was taking everything in, and to a much greater degree than she'd ever done before. No detail seemed to small to notice and appreciate. The light breeze, the crisp smell of leaves, the soft backdrop of bird and insect chirps and calls, and the wing she had around Fluttershy's back. All these things together were more revivifying than even the best nap.

Was this how Fluttershy experienced nature? Rainbow Dash couldn't help but ask herself that question over and over. In all the yeas she had known her friend, this was the first time she had ever truly understood Fluttershy's passion for nature. And to see her mood improving by the minute made it all the better.

Fluttershy had moved her head out from under Rainbow Dash's chin, and it was due to two reasons mostly. One, her neck had become sore after a just few minutes of doing so. And two, she, like Rainbow Dash, wanted to enjoy the scenery.

Things that Rainbow Dash wouldn't have given a second glance at earlier were suddenly quite interesting to her, the different mosses and fungi catching her interest the most. No forest near Ponyville that Rainbow Dash had been in featured quite as many different varieties as she could see now.

A fluffy dark-green moss grew on the forest floor. At the junction where the forest floor turned into the grey-brown bark of the trees, a minty coloured moss emerged. And a teal-ish moss that was similar in hue to the leaves of the forest trees formed speckly patterns on nearly every stone that rose up out of the ground.

The fungi were equally as various, some clinging to the sides of trees in shelf-like structures, others lining the insides of hollowed-out logs. Fortunately, none of them seemed to be anything like a particular fungus they had run into earlier.

Rarity, who had taken a backseat up to this point, had even begun to enjoy the tranquility of the forest herself when she wasn't thinking about the dirt in her mane. And the sight ahead of two close friends, as imperfect and incompatible as their personalities were, side-by-side after so many years... It was so sentimental that Rarity could barely hold herself back from commenting on the matter. Even so, she did manage to keep her remarks to herself. With how self-conscious Rainbow Dash was about these things, she knew that speaking up would only ruin the moment.

Through all this however, there was also another part of her that couldn't quite let go of the mushroom incident from earlier. Not that she was unjustified in her concern. But she did wish that she could forget about it, if only just for the moment.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Before long a new sight sprung up out of the forest. A stream, ten feet wide but not even half a foot deep, cut a path through the foliage perpendicular to the path the ponies themselves had been taking. They came to halt at the wet, gravelly riverbank. Rainbow Dash walked forward and dipped a hoof into the water.

“Is it cold?” Fluttershy asked.

Rainbow Dash pulled her hoof out and shook off the wetness. “Nah, it's not too bad.” She looked up the stream, then down, both directions yielding more or less the same sight: A narrow river running over a riverbed of weathered stones and weaving around the plentiful stones which protruded out of the water. The larger stones were largely clean of any moss or algae, and flaunted proudly their jagged, un-weathered surfaces that the shallow river couldn't reach. The submerged stones were a different story. A stringy dark-green algae clung to their surfaces and swayed in the current of the river like party streamers in the wind. Both upstream and downstream the river bent sharply after a short distance, leaving little information to be gained as to where it headed and where it came from.

Rainbow Dash stepped back from the water and turned around to face her friends. “So what do you wanna do?”

“It's likely,” Rarity said, then halted that line of thought. “Actually, before I get to that, first things first: I'm cleaning this dreadful dirt out of my mane.” She walked over to the water's edge and took hold of a portion of water from the stream in her magic, lifting it into the air. The water formed into an amorphous ball that she then levitated over to the spot just above her head. “And shame on you Rainbow Dash for taking advantage of my fragile emotional state,” she added scornfully, before positioning her head as far forward as it would go to keep the rest of her body from getting wet. She made an opening in her magic, letting the water trickle down in a shower of droplets, washing away the reminder of her over-dramatic behavior.

Rarity's accusation had been weak at best. That she knew. She also knew that it had come out much too mildly. It was hard for her to be vehement about something that had been almost entirely her own doing, but she still felt it necessary to admonish Rainbow Dash if for no other reason than to feel better about her own impulsivity.

“Hey, you asked for it,” Rainbow Dash replied, unfazed by the accusation.

Rarity didn't respond. Rather, she returned to her previous line of thought as she worked the dirt out of her mane. “As I was saying,” she began, running a hoof through her soaking mane, dispelling a blade of grass that had weaved its way into it. “It is likely that this stream is running away from those mountains we saw earlier. If we follow it upstream, it would probably lead us right to them. Downstream probably leads right to the ocean.”

Rarity's mane no longer held the same form it once did. Instead, it hung limply over the side of her head, sopping, but clean.

“I think following the stream to the mountains is probably a good idea.” Fluttershy raised a hoof to her chin as she mulled over the benefits such a course of action would have. “If we do, then it would make it a lot harder for us to get lost. If somepony got separated, all they would have to do is find the stream and follow it to the mountains. Not to mention that it's an unlimited source of fresh water, which is always useful.”

“So, upstream it is then?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Upstream it is,” Fluttershy repeated.

Half an hour later and Rainbow Dash was hopping from river-rock to river-rock as part of a game she had devised wherein she had to avoid touching the water, but without the use of flight. After a few minutes, she decided that, since gliding was technically not flying under her definition of the word, it should be allowed under the rule-set, but any form of flapping was still strictly prohibited. After a few more minutes, she decided that she liked this change of rules.

By now, the stream had grown to around twice its original width, causing the water that flowed through it to be even more shallow. The water ran over only the smallest of rocks, anything larger it was forced to go around, which, as a matter of fact, was almost everything. In truth, it wasn't so much a river of water as it was a river of boulders which someone had spilled some water into. This turn of events didn't faze Rainbow Dash, though. There was still enough water to keep the game going.

Fluttershy, who was currently walking with Rarity along the river bank, had tried to convince Rainbow Dash multiple times since she'd started to not unnecessarily risk an injury, but Rainbow Dash remained confident in her ability to not get hurt... Or at least to not get hurt too badly.

Rarity's mane still hung low, in absence of its usual structure, showing off its full length that was normally hidden within a meticulously formed curl. It flowed from her head into a gentle, sweeping curve, much the same as the yellow mare next to her, except it lacked the sheer volume that Fluttershy's mane naturally possessed. Standing next to Fluttershy with her mane as it was, the two would have shared an almost uncanny resemblance if not for their differing colour palettes.

Above, the sky was largely blocked out by leaves and tree limbs, even though no trees grew within the craggy riverbed. The limbs were of trees growing at the bank that reached out over the unoccupied space to salvage whatever sunlight they could that would otherwise go to waste, forming a sort of awning on both sides that intermeshed at the center.

The cyan mare hopped from a one darkish-grey rock to another darkish-grey rock, then to a lightish-grey rock, and then to a rock which was a mid-tone grey but with sparkles, all before hopping to one final rock that rolled over when she landed on it. Rainbow Dash had planned for exactly such an event however, and with one powerful flap of her wings, she was airborne, having narrowly avoided a collision with the pointy rocks below. She still had one problem though, which was that she was currently moving horizontally at quite some speed. Her poor takeoff angle had sent her bounding off to one side, which meant that her brilliant escape strategy had really just bought her another half second before she crashed into the shallow stream, letting out a yelp as she impacted. Water splashed up around her then rained back down. Groaning, she made to stand as Fluttershy rushed through the air, landing next to her.

“Are you alright? Did you hurt anything?” Fluttershy said worriedly as she helped Rainbow Dash to her hooves. She nudged Rainbow Dash with her muzzle to help guide her to her hooves.

“I'm fine—Ow!” Rainbow Dash winced as Fluttershy nudged her side. “Okay, I'm mostly fine. I think I landed on a rock,” she said as she rubbed the freshly forming bruise on her side.

“I told you you would get hurt,” Fluttershy said sternly.

“It's just a bruise. Nothing to cry about.”

“But it could have been a broken wing or sprained ankle.” Frustration had crept its way into Fluttershy's tone. A multitude admonishments for Rainbow Dash's carelessness piled up in her mind, trying to force their way out, but in the end, all that escaped Fluttershy's lips was a frustrated sigh. It just wasn't in her nature to berate another pony, even if they didn't seem to learn any other way.



•  •  ❖  •  •



After rounding yet another bend in the river,  a faint splashing sound made itself known. Rarity commented on how she thought the sound's source to be a waterfall, and the others uttered their agreements.

As they got closer the sound grew louder, but by no means was it actually loud. In addition to that, as they approached they could make out the distinct pitter-patter of water droplets hitting water, further suggesting that it wasn't a roaring beast of a waterfall. Eventually, the tunnel created by the overhanging trees gave way to an opening in the foliage, and they saw where source of the sound was coming from.

A pond, roughly circular in shape, speckled generously with lily pads and the pink flowers that accompanied them, covered the bulk of the land in the forest clearing. The only area not covered was a small patch of land just over a pony's length across at its narrowest, rising out of the water right in the center of the pond. On the far side of the lily-pond, across from where the ponies stood, was a dripping cliff-face.

Water from a wide but shallow stream trickled over the edge of the rock, and for the most part clung to the stone as it rode its way to the bottom. Only a few drops here and there would fall from the stone and smack into the pool below. It could hardly be called a waterfall at all, given the dearth of both water and falling, although perhaps it was just having a bad day.

Fluttershy walked forward out into the clearing and noticed as a family of ducks paddled their way to the center island and climbed onto it. The mother duck had to make a trip back into the water to steer a troublesome duckling that had gone its own way back in the right direction.

“I can't speak for you two, but my legs are killing me.” Fluttershy flinched at the sound of Rainbow Dash's voice as she walked up behind her. Rainbow Dash lifted a foreleg and twirled it at the ankle, at first in one direction, then the other, relishing the feeling of stretching her aching muscles. “Can we stop her for a little bit?” she asked, looking to Fluttershy.

“Um... Sure. I don't see why not.”

“Sweet. Thanks 'Shy.” Rainbow Dash slid off her saddlebags and threw them up against a tree, out of the way. “Don't know about you, but I'm going for a swim.”

She unfurled her wings, letting out an “Oooh yeah,” as the stiff muscles practically creaked into their extended position. Rainbow Dash's saddlebags didn't cover her wings or prevent her from opening them, but it did prevent her from folding them into their natural closed position, which was a surefire way to get stiff wings. She made a mental note to add “get new saddlebags” to her to-do list, however at the moment she wasn't cornered about that. Right now all she wanted was to kick off this swim-session properly, which meant only one thing: An epic cannonball.

Rainbow Dash pushed off of the ground and gave a powerful thrust of her wings that launched her into the air and over the water. Pulling her legs toward her body and closing her wings, she allowed herself to plummet down to the water that awaited below.

Water exploded from the impact-zone like a ruptured soda-can, shooting high into the sky, then raining back down. A few drops reached as far a Rarity and Fluttershy, but for the most part they stayed dry.

Rainbow Dash resurfaced, spouting out a mouthful of pond water, then turned to face the Yellow and White mares on the shore. “You getting in, Rarity?”

Rarity looked around in confusion, glancing first to her left, then her right. “Is there another Rarity here, or was that question aimed at me?”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. She wasn't sure why she even bothered to ask.

“What about you 'Shy?”

“Um... Maybe a little later. I think I'd like to go through my journal and make sure I have everything written down first,” she said as she opened her saddlebag and took out the small brown journal and undid a small latch that kept it securely shut.

Rarity opened her saddlebags and produced a pencil and a small pink notebook of her own. “And I'd like to try to get down some sketches that aren't terrible. This new scenery is exactly what I've been needing.”

“Alright, well, whatever.” Disappointed, Rainbow Dash reclined back into the water and tossed her front hooves outward to each side, allowing herself to float on the surface. Since there was nothing else to do, she closed her eyes and simply focused her attention on the feeling of floating. She spent a few minutes like this, keenly aware of the buoyancy of different parts of her body, before she got bored and shifted her focus onto how freely her mane and tail flowed in the water. Just as she was about to grow bored a second time, she felt herself drift into something. She was startled initially by the contact but didn't flinch, and kept her eyes closed. She felt the smooth, waxy surface of the object against her ear and determined it to be, in all likeliness, a lily-pad.

The following few minutes she spent listening to the sounds she could hear, the birds, the insects, the waterfall, the wind through the trees, until she was interrupted, not unwelcomely, by the feeling of a small, quacking object jumping up onto her abdomen. She opened her eyes and peered down at the tiny yellow duckling looking back at her.

“Uh... Hey there...”

The little duckling sat down in front of the cyan pegasus's face and stared at her with its beady black eyes.

Quack.

Rainbow Dash waited for more but received none. “Quack to you, too.” She said as she placed her hooves behind her head to help keep it propped up, which worked exceptionally poorly given that she was lying on a liquid.

“I'm sorry, is he bothering you, Rainbow Dash?” Rainbow Dash turned her head to see Fluttershy wading through the water toward her, wings outstretched. Sitting atop her wings were five other little yellow ducklings.

“Not really, I guess.” She looked back to the duckling whose eyes remained fixed on her. “What does it want from me?”

Fluttershy smiled. “He's just trying to get to know you... I think.”

Rainbow Dash looked back down at the duckling who continued to stare at her.

Quack.

“Right...”

The duckling stood up, waddled forward two steps, then sat back down uncomfortably close to Rainbow Dash's face.

Quack.

“Yeah... now this is just getting weird. A little help here 'Shy?”

Fluttershy moved close to Rainbow Dash and extended a wing to the duckling. “Come on now. You can get to know Rainbow Dash later. We need to get you back to your mama before she gets worried.”

The duckling hesitated for only a second before it obeyed and waddled up onto the cream-coloured wing of Fluttershy who then made off with the ducklings to return them to their mother, Rainbow Dash watching as she went.



•  •  ❖  •  •



“Ready to get moving?”

After a moment's delay, Rarity looked up at Fluttershy from her notebook which she had sulkily buried her face in. “Why can't I think of anything?” she said, poutily.

Earlier, Rarity had taken up a spot under an umbrella-shaped tree in hopes of getting something down on paper, yet not a single good design had come to her in the hours that she had sat there. Or, at least she thought it had been hours. It could have been forty-five minutes for all she knew, but it certainly felt like hours.

“I don't know. I wish I could help, but I don't think there's anything I can do.”

Rarity stood, levitated her notebook into her bags, adorned them, then hung her head dejectedly.

“If we get moving again, maybe you'll find something that inspires you.” Fluttershy suggested.

“One can hope.” Rarity said, forcing herself upright into a more dignified posture, even if she didn't feel it on the inside. “I just don't know what to do anymore. Dressmaking, it's part of who I am.” She touched a hoof to her chest and looked intently into Fluttershy's eyes. “It isn't just something I do. It affects the way I look at the world, and the way I think. But now...”

Fluttershy frowned helplessly at the pleading, azure eyes staring into her own. This was a lot for her to take in so suddenly. Or perhaps it wasn't so suddenly. Rarity had made mention of this problem in some fashion a few times previously. On the airship, at the train station, and during their last spa date. But they had always felt like passing remarks to Fluttershy. They were the sorts of things that Fluttershy expected the dressmaker might say from time to time when feeling stressed, but that certainly didn't seem to be the case now. 

Rarity had never withheld her emotions from Fluttershy before, so why was this news to the pegasus now? If this had been deeply bothering Rarity for so long now, then why didn't she know? Had she been inattentive?

“I... don't really know what to say. I'm sorry to hear that you're struggling with your dresses, but I don't think I have any advice to give.” Fluttershy pawed guiltily at the ground. Some friend she was, not having anything useful to say. Though, it wasn't as if she had no excuse for being useless. Her job as an animal caretaker didn't exactly require an eye for the latest fashion trends.

Rarity stepped closer and wrapped a single hoof around Fluttershy's neck. “It's nothing you need to worry about, darling. I shouldn't have even brought it up. Let's just get moving, shall we?” She pulled back and smiled at Fluttershy. A smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

“O-Okay...” Fluttershy turned around and called out to Rainbow Dash who was just a few paces away. “Rainbow Dash, get your things. We're... going to...” she said, trailing off at the end from what she saw.

“Now remember, you can't fly with just wing-strength alone. You have to have good form or you'll never get off the ground in the first place!” Rainbow Dash stopped pacing back and forth along the shore and faced her audience. “So with that in mind, show me a gliding stance.” On cue, five of the yellow pupils spread their wings while one more did nothing.

Rainbow Dash got down on their level (which meant lying prone) and inspected each future-flier's form. “Wings up more,” she said to the first duckling. “Now that's too high. Lower. Lower. Now up just a tiny bit. Aaaand... stop. Perfect.” She moved to the next. “Okay... That would be good, if you were trying to stop yourself. You need to tilt them down like this.” A small nudge later and the duckling's wings were positioned properly for a glide.

She moved to the third who sat there doing nothing. “It looks like we've found the earth-pony of the family. Come on, wings out in a glide, like this.” Rainbow Dash demonstrated a glide to the duckling, but still it did nothing. “See what I'm doing? Just do exactly as I do.” She folded her wings then stuck them out again. The duckling stared, but did nothing further.

Trying to be as clear as possible, Rainbow Dash spoke as slowly as she could bear. “Winnnngs. Ouuuuuut. Got it?”

Quack.

“Oh... it's you...”

“Not to interrupt or anything, but we're ready to get moving whenever you are, Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy said, now standing just behind her.

“Yeah, just a sec. I'm almost done,” Rainbow Dash replied without looking back. She skipped instructing the problem-duck and moved on to the last three, quickly fixing their inexperienced technique. “If you take one thing away from this lesson, just remember this: Nopony... Er... Noduck ever learned to fly by just listening to some crotchety instructor. You have to practice, everyday. And if you do, you'll be flying in no time!”

The reaction from the crowd was mixed, but Rainbow Dash assumed this was about as good as she could expect from an audience which was collectively less than two months old. She stood and faced Fluttershy. “Alright, I'm ready, so are we—Uh... What are you so smiley about?”

“You.”

“What'd I do?”

“It was really cute the way you were teaching those little ducklings.” Fluttershy's smile grew wider as she spoke.

“Hey, somepony had to teach them how to fly.”
> Thin Walls
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

An excerpt from The Ultimate Expeditioner's Handbook:


It is a well-established fact amongst ponies who have ventured outside their homeland that there exists a problem with maintaining friendships through the tedium and pain inherent in the exploration of the unknown. However, this inextricable fact of expeditions can be circumvented by traveling only with those whom one would feel comfortable despising. Whether these ponies are the subjects of a preexisting contempt, or are more-or-less decent ponies whose friendships will serve as sacrificial offerings to the greater pursuits of science and exploration, should be decided upon on a case by case basis.

Perplexingly, there exist no documented cases of this advice ever having been used on an expedition, which has lead us to believe that the advice isn't widespread enough throughout the expeditioning community. 



•  •  ❖  •  •



The crackling fire pulsated and flickered, radiating off waves of heat onto Fluttershy. In front of her lay the notebook she had been using to log each and every animal species she'd encountered on the island so far.

Fluttershy's mane, as it turned out, functioned as an excellent means of protection in more than one way: First and foremost, it had the ability to shield her from the penetrating gazes of other ponies, (a usage Fluttershy was already well-acquainted with,) and currently, it was making an effective heat-shield from the hot, dry air coming from the fire. But even with her mane acting as an intermediary between the flames and the rest of her body, the dry air sucked the moisture from Fluttershy's eyes, causing her to blink much more often than normal. This was hardly a bother for Fluttershy though as she lazily flipped through the pages of her notebook, warming her front hooves by the heat of the fire.

They had stopped again, this time at Rarity's request, though Fluttershy similarly had been contemplating stopping for the night. It had come as no surprise to her when Rarity voiced her recommendation. Aching hooves and hunger had begun to take their tolls on everypony, making it an easy decision for Fluttershy when she chose in favour of stopping for the night. Even neglecting the twinges of soreness and hunger, the ponies couldn't have gone on too much longer before they would have had to stop anyway, because the night was fast approaching and they would need the last light of day to make camp.

To avoid the headache of waking in the middle of the night with wet hooves and sodden belongings as a result of a rising river, they traveled into the woods a distance until they found the first open area where they could safely make a fire. Through the gaps in the canopy, just barely visible, was their destination. Only the tips of the mountains peeked through the leaves, the rest hidden completely from view. It was abundantly evident, just from what could be seen, that the hours they had spent wending along the river had brought them much closer to their goal. Fluttershy had guessed that they were nearing three quarters of the way there by now, and that they would make it to the mountains in no time at all the following day.

Fluttershy flipped a page forward in her notebook. It wasn't quite dark yet. The sun had set all the way, but its most tenacious rays of light reached over the horizon and into the night sky, allowing Fluttershy just a little more time to read. It had only been a few minutes after they first stopped that the sun had began to burrow into the horizon, causing the bright sky to dim further and further. But the real darkness was still to come. Now, as Fluttershy read, the yellows and oranges of sunset that had briefly decorated the sky were gone, and in their place, a muted cerulean that was gradually shifting into the inky black of night.

Under the fiery hues of sunset was when Fluttershy had prepared dinner. The main substance and nutrition of the meal came mostly in the form of beans. Not a favourite of Fluttershy's, but the ease of carry and of preparation made them an obvious choice. She had tried scavenging for other delectable things to eat while the beans cooked, leaving Rarity to stir the pot as she looked, and she succeeded to a degree, but unfortunately it barely even amounted to a side dish after being divvied up amongst the three of them.

Fluttershy picked up her pencil in her mouth and fixed a small spelling error in her field-notes. She put the pencil back down and closed the notebook. Fluttershy easily could have read over the whole thing in one sitting, but she felt no urgency to do so, instead deciding to pick it up again at a later time.

To Fluttershy's left, a few feet away, was Rarity, lying on her back, looking up at the night's first stars as they flickered uncertainly into view in the darkening sky, the faint white specks barely visible on the grey-blue backdrop.

Rainbow Dash was absent. She'd offered to go to the river to wash out the pot and dishes, and hadn't yet returned. Rarity found it hard to believe. Not that Rainbow Dash hadn't returned, but that she had offered to help in the first place. She'd always thought that Rainbow Dash was the kind of pony that only ever granted help when asked, and would do so begrudgingly, she might add. Of course, the only thing that Rarity had ever needed from Rainbow Dash was for her to stand still for a dress on one or two occasions, so perhaps that had something to do with it.

“Did you get enough to eat?” Fluttershy asked.

“Hmm? Oh, yes. Plenty.” Rarity rolled onto her side to look at Fluttershy, propping her head up on one hoof. “The beans were... um...” Rarity twirled her hoof as she thought of something positive to say. “They were very filling, I suppose.”

“Did you not like them?”

“Well... No, not really,” Rarity admitted. “Not by any fault on your own, mind you. I just don't particularly care for beans, if I'm to be honest.”

“Oh, well, I don't like them much either,” Fluttershy admitted.

“Rather unfortunate since I suspect that there'll be more of them to come.” Fluttershy nodded, then Rarity rolled back onto her back, face up-turned to the sky. “You know, Fluttershy, while I have been spending an inordinate amount of time complaining today—which I would like to apologize for by the way—there is one thing I've come to like about this wretched, overgrown, nature-filled place. Aside from the one or two downright immaculate vistas we've stumbled upon.”

“You don't need to apologize, Rarity, I can understand why you don't like being around nature. I'm just glad you agreed to come with me. It was very generous of you to come at all. I know how busy your life can be,” Fluttershy tried to say assuringly, but Rarity was having none of it.

“Bosh. I absolutely do need to apologize. My complaining was even annoying me so I know it must have been annoying for you. And I know that it was annoying Rainbow Dash because she was quite vocal about how much it was, though I don't think her shouting at me to 'shut up' was entirely called for.”

Fluttershy tapped on her notebook, unsure of what to say. “Um... Apology accepted then?”

Rarity gave a diminutive laugh. “How gracious of you,” she said, only half-sarcastically, then tilted her head to the side in thought. “There was something else I was going to say, but I can't remember what it was.”

“You were saying there was something you liked about this place,” Fluttershy said as she picked up a large stick and laid it across the fire.

“Oh, yes, that's right!” Rarity turned to her side to continue her conversation face-to-face. “I was going to say how much I'm enjoying not being able to do anything, which, I'll admit, sounds like a strange thing to say, but recently I've been so caught up with... with everything, that I haven't had time to think. Every little thing, all competing for the forefront of my attention. It seems like every second of my time recently has been used to determine 'What can I be doing right now,' instead thinking about what I should be spending time on for that month, or this year, or for the rest of my life for pony's sake!”

Rarity thought for a moment. “And I don't mean that in the very hollow sense that most ponies do when they say things like 'I want to be a model', for instance, and end it there. I want a little more than that. My life goals shouldn't be something I can fit into one, short sentence.”

Rarity took the look on Fluttershy's face as a sign that she wasn't nearly as moved by her words as she herself was.

She continued, lying back to look at the sky once more. “Maybe it comes as second-nature for you to live your life with a deeper regard for the future, but for me... it's something I seem to have a knack for ignoring.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn't say it's second-nature to me at all. I can barely think about what my life might be like in a year without panicking, so mostly I just avoid it altogether,” Fluttershy admitted, pawing at the dirt. “I guess I'm just lucky that things have worked out so smoothly for me for so long. I didn't plan it out or anything, I just do what I enjoy, and so far, that's what's worked for me. If things changed... I wouldn't know what to do. I like them the way they are because the way they are works. I... I just can't take change.” Fluttershy was too ashamed to look at Rarity, but Rarity was too busy staring up at the sky to notice.

Rarity gave a little “Hmm,” in acknowledgment of Fluttershy's statement, but had nothing more to add to it herself.

More stars irresolutely wavered into existence. The sky was as nice as it was back home, but everything else left something to be desired in Rarity's mind.  And then there was the nagging feeling that she hadn't seen the worst of the island just yet.

She was waiting for it to happen, whatever it was. She could feel it, like eyes staring into the back of her head. It was that same nagging feeling that, after a minute, turns into a yanking, tugging feeling that somepony, or something, is watching. She didn't think the feeling she felt actually was the feeling of being watched, but it was equally unnerving.

Rainbow Dash returned with the pot and other dishes in her saddlebags. “I'm back!” she announced. “Didn't miss anything while I was gone, did I?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “Not really,” she said. “But now that you're back, we should all get started on setting up our tents. And we had better make it quick. If we wait any longer, it'll be too dark to see what we're doing.”

“Sounds good to me.” Rainbow Dash said, as she trotted over to a pile containing her things. Things that were once in, or attached to her saddlebags but had been removed when she had needed the bags for carrying the dishes.

Likewise, Fluttershy went over to her bags and detached a smaller bag from them that contained the parts that would become her tent. Soon after, Rarity did the same, abandoning her ruminations and getting to work.

Fluttershy untied the knot at the end of the long cloth bag, then gently slid the pieces out the open end. She laid them out in front of herself in an organized fashion; rods, stakes, and ropes, all getting their own separate piles, and the single, large, canvas sheet a pile of its own. She found a suitable, flat location that would make the perfect spot for a tent, but before she could begin assembly, Rainbow Dash had something to say.

“Heh... so, uh...” she stammered out. She looked up from her pile of belongings and over to Fluttershy, rubbing a hoof over the back of her neck. “I may or may not have brought a tent with me.”

With a growing look of consternation about her, Fluttershy faced Rainbow Dash. “Hmm?” she hummed, a request for Rainbow Dash to elaborate. She knew exactly what Rainbow Dash was insinuating, but was a little shocked that nopony had noticed earlier.

Rainbow Dash batted a hoof at her pile of many things, none of which were a tent. “Well... I don't want to point hooves or anything, but it looks like somepony forgot to bring my tent.”

Rarity briefly broke away from setting up her tent to look over to Rainbow Dash with a raised eyebrow. “So you're without a tent then?”

“Uh, yeah. That's kind of what I've been saying.”

“Well before you even ask, the two of us are not going to be sharing a tent,” the white unicorn said placidly. “I need my beauty sleep—especially after an exhausting day like today—and I can't have anypony getting in the way of that.”

“That's okay, I wasn't planning on it. I'd actually like to get some sleep tonight, too, and there's no way that would happen if I was stuck beside you and that constant snoring,” Rainbow Dash smirked.

“For the last time, I do NOT—Erughh!” Rarity ground her teeth and held back her anger as best she could. She took a deep breath then started again. “I,” she began calmly, punctuating the word by bringing a hoof to her chest, “am a lady. I have class. And I do not snore.” She shifted her focus back to her tent supplies and, aghast, realized that at some point without knowing it, she had stabbed one of the poles into the dirt with her magic.

Her blue aura enveloped the pole as she withdrew it. Inch by inch it came out, leaving Rarity to gape at the eight inch deep hole that remained in the dry and compact soil of the ground. The pole still being intact after such a forceful impact was a miracle in its own right.

“Is that all you forgot to bring?” Fluttershy asked, mostly inattentive to Rarity's small fit of rage. “And how did you forget it in the first place? I wrote you a list of all the things you needed. I know I put 'tent' on there.”

Fluttershy's question was almost lost on Rainbow Dash whose chuckling at Rarity's distress had just started to die down. “I don't think I forgot anything else. Wait, no...” Rainbow Dash's face scrunched up into a pensive expression, her eyebrows furrowing. “Actually, yeah, I had it right,” she said, now certain of herself. “I know for a fact I got all the other things on the list except for the tent. I remember now that I was saving the tent for last because it's buried under all of my other junk that I never use, but I guess I forgot to go back to it afterward I finished the list. And I didn't double check the list either...” Rainbow Dash laughed nervously. “I mean, it would have been kind of a pain in the flank to dig it out from underneath all of my other junk, so... I guess you could call that a bright side.”

“Well,” Fluttershy sighed. “I guess there are worse things you could have forgotten. And... um... also, do you want to share a tent with me? Mine's made to fit two ponies anyway.” Through the frustration in Fluttershy's voice shone a glimmer of enthusiasm at the prospect of sharing sleeping arrangements with Rainbow Dash again.

Not for any untoward reasons, of course! It was just... nice. That was all. Particularly the cuddling.

“It's either that, or I'm sleeping on dirt tonight, and I can't really say that sounds to fun... Unless Rarity changed her mind. Hey Rare, you sure you don't—”

Rarity scoffed. “You're not coming anywhere near my tent tonight after insulting me like you did!”

“All I did was state a fact,” Rainbow Dash grinned. The smirk on her face was slow to fade as she turned her attention back to Fluttershy. “Your tent it is then. And to make up for forgetting my tent, I'll go ahead and set ours up for us.”

“Oh, you don't have to do that. I can do it if you don't want to...”

“It's fine. I want to,” Rainbow Dash said, shrugging off Fluttershy's protest.

“Well... if you're sure you want to...”

Rainbow Dash smiled. They had to go through this same charade any time she offered to help Fluttershy with anything. “I'm positive.”

Rainbow Dash went over to Fluttershy's neat piles of tent parts and began making them into un-neat piles of tent parts as she went to work setting up the tent.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Rarity admired her work. Her tent stood proudly and neatly. The angles were exact, the poles vertical, and the roof devoid of any wrinkles whatsoever. She stepped back to take in the sight from another angle and found that she could admire it just as well, if not better, from a distance.

She turned around and saw Rainbow Dash fumbling with a pole mumbling under her breath something that she couldn't quite make out. By the look on Rainbow Dash's face, she assumed it was something the pole would have taken great offense to were it capable of such things.

Despite her frustration, Rainbow Dash had only just begun setting up her tent. It had taken Rarity just a minute to erect her own tent with the aid of magic, so now, with the free time she had on her hooves, she thought the time was apt to seek out a little... requital. Requital being the most lady-like word Rarity could think of for what was, quite simply, payback. She didn't have anything substantial in mind. Just a little something to get on Rainbow Dash's nerves like she had hers.

She trotted over to the fire and took a lying position next to it, a few feet behind Rainbow Dash whose back was turned to her. Rainbow Dash had in her grip a pole which was opposed, seemingly as a non-negotiable matter of principal, to staying up. No matter what she did, as soon as she took her hooves away for more than a few seconds, it would flop over like a tired cat, and pull down with it any progress Rainbow Dash had made. Again and again this happened. She would get it just right, let go, and it would, once again, fall over.

“Turn it around,” Rarity said.

Rainbow Dash swiveled her head around to look at Rarity. “What?”

“The pole, turn it around,” she repeated. “It needs to be the other way.”

“What does it matter? It's the same on both ends.”

“Just do it, would you?”

After a moment of reluctance, Rainbow Dash conceded, but not before a great deal of consideration in favour of flat-out ignoring her. “Fine.” She flipped the pole around and resumed trying to get it to stand correctly.

“No the other way,” Rarity said twirling her hoof in a circular motion.

“What other way?”

Rarity took the pole from Rainbow in her magic and flipped it back around. “Like this.”

“That's exactly how I had it in the first place!” Rainbow Dash shouted, gesticulating fervidly.

“Oh,” Rarity said innocently. “So it was. My mistake. Carry on then.”

Rainbow Dash huffed then took the pole from the hold of Rarity's magic and got back to work. “Yeah, thanks for the help.”

“I didn't realise I had helped at all,” Rarity said, in continuation of her act.

“You didn't.” Rainbow Dash deadpanned. 

Rarity pretended to be interested in the fire, picking up a stick and poking at it. After a minute she pretended to grow tired of it. “Are you sure you have all of the parts?” she said, as she tapped her chin contemplatively. 

“Yes,” Rainbow Dash seethed, her tone a rather delectable mixture of exasperation and annoyance to Rarity's ears.

“And you've doubled checked to make sure you're guy-lines are all running to their corresponding stakes?”

“What? 'Guy-lines'?”

“The ropes, dear.”

“Then why didn't you just call them ropes? Actually, y'know what? I don't care! Just stop talking so I can focus on getting up this stupid tent!”

Rainbow Dash jammed the pole into the ground to see if that would make it stay up any better than it had been. “I know what I'm doing. I've set up a tent before.” she let go of the pole. It stayed put for a deceptively long time before falling back down. She exhaled out a deep breath that bordered on being a groan, with it, she expelled much of the frustration that continued to grow within her, stoked by Rarity's attempts at 'help'.

Fluttershy, who had been quietly minding her own business reading a book (with difficulty) by the dim wavering light of the fire, looked up to see what all the fuss was about. As far as she could tell, it was just Rainbow Dash being Rainbow Dash.

“Do you want me to help, Rainbow Dash?” Fluttershy asked. “It would be easier if we did it together.”

“No it's fine. I'll have it up in a minute,” Rainbow Dash insisted. She had told Fluttershy she wasn't going to have to set up the tent, and by Celestia, that's what was going to happen.

Rarity let out the loudest “Hmmm....” she could get away with without it sounding fabricated. “How incredibly strange... Your stakes aren't coming out of the ground are they? They should be at forty-five degree angle relative to the ground, facing away from the tent, of course.”

“No! The stakes are fine! I just can't get this stupid thing to stay up!”

Rarity smirked. Rainbow Dash was acting unsurprisingly predictably, and Rarity thought her own acting was quite good as well. She could have helped if she wanted to, but she didn't. Irritating the cyan mare was much more enjoyable. But it wasn't really what she was after, though. It was part of what she was after, but her plan was much more sophisticated than that.

Houseflies are irritating, Rarity reasoned. A crying foal is irritating. Accidentally putting too much sugar in one's tea is irritating. Irritating is easy. Rarity though... she had something more cunning planned. Being a little irritating was just the first step. And now that she'd done that, there wasn't too much left for her to do, but it needed to be done soon, lest Rainbow Dash cool off. “I could help you set it up, if you'd like,” she offered.

“I don't need your help. I can do it on my own.” Rainbow Dash responded, with the exact stubbornness Rarity was counting on. 

After what Rarity determined to be the perfect length for a pause she pitched her final question. “Are you sure? I've already finished setting up mine.”

“Yeah, I'm sure.” Rainbow Dash said sourly.

Rarity sat back for a time, smugly counting the minutes as they passed. She wagered she would only make it to another two, maybe three minutes. Yes, any minute now, she knew Rainbow Dash would give up. Any. Minute.

“I give up!” Rainbow Dash shouted, throwing her hooves in the air. Fluttershy jumped slightly at the outburst.

Holding her head low like a bull ready to charge, Rainbow Dash stomped away from the pile that was supposed to be a tent, then plopped down in front of the fire, making a point to face away from Rarity. She glared at the ground just in front of her nose with her head resting on her crossed front-hooves. Her deep, rancorous breathing stirred up small clouds of dust out of the dirt in front of each of her nostrils.

Fluttershy frowned. She had come to expect the occasional hissy fit from Rainbow Dash as a result of her temperamental nature, and she knew from years of experience that the best thing for her to do at this point was to not say anything to her. In the past, she used to try to cheer Rainbow Dash up when she would throw a tantrum, but the downright abusive things Rainbow Dash would say—then inevitably regret saying—when she got like this quickly taught Fluttershy that shutting up for a couple minutes was in everypony's best interest.

As Fluttershy forlornly watched Rainbow Dash, wishing she could say something to her without getting a cruel response, she noticed something unusual. Rarity looked a little too smug. It was a hunch, but she suspected she knew why.

Rarity's breathy giggling was interrupted when she noticed a glare aimed in her direction. She coughed to disguise that she had been laughing and swiftly flicked her head to look at a suddenly very interesting tree. Had that been there the whole time? It was so tall, and leafy as well. Truly marvelous in every capacity.

She glanced sideward, hoping to see that Fluttershy had found something else to glare at, but instead discovered her walking toward the heaping mess of poles and canvas that Rainbow Dash had just a minute ago abandoned.

Rarity got up and approached it as well. As Fluttershy inspected the tent, Rarity picked up the carrying-bag it had come in using her magic and peered inside it. Contrary to her suspicions, she didn't find any extra parts still in the bag, but she did find some lying under it: A single stake with a length of rope wrapped around it. She deftly unwound the rope from around the stake then levitated into place all the pieces of the tent at once, at the same time sticking the stake in the ground in front of the tent. She strung the rope between the pole and the stake with all the dexterity of a bowyer then stood back. All of this took her no more than a few seconds, and the end result was a tent standing as precisely as it should, with no signs of impending collapse.

Fluttershy eyed Rarity suspiciously. “Did you know that it was there the whole time?”

“The stake? No, I didn't know it was there, but it stood to reason that there was a stake missing.” Rarity thought she had sounded innocuous enough, but apparently she hadn't been, because Fluttershy's disapproving glare came back.

“You don't have to get back at her you know,” Fluttershy said, tersely. “I know she can get on your nerves sometimes, but I thought you were better than that.”

Rarity stood slack-jawed. Was... was Fluttershy calling her out? But this was supposed to be the part where she would proudly proclaim that the tent was up and it had only taken her a few seconds just so she could stomp all over Rainbow Dash's big, bloated ego. That's what this was all about: a sucker-punch to Rainbow Dash's ego. It was only fair! It was Rainbow Dash's behavior that had made her look like a barbarian at the train station! And she had made her agree to having mud put in her mane under the guise of it being a way of 'getting it over with'! Consent or no consent, the action had come from a place of ill-will, and that Rarity did not appreciate. Which isn't even to mention how it was an outright crime against fabulosity.

And she had said that she snored as well! Such a statement was nothing short of slander.

And she made her eat doughnuts from a run-down doughnut shop! In Canterlot, of all places!

And she hadn't been very gentle in carrying her down off the airship, which was rather... rude...

All of these things. They had all been very... moderately unpleasant at the time. The more Rarity thought about them the harder it was to remain angry about each one. Except for the incident at the train station, that really had pissed her off quite seriously...

But even so, she didn't desire payback anymore. She felt... petty. Really petty. She had known from the start that what she was doing was nothing but petty, but the accompanying hadn't made itself known until now. She felt dirty. And all it had taken was an outside set of eyes.

'Better than that'? She was better than that. It went without saying that she was better than that! To stoop so low as to seek revenge for her own enjoyment, the idea left her aghast! Nauseated even! It was... Well it was unthinkable! Just a moment ago that would have been exactly what she would have done, but now? Now it wasn't even a consideration. She was better than that! And nopony should dare suggest otherwise.

Although... she had already set up the tent, and rubbing it in would be so very, very easy...

No!

No. She would do the proper thing and not do what she so deeply wanted to do. The opportunity was right there, but she wasn't going to take it. If anything, it just went to show how commendable a mare she was, resisting temptation so well.

“Get back at her? Why, I was planning nothing of the sort,” Rarity lied. “She said so herself that she didn't need my help.”

Fluttershy sighed. She wasn't buying it. She walked over to the fire and started clearing up her books and the assortment of other items she'd left laying about, before untying her sleeping-bag from her saddlebags. Rarity watched Fluttershy as she passed by carrying her sleeping-bag in her mouth. Fluttershy didn't say anything as she passed, she didn't even look at her. She didn't see the point in talking if Rarity didn't want to meet her in the middle on a pony-to-pony level.

As Fluttershy passed by her, Rarity changed her stance from feeling dirty to feeling like nine piles of festering offal.

After Fluttershy had laid out her sleeping-bag inside, she went back to grab Rainbow Dash's. When she had finished laying that one out, she called out to Rainbow Dash, “The tents up, Rainbow. Everything's already set up, so just come in whenever you're ready. Oh, and um, whoever's out last, make sure you put out the fire.” She disappeared through the flaps leaving just Rarity and Rainbow Dash.

For a moment, Rainbow Dash didn't move, but after a time she got up and made her way over to the tent. She passed by Rarity who was still too busy feeling like a jerk to have moved yet, then passed through the flaps and into the tent.

Rarity, realizing she was the last one out now, magicked some dirt over the fire, then stumbled, downtrodden, through the dark over to her tent.



•  •  ❖  •  •



The thick canvas flap whipped closed, Rainbow Dash stepping inside and onto the end of her purple sleeping-bag. The small tent could barely accommodate the full length of the bag, sparing only a few inches on either side. Adjacent to Rainbow Dash's sleeping-bag was Fluttershy's, atop it, Fluttershy herself, lying there staring at the angled ceiling. The two cotton-padded sacks combined nearly took up every square-inch of floorspace, scrunching up against each other where they met in the center. Rainbow Dash zipped closed the tent flaps, making it almost pitch-black inside the tent, then pirouetted and fell back-first onto her puffy bag. The cushioning proved to be less cushy than expected as she smacked against the hard ground, the padding doing little to soften the blow.

“Oof!” she grunted.

Fluttershy, having been snapped out of her reverie, worriedly turned toward Rainbow Dash whose face was scrunched up in a combination of surprise and pain. “Are you alright?” Fluttershy couldn't make out Rainbow Dash's face in the dark, but she had been able hear the thud of Rainbow Dash hitting the ground.

One eye clenched in pain, Rainbow Dash winced as she took in a breath of air that didn't feel like it was all that fond of being breathed. “Yep. Just... not quite as fluffy I thought it would be.” she wheezed.

“I can barely even see you it's so dark in here,” said Fluttershy, through the dark.

“Yeah, and I can barely even feel anything... except pain,” Rainbow Dash groaned. She had a smile on her face, but there was no way for Fluttershy to see it.

“Are you sure you're alright?” Fluttershy inquired a second time.

“I'm fine, I was just kidding,” Rainbow Dash grinned.

A time passed where neither spoke, simply steeping in the eerie sensory deprivation, taking in the silence that gently fell upon the small space like the first snow of winter. Fluttershy was pretty sure she could make out Rainbow Dash's outline against her surroundings, but it was a fleeting effort, because every time she moved her eyes, the lines blurred and she had to concentrate to focus them down to a crisp edge again.

Rainbow Dash broke the silence. “Are you tired?”

Fluttershy noticed the outline of Rainbow Dash's head move. Her best guess was that she had turned it to face her. She assumed it must have been out of habit, because there wasn't much for her to look at. “Kind of. My legs are a little sore from all the walking.” Fluttershy said, slowly massaging one foreleg with the other. “You?”

“Same.”

Silence fell again. It felt fragile, like a paper-thin sheet of ice, and lasted for only a short time before it was shattered. This time, by Fluttershy.

“Rainbow?”

“Hmm?”

“Last night... on the airship...” Fluttershy started.

“...Yeah?”

“Um... Oh, it's nothing,” she said, dismissively.

Rainbow Dash sighed, only partially from exasperation. Fluttershy going into her shell like this was usually at least the littlest bit annoying to her, but it wasn't all bad. Not always.

Having been Fluttershy's friend for so long, Rainbow Dash knew just how many problems Fluttershy's timidness could sometimes cause her, but this wasn't one of those times as far as she could tell. This wasn't a case of Fluttershy taking the blame for something she didn't do because she was too scared to speak up, or not getting help when she needed it for the same reason, it was... well Rainbow Dash didn't know what it was because Fluttershy hadn't told her yet, but whatever it was, Rainbow Dash doubted it was anything like that.

And besides, Fluttershy being shy was what made her... well... her. It made her different. Maybe it didn't help Fluttershy stand out amongst other ponies, but it made her stand out to Rainbow Dash.

“Come on Fluttershy, use your words.” Rainbow Dash clumsily reached a hoof forward into the dark and prodded Fluttershy's chest. “I know you've got them in there. And they aren't all about bunnies and squirrels.”

Fluttershy smiled briefly, but it evaporated when it came time for her to spill the beans. “I was just going to say that last night, on the airship, when you came up and slept in my bed with me... it was, um... I was just going to ask... if you wanted to do that again, maybe.” Fluttershy grew sheepish near the end. Being unable to see the reaction on Rainbow Dash's face as she spoke drove her crazy, and her lack of a verbal response helped in no way either. “Only if you want to, though.”

Eventually, Rainbow Dash did respond, after what was, in truth, just a few seconds.

“Okay.” she said, causing a smile to sweep across Fluttershy's hidden features. Excluding the night before, if that even counted, this would be the first time Fluttershy had gotten Rainbow Dash to cuddle with her in years.

“Well come on, get over here,” Rainbow Dash invited.

Fluttershy eagerly closed the gap, wriggling right up beside Rainbow Dash. She reached a hoof over the midsection of the other pegasus's body and laid her head up against the soft fur of her chest, nuzzling into to it slightly. At this distance, she could make out a lot more detail than before, and looking up at Rainbow Dash's face, she could see a small smile on it.

Rainbow Dash reciprocated the snuggle with a hoof under Fluttershy's neck, giving a gentle squeeze, and letting out a contented sigh. “So,” she began. “is this how it's gonna be every night?” 

“It doesn't have to be if you don't want to,” Fluttershy said.

“I didn't say that,” Rainbow Dash said, giving another little squeeze.

For a change, Fluttershy was actually thankful for Rainbow Dash's inability to accomplish small tasks like remembering a tent. In fact, she wasn't even sure why she had told her to bring one in the first place. With the two of them sharing a tent, they wouldn't have as much weight to carry. Knowing now though that Rainbow Dash didn't have a tent, Fluttershy decided that she would be the one to carry it tomorrow.

Fluttershy's breathing slowed down to a leisurely stroll as she continued to nuzzle into the silky fur of Rainbow Dash's neck. She had always had the softest fur of any pony Fluttershy had ever known, much softer than what most ponies would have expected from the rough-and-tumble pony. It was her mane that gave them that idea more than anything else, but even Rainbow Dash's scratchy-looking  mane wasn't unpleasant to the touch.

“This is nice,” Fluttershy hummed.

“Mhmm,” Rainbow Dash exhaled. “But y'know, most ponies sleep in sleeping-bags and not on them. Although I'm not sure either of these bags could fit two ponies at once.”

“This is better.” Fluttershy said, gripping more tightly onto Rainbow Dash as if to keep her from abandoning her for the warmth of a sleeping-bag.

Rainbow Dash yawned, laughing at the same time. “Can't argue with that.” She could have fallen asleep right then and there if not for Fluttershy yanking her back toward consciousness when she spoke again.

“I remember when we were little and would have sleep-overs at my house,” Fluttershy reminisced. It was hard for her to not think about her fillyhood with Rainbow Dash when she was around her. Meeting Rainbow Dash had been the first time in her life that things had started looking up for her. “I also remember that every time we went to sleep, you would be the one to suggest we cuddle.”

Rainbow Dash almost choked. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on there. Cuddle? Who said anything about cuddling?” Rainbow Dash did not cuddle. In fact, there was only one thing more lame than cuddling, and that was snuggling. And they certainty weren't doing that. “I never once suggested that we cuddle. And we're not cuddling right now, either.”

Fluttershy looked up at Rainbow Dash in confusion. “Then what do you call it?” 

“This is... um.” It was a good question. What would she call it? “This is... close-sleeping...”

Fluttershy went along with Rainbow Dash's terminology despite it making her want to roll her eyes. She smiled. “Still, you were one who always wanted to 'close-sleep.'” 

“Well... yeah,” Rainbow Dash admitted. “So what? There's nothing wrong with that!” she added defensively.

“Then why did we stop?”

Rainbow Dash didn't like where this was going. This wasn't the first time Fluttershy had brought this up, and it wasn't the first time Rainbow Dash had hoped it would be the last. Though it had been a long time since it had last come up.“What do you mean?”

“Why did we stop?” Fluttershy repeated. “One of the days when we had a sleep-over you just didn't want to cuddle anymore, and then a little while after that, you stopped coming over to my house altogether.” Fluttershy looked pleadingly into Rainbow Dash's eyes. “Why?”

Rainbow Dash's eyes had adjusted to the darkness by this point, and through it, she could see quite clearly the look she was receiving. “Well... um. There's a reason for that, but it's kind of... complicated.”

“What is it?” Fluttershy asked.

“Umm... Do you think it could wait til morning? I don't mean to blow you off or anything, but could we get some sleep first? It could take a while.”

Disheartened, Fluttershy looked down, and away from Rainbow Dash's face. The warmth emanating from Rainbow Dash's body suddenly didn't feel quite so warm.

“Hey, come on, I promise I'll tell you in the morning.”

Fluttershy didn't look up. “Pinkie promise?”

Rainbow Dash went through the motions, accidentally lightly bonking Fluttershy in the nose in the process. “Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”  

Fluttershy rubbed her nose. “Okay,” she conceded.

Rainbow Dash let her head roll back, her eyes closing. “First thing in the morning,” she yawned. “I promise.” She gave Fluttershy one last squeeze, then angled her head down so that she could nuzzle her cheek into Fluttershy's voluminous mane.

Fluttershy happily nuzzled back. Because first thing in the morning she would get the answer to her question. A question she'd wondered about for years but had been too afraid to ask. From the very beginning it had made her doubt their entire friendship and whether or not she and Rainbow Dash were actually as close as she thought they were, but that would all be put to rest. Because first thing in the morning she would get her answer and it would sort everything out... she hoped.

For the time being, she would just try to not think about it. Instead, she focused on the rhythmic breathing of the pony beside her, and the pleasant, comforting feeling that came with having somepony else be close to. She hoped they would do it again, make a habit out of it like before. But for now she would just enjoy it while it lasted.

Soon Fluttershy felt sleep fast-approaching, so she closed her eyes and did her best to meet it halfway.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Slowly, quietly, Rainbow Dash slipped out of Fluttershy's tenuous hold, the yellow pegasus's hoof falling limply off her body. The dozing Fluttershy looked as peaceful as could be as she lay there with her eyes closed and mane strewn about, but that didn't stop her from being the sole source of a disorienting amount of anxiety for Rainbow Dash.

With great care, she unzipped the tent, then passed through the flaps. The outside world greeted her with a blast of chilly, morning air, and a raucous of far too many simultaneous birdsongs.

The singing had started as a small choir composing of only the earliest of risers, their gentle, repeating tunes a light nudge for Rainbow Dash to get up and start her day, but before long, more joined in, followed by more still until it had escalated into a whole symphony, with every member playing on a different page.

Somehow, through the tumultuous racket, Fluttershy continued to sleep. It was true that the animal caretaker's abode was home to a large number of birds, and that probably had something to do with it, but even with this knowledge, Rainbow Dash was still totally baffled by the yellow mare's sustained unconsciousness.

Even as the birds shouted over one another, Rainbow Dash's thoughts drifted away from the noise and toward her current problem: last night she had promised—Pinkie promised—to tell Fluttershy a secret that she'd kept from her since they were fillies. A secret that could change everything if Fluttershy ever found out about it.

But she didn't have a way out of it, as far as she could tell. Fluttershy had been dead-set on finding out the night before, and it was unlikely she'd had a change of heart in the short time since then, which realistically left Rainbow Dash with one choice:

She was going to have to lie.

And with the possibility of Fluttershy waking up any minute now looming, she would need to think of a convincing one and make it quick.

She walked out into the center of the campsite and sat down next to the burnt-out fire. As the minutes passed, she poked at the charred remains, trying to think of anything that both sounded reasonable, and didn't make her sound like a jerk or an idiot.

After a little while, poking the ashes got boring, so Rainbow Dash started pacing around the fire, as she tried to think. Over and over, she cast her line out into the ether, but the ideas just weren't biting.

It wasn't as if this was the first time Fluttershy had asked her about that particular time from their past, but normally when Fluttershy brought it up, Rainbow Dash just brushed it off without really giving her an answer. Then they would both forget about it for a while, and Rainbow Dash wouldn't have to think about it for another few months or, even better, years.

She never had to worry about Fluttershy pressing too hard for an answer either, because that went against rule one of being Fluttershy, which was to not be a bother.

Rainbow Dash couldn't help but think that maybe pushing Fluttershy toward being more assertive wasn't such a good thing after all.

“Ugh... I just had to go and ignore her...” she muttered, in regard to her fillyhood with Fluttershy. “And why now?” she asked aloud, then realized that it was a stupid question. It was because they had slept in a way that looked to the untrained eye like cuddling—but most certainly wasn't cuddling—the previous night.

“I should have just said 'no',” she remarked, rubbing a hoof between her eyes.

“No, that wouldn't have worked.” She sat down and planted her forehead in her hooves. “She still would have wanted to know why we don't cud—close-sleep anymore. Maybe even more than she does now.”

The morning sun's light gleamed in the damp morning air as it fractured through the gaps in the foliage, one shard catching Rainbow Dash's eye, a reminder to her that time was still ticking and she still didn't know what she was going to tell Fluttershy. She glanced about frantically. There had to be something! It was then that an idea struck her.

“Aha!” she nearly shouted but managed to catch herself. It was a bit of a last-ditch effort and she didn't really love the idea all that much... or at all, but maybe it was just crazy enough to work. She'd managed to keep her secret from Fluttershy for this long, and if this plan worked, she would keep it for a little longer still. With a grin like a madmare, she threw caution to the wind and trotted in the direction of Rarity's tent.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Rainbow Dash barged into Rarity's tent as fast as a pony cold barge through an opening sealed by a zipper, and was surprised to see that Rarity was actually awake, sitting in the middle of her tent, applying eyeshadow. “Hey Rarity! Sleep well? Good.” She paused for a second. “Are you putting on eyeliner? Actually, never mind. That doesn't matter right now.” Rainbow Dash forced herself to slow down. She wasn't going to get anywhere if she was talking faster than her brain was working. She huffed a sigh and then began again. “Okay, listen, I've got a bit of a problem on my hooves, and basically what I need right now is for you to tell me what to do.”

Rarity looked askance at her new guest over the small mirror she was levitating in front of her face, mildly surprised to see her talking to her at all, but mostly just peeved that she had come in without any warning. “It's rude to enter a private room without first asking permission, Rainbow Dash” Rarity chided, then she muttered under her breath with far less conviction, “And you should also know the difference between eyeliner and eyeshadow by now.”

“I'll work on that.” Rainbow Dash said, paying little heed to the prissy unicorn's remark. “Anyway, last night, me and Fluttershy were talking and she asked me something, and I Pinkie promised to tell her in the morning, and now it's morning and I don't want to that thing... So what do I do? I lie right? Because I'm pretty sure that's what I should do.”

Rarity's facial features curled into a confused countenance at the cyan mare's jabberings. “Rainbow darling, I wasn't able to follow what you said in the slightest.”

Rainbow Dash irritably re-relayed the information as clearly as she could. This was wasting valuable time. “Last night Fluttershy asked me a question. I promised to give her an answer. I don't want to give her an answer. What do I do!?”

“You tell her the truth, anyway?” Rarity suggested, unsure still of exactly what Rainbow Dash was asking her. “You still haven't told me anything coherent, so forgive me if my answer is lacking.”

“I don't want to tell her the truth, that's the problem!”

“So you would rather break a promise you made to a friend? Also, I must say I'm a little surprised you're not still upset with me about last night.”

“What, you mean the thing with the tent? Forget about it, I'm over that now. But if you want to think of this as making it up to me, then go ahead. And let's try to stay focused on solving my problem for now.” Rainbow Dash pushed aside one of the flap doors to make sure that Fluttershy hadn't woken up yet. She hadn't. Rainbow Dash let go of the flap and it swished back into place.

“Very well.” Rarity said after a moment of contemplation, putting down her eyeshadow palette and mirror off to the side. “But before I can be of any use to you at all, I will need a little more context.”

Rainbow Dash sat down. It didn't look like this was going to be as much of an in-and-out visit as she would have liked it to be. “What more could you possibly need to know?”

“Well... everything that's relevant preferably, but why don't we just start with what exactly it is you don't want to tell Fluttershy.”

“Uh...” Rainbow Dash shifted uncomfortably. “I don't want to tell you either.”

“Okay...” Rarity deadpanned. “What was it that she asked you, then?”

Rainbow Dash bit her lip. “Ehhhhhhhhhhh...”

Rarity ran a hoof down her face. “Rainbow, how exactly do you expect me to help if you won't tell me anything?”

“Just... ask a different question. Those one's aren't important. Or just use your freaky unicorn powers to read my mind or something, I dunno.”

Rarity chuckled. “Even if I could read minds, I'm not sure I'd want to look into yours.”

“Questions, Rarity! Focus!”

“Fine, fine. Um... How about...” Rarity grasped for anything that might get the cyan pegasus to give her more information. If Rainbow Dash wasn't going to give Rarity what she wanted intentionally, then Rarity was just going to have to piece it together using what she would give her. She rested her chin on her hoof as she thought, then sprung up when a question occurred to her. “What lead up to Fluttershy asking you this oh-so-terrible question?”

Rainbow Dash sighed defeatedly. She wasn't loving this question either, but they weren't going to get anywhere if she didn't give Rarity something to work with. “Well... we were just talking, basically. Then Fluttershy wanted to know if we could sleep next to each other like we did the night before... and... um... then...” Each word Rainbow Dash spoke felt like taking a step in a minefield, and by the time she had finished, she was pretty sure she had stepped on a quite a few mines.

Rarity looked at Rainbow Dash with a raised brow. “Hold on, what do you mean by 'sleep next to each other'?” she said suspiciously. “And for that matter, what do you mean by 'the night before'? The night before we were on the airship and I distinctly remember you sleeping in your own bed.”

Rainbow Dash winced. She had definitely made a few missteps. She gave a pained laugh. “Ehehe... yeah... about that...” She looked at her hooves, but they didn't know what to say either. “I mean, I started the night in my bed...” Rainbow Dash trailed off, but Rarity was quick to pick up where she left off.

“And then ended it in Fluttershy's?”

“Pretty much.” Rainbow Dash admitted, and, to ward off any erroneous assumptions of Rarity's part, quickly added, “But, before you even ask, nothing happened. Fluttershy was having a nightmare, so I went up to her bunk.”

Rarity grinned a knowing grin that said everything she had to say before she said it. “Oh come on now, Rainbow Dash. If nothing happened, then why are you being so evasive with your answers? Do you really expect me to believe you when you won't give me a single straight answer?” Rarity's grin widened. “Do you want to know what I think?”

“Not really,” Rainbow Dash said, but Rarity continued unabated.

“I think there's something going on between you two that you aren't telling me about.”

“Well there's not!” Rainbow Dash shouted defensively.

“Then tell me exactly what happened, and don't you leave out a single detail!” Rarity demanded, even going so far as to stomp a hoof into her sleeping bag which negated any sound it might have made.

“Fine! We snuggled alright!? It's super lame, but that's what we did. Last night and the night before.” Rainbow Dash said, lowering her face in shame. “On the airship it was mostly just me snuggling Fluttershy because she was having a nightmare, and me being there seemed to make it go away. Then last night, Fluttershy asked if we could do it again. That time it was both of us sort of snuggling each other.” Rainbow Dash's delivery was so dramatic that Rarity half-suspected the pegasus of mocking her, the unicorn having her in dramatic streak.

Pushing aside that thought, Rarity took a second to let everything sink in, and when it did, she rolled her eyes. Though she disagreed with Rainbow Dash that everything needed to be rated on a scale of lame to awesome, right now she just wanted to get the facts out in the open. “And the question Fluttershy asked you...?”

Rainbow Dash slouched down in shame for having completely de-awesome-ified her name. “She wanted to know why we never snuggle anymore. We used to all the time, back when we were fillies. We would have sleep-overs, at 'Shy's house mostly, and snuggle when we did, but eventually we stopped having sleep-overs, and she wanted to know why. Actually I think she called it cuddling, but it's still lame no matter what you call it, which means that I'm lame!” She collapsed to the floor in self-pity, sticking out her bottom lip.

“Would you shut up about your perceived lameness!? Why? Why did you stop having sleep-overs? And why is it such a big deal?”

Rainbow Dash was uncharacteristically silent. She stared quietly off to the left.

“You're not shutting up on me now, Missy! Tell me why you stopped having sleep-overs!” Rarity ordered.

The air hardened as Rainbow Dash took in a tense breath. She closed her eyes, and then softly muttered. “Because... I used to have a crush on Fluttershy.”



•  •  ❖  •  •



Fluttershy woke with a slight pain in her head. She rubbed her eyes then opened them. At first, she was confused to find that she hadn't woken up in her bed back in Ponyville, but it quickly wore off when she realized where she was. She turned onto her side to wish a good morning to Rainbow Dash but was disappointed when she found an empty spot in her place. She sat up and rubbed her eyes again. With nothing else to do inside the canvas shelter, Fluttershy got up and went outside.

Upon crossing through the threshold to the outside, Fluttershy was greeted by an utterly vacant campsite, neither Rarity nor Rainbow Dash were visible in the immediate vicinity. Fear began to creep up her neck and bat at the back of her mind, but it was short lived. She assured herself that everything was probably fine and that it was a little early to start panicking.  Rarity was probably still sleeping, and maybe Rainbow Dash had gone off to get water to make a nice oatmeal breakfast.

Fluttershy began toward her supplies to see if the cooking-pot was where it had been left the night before, but stopped when she heard what sounded like talking coming from Rarity's tent, not regular everyday conversation either, but a heated exchange of words.

Curious, Fluttershy went to investigate.



•  •  ❖  •  •



“You had a crush on Fluttershy, as in, you don't anymore,” Rarity said disbelievingly. Rainbow Dash sat just in front of her, staring down at her hooves.

“Mhmm.”

“So this resurgence of snuggling isn't because you like Fluttershy? Romantically, I mean.”

“Of course not!” Finding it impossible to remain sitting while being accused of something so outlandish, Rainbow Dash got to her hooves. “Friends snuggle all the time! It doesn't mean that they like each other!”

“I think you'll find that they don't.” Rarity said, incredulously, slightly caught off-guard by Rainbow Dash's rejuvenated defensiveness.

“Sure they do.”

Rarity couldn't tell if Rainbow Dash really believed what she was saying or not, but she knew just the way to prove her wrong. “Snuggle me then.”

“What!?” Rainbow Dash balked, taking a half step back. 

“Is there a problem? We're friends aren't we? I think a little platonic snuggle session would do us well. Now get over here, you.”

“No.” Rainbow Dash said staunchly.

“Why not? You snuggled with Fluttershy.”

“Because me and 'Shy are like best friends. Me and you, we're just... regular friends. And we're kind of in the middle of something right now, so there's that too.”

“Oh, yes, how silly of me.” Rarity feigned. “That makes perfect sense.”

Rainbow Dash wasn't a stranger to sarcasm, but she played along anyway. “Yeah, it does.”

“I have just one question though: would you consider you and Applejack to be best friends also?”

Rainbow Dash groaned. She knew where this was going. “Well... yeah probably. But I already know what you're going to ask me next and the answer is no. There's no way me and Applejack would ever snuggle. We're just not that kind of friends.”

“Not what kind of friends? Not marefriends?”

“Ugh! I'm out of here! You're just... You're no help at all!” Rainbow Dash turned around and made for the exit. She continued her rant as she passed through the already unzipped flaps. “I came in here because I thought that maybe you could—” Rainbow Dash's words caught in her throat.

Directly in front of her was Fluttershy, standing with her head turned down and slightly to one side, the one pony she had meant to be keeping an eye out for, but had obviously forgotten about. The realization that she had heard everything that had just been said hit her like a tidal wave of brick walls. Fluttershy couldn't quite bring herself to look directly at Rainbow Dash, and her expression was that of unease covered in a growing red blush.

“You... heard that?” Rainbow Dash forced out through the block in her throat.

Fluttershy draped her mane in front of her face. All she could do to respond was nod slightly. Simply having Rainbow Dash talk to her made the blush on her face spread further and practically glow with intensity.

Rainbow Dash wanted to ask her how long she had been listening but couldn't get anything more to come out. Her brain had all but shut down upon seeing Fluttershy and knowing that she knew her secret. It was like living through the best young fliers competition all over again, and again, and again, all at the same time, the same nervousness and worry compounded a thousand times over.

After a few very, very long seconds, Fluttershy felt a gush of wind that caused her mane to blow into her face and the leaves at her hooves to dance around. When she looked up, Rainbow Dash was gone.
> Tooth and Claw
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

An excerpt from The Ultimate Expeditioner's Handbook:

Some ponies argue that true success on an expedition isn't achieved by finding that which you had set out to, but by finding that which defies expectation.

It is our opinion that this fortune cookie style advice is rubbish.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Standing before her, with cheeks burning like molten metal and pupils shrunken to pinpricks, was a pegasus Rarity hadn't seen before.

Sure, it may have looked like Fluttershy, but the Fluttershy Rarity knew had never been quite as offputting to look at as this Fluttershy was right now. Her eyes were wide and immovably fixed to a slightly downcast angle, and she looked profoundly worried.

Clearly something was going on in Fluttershy’s head. That much Rarity knew. And, while she couldn't know for sure exactly what Fluttershy might have been thinking, given recent events, she felt she could make an educated guess.

“Fluttershy…?”

Rarity’s voice carried a mildly concerned tone. She tilted her head to one side and stepped closer to her friend.

“Fluttershy, are you… ehm…” she bumbled, unable to think of anything worth being said. Eventually she settled with just stating the obvious. “You look flustered.”

Fluttershy didn’t respond, but not for a lack of effort. She just couldn’t do it. Her mouth cracked open, but, despite repeated efforts, she couldn’t cobble together even the beginnings of a sentence, leaving her to stand there in silence with her mane draped over a large portion of her burning face.

The possibility that Fluttershy hadn’t heard her at all was more than just a passing thought in Rarity’s mind as she waited for a response, and with each passing second, she grew more confident that she wasn’t going to get one.

The way Fluttershy was staring at nothing, the way she hadn’t moved since Rainbow Dash had fled to who-knew-where, the way her face was painted in a blush so intense it looked like her cheeks were about to combust, Rarity took it all as fairly conclusive evidence that Fluttershy was sojourning in someplace other than reality at present.

Though, after a minute, Fluttershy did do something: She fell to her haunches, then continued to stare off at nothing, resuming her empty-headed demeanor from before.

Simply mustering the motor skills necessary for sitting down was just about the only physical thing Fluttershy could manage at the moment. But inside her head was a whole different story. Dozens of thoughts warred against each other, and the resulting chaos made it impossible for Fluttershy to make out what each thought was and what they were even fighting for.

“Well then,” Rarity began, still at a loss for what to do and uncertain of how to feel about being at least a tiny bit responsible for Fluttershy's current state. “Seeing as your hooves are full at the moment with taking in everything you just heard... um... how about I just go ahead and prepare us a little breakfast?" she said, giving her best attempt at a genuine smile. "Sound good?”

In reality Rarity just wanted an excuse to not be around Fluttershy until the pegasus had had enough time to gather her thoughts and could speak again. It wasn't that she didn't want to be there for Fluttershy, she really did, but the situation was an uncomfortable, awkward mess and she needed some time to think things over, just as much as Fluttershy did, lest she say something foolish and make things dramatically worse.

Rarity was beyond expecting a response by this point, so without waiting for one, she went on to make breakfast, leaving Fluttershy to her thoughts.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Rarity clambered through the thick, tangled underbrush, cooking pot within her magical hold, as she her way to the river to collect a potful of water. She mused about what she should do with Fluttershy, and for that matter, Rainbow Dash as she weaved between trees and narrowly avoided tripping over unearthed roots. It wasn’t a long walk from the campsite to the river, but Rarity was finding that the path of least distance between the two locations was by no means the path of least resistance.

The path she had chosen was nothing short of untraversable, a wall of grass, bushes and weeds that would have made a suitable defense for a castle. Rarity, however, didn’t plan on turning back just because something like practical decision-making dictated it. No, Rarity wasn’t one to give up, even when it made the most sense. There was seeing her first intuition through to the end that was quite satisfying. As if refusing to give 
in to the pressure was proof that idea wasn't so bad to begin with. Was it stupid? Maybe, but it would take a lot more than the debatable stupidity of her plan for Rarity to change course now. However, If she wanted to make it to the river without tripping and falling or twisting an ankle, she would need to focus her attention on the present despite her desire to focus it on the more gossipy recent events.

Oh, but what a turn of events they were! Rainbow Dash, allegedly having once had a crush on Fluttershy, then Fluttershy finding out about those feelings Rainbow Dash allegedly once had for her, in addition to the many loose ends that needed tying up. She almost felt guilty about the amount of meddling she was planning on doing... Almost.

There was one loose end in particular though that captured Rarity’s curiosity more than the rest. Now that she had had a little time to think about each of Rainbow Dash’s responses, one of them really hadn’t made all that much sense… at least, not on its own it didn’t: It was why she had stopped having sleep-overs with Fluttershy. Rainbow Dash had claimed that her reason for stopping was because she had had a crush on Fluttershy, but that didn’t even answer the question. As far as Rarity was concerned, it only raised more.

At the time, she had been too caught up in her incredulity at Rainbow Dash’s claim of no longer having a crush on Fluttershy, considering how she had just admitted to snuggling with her for two nights in a row. But that one non-answer Rainbow Dash had given her had really begun to bug her. Her whole conversation had been nothing short of infuriating, with the way Rainbow Dash would only give her half-answers of absolutely no lucidity whatsoever. But Rarity was going to get those answers, it was just a question of when. Not that it would be hard; Rainbow Dash seemed to really open up as soon as she was accused of something untrue. Rarity made a mental note to remember that trick in the future.

Rarity hiked her hooves up high with each step to keep them from being ensnared by the mess of long grasses and overgrown weeds as she carried on through the accursed landscape. She was beginning to believe its very existence was solely to serve as a punishment designed specifically for her as a result of some unknown transgression she had committed in a previous life, because nothing so absolutely wicked and unpleasant could have arisen by mere happenstance. Every step was greeted by thorn-bushes scraping at her sides, every hooffall welcomed by more and more burrs clinging to her fur. It was, by every stretch of the imagination, the worst possible thing, but even the worst possible thing wasn’t enough to stop Rarity as she carried on through the thick of it until the plant-life thinned and she could walk comfortably again.

Eventually she happened upon a fallen tree lying across her path. She stepped up onto the tree, then back down onto the ground on the other side, hearing a wet squish when she touched down. She looked down in dismay at the sight of one of her legs halfway buried in mud so dark in colour that it almost appeared black.

“Ewwww!”

A moment later, a pungent stench that smelled like an amalgamation of week-old compost and rotten fish wafted up into Rarity’s nose.

“Ewewewewewew!”

She attempted to retract her hoof from the stinking mess, but the action only served to create a vacuum in the empty space, the force pulling her leg right back down. Rarity pulled again but was met with the same results. Obviously stuck, she took a moment to evaluate her surroundings and the best course of action to free herself.

The muddy terrain Rarity found herself entrapped by extended only a few feet in front of her, but wound off as far as she could see to her left and right. That, and the way the land dipped slightly where the mud began then rose back up where it ended, lead Rarity to believe that the area had once flowed with water, but for whatever reason all that remained of it now was a smelly groove in the earth.

These deductions did nothing to put Rarity's mind at as ease. In fact, they did quite the opposite, because she now knew the odor that smelled so strongly of rotting fish almost certainly was rotting fish, and the undertone of compost probably wasn’t too far off from reality either.

Rarity grunted from exertion as she pulled again, but, if anything, pulling appeared to just make things worse when her hoof sunk back down to, at the very least, the same depth it was at before. Her shoulder was starting to ache from the unusual position she was forced to assume, and her hind legs weren’t fairing much better. She let out a surly groan. “Lovely…”

After hooking the pot she had been levitating on a broken tree limb so she could better focus on her current predicament, Rarity looked around to see if her surroundings could provide her with any aid. Immediately she noticed the fallen tree just behind her. It occurred to her that, if she laid her body across it, the log could act as a fulcrum and provide her with the leverage she needed to extricate her hoof.

She stepped her hind legs back over the log, rested her abdomen on the trunk, then leaned back, putting all of her bodily strength into the action. Slowly, she felt her hoof begin to break free. She twisted it in one direction, then the other, speeding up the process of slowly inching her hoof out of its wet, earthen confines. Her joints ached under the strain, and she was finding it increasingly difficult to keep up her strength, but she continued pulling until she felt air rush into the cavity as the airtight seal around her leg broke. Her hoof quickly slipped out of its squishy prison with little resistance, producing a wet slurping sound as it did.

With no counter-force pulling back on her anymore, Rarity stumbled backward before capsizing and landing flat on her back. Her head forcefully impacted the forgiving forest floor, leaving a dent in the soil, but her head, thankfully, unscathed.

Lying there, unmoving, her mane splayed out every which way, Rarity took a moment to appreciate the fact that she was free. After that moment passed she took several more to despise everything else.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Time seemed to stand still for Fluttershy as she sat in front of Rarity’s tent, staring off at nothing. Though time could have been doing back-flips for all Fluttershy cared because she was wholly focused on something else at the moment: a thought she repeated in her head over and over, to no forward progress or clarity.

Rainbow Dash used to have a crush... on her?

The words all made sense on their own. And when put together they formed a meaning that Fluttershy could understand. But when she asked her brain to formulate an opinion on that meaning—to come up with a thought, a feeling, anything at all—it completely and wholeheartedly did nothing, and it did it very well. She had drawn blanks before, but this was a whole new level entirely.

Eventually, after several minutes of failing to comprehend what she now knew, Fluttershy gave up on trying to coax an opinion out of herself, and decided instead to manually break down the problem into more manageable pieces, starting with the most basic questions. The first being: Why?

That line of thought promptly hit a wall. Granted, the question wasn’t very specific, but nonetheless she moved on, shifting her thoughts to: When?

Surely a question as simple as that couldn’t provide her with too much trouble. Fluttershy reasoned that, If anything, she ought to be able to handle a two dimensional time-line.

She knew, from what she had overheard, that it must have started some time when they were in flight school together, and lasted until... well that part she didn’t know. Naturally she was inclined to think that it must have ended when her and Rainbow Dash stopped spending time together. But hearing what she just had, it sounded like it was the other way around. Which meant that the reason for Rainbow Dash spending less time with her was because... she had a crush on her? 

Fluttershy didn’t understand. None of it made any sense to her. Why would...? If Rainbow Dash... Why...?

Overwhelmed to the point of feeling like she couldn’t remember her own name if she needed to, Fluttershy wanted nothing more than to lie down in light of current events. So she did. She rolled back on her spine until her head rested on a cushion of grass, her eyes confronted with the expansive sky above her, the vastness of which was reined in only by a frame of trees whose deep teal leaves blotched out the blue, creating a scene that Fluttershy was all too willing to lose herself in.

She wished she could push her questions out into that endless sky, let them drift up and away from her so that she could think straight for even just one minute. One minute where she could just stop worrying. The trees all around her never had to worry. They took what the world gave them for better or for worse, because they didn’t have a choice in the matter. Right now they were swaying gently in the wind because that was what the wind wanted and if the trees didn’t like it, then tough. They never had to make choices. Choices were made for them. They never had to think, because what did it matter? Trees didn’t have the perfect lives, but they sure had easy lives. She wished she could be—

No. Now she was just being silly.

For the moment, she decided, she would just lie there. She wouldn’t think about the trees, or the sky, or the thing she probably shouldn’t even list to make sure she didn’t start thinking about it again. Her subconscious could concern itself with those if it wanted to, but right now, Fluttershy felt, wasn’t a time for thinking. Right now was a time for being, and nothing more.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Rarity held out her blackened, mud-covered hoof, drawing her head back as far away from it as her body would permit. It stunk of the putrefaction of a thousand fish, hundreds upon hundreds of plants, a dozen or so small mammals, uncountably many insects, a handful of gastropods and other molluscs, most likely a few reptilians, and quite possibly a bird or two. Rarity cringed when the ripe stench settled in the back of her throat, almost gagging when it mixed into her saliva. She took a step back as if attempting to walk away from her own limb. With a deep scowl on her face, she turned her head to the sky, and addressed it.

“Nature,” she said with an exasperated sigh, “why do you hate me?”

She looked back at the hoof for a moment, huffed indignantly, then dropped it back down to the ground. She allowed herself the few seconds she needed to compose herself, then, without further commotion, picked up the pot hanging patiently on the broken tree limb and continued on toward the river, holding her head up high like the hell of a mare she was, in spite of the displeasure she felt. If nature wanted her to be unhappy—which was what seemed to be the case—then congratulations to it; it had succeeded. But Rarity would be damned if she was going to give it the gratification of seeing her that way. 



•  •  ❖  •  •



Not overly far away, perched near the top of a giant sequoia, Rainbow Dash gnawed on the end of her hoof, a nervous habit of hers she hadn’t realized she still had.

“What was I thinking!? Of course talking to Rarity would lead to her screwing everything up!” Rainbow Dash ranted, gritting her teeth and turning to face the trunk of the tree. Her chest felt like it was being pumped full of sweltering hot air as the anger inside her rose. Before long she reached her limit and was forced to let some of that hot air out by throwing a rage-filled punch at the thick trunk of the sequoia. It impacted with a dull crack that sent vibrations all the way up her foreleg and left her with a tingling in her hoof. “It’s all her fault! I know it is!” She held her hoof there as the grimace on her face slowly faded into a frown and the majority of the rage within her dissipated. She hung her head, letting her hoof slide down the trunk and her body droop like a wet piece of paper strewn over a branch. Slowly, she leaned forward until the crown of her head rested against the rough, bark exterior of the tree. “Somehow...”



•  •  ❖  •  •



Rarity ducked under a branch and emerged out of the brush onto a narrow, sandy shoreline. She trotted into the first few feet of the river where the water was shallow and began washing the mud off of her leg as best she could, frowning at the stained fur it left behind. Then she proceeded to remove the garden she had collected in her mane and tail.  Her morning hadn’t been spectacular thus far, but maybe a little breakfast would be just the thing she needed to make it bearable.

Rarity had a rule about mornings, heedless of the day or circumstances, that she always upheld if at all possible, and it was to never let anything bad happen before breakfast. It was her opinion that no good day ever started with something bad happening before breakfast. She recognized that this opinion was probably based in superstition and reinforced by cherry-picked evidence, but at the end of the day it was the result she cared about, and living by her breakfast-above-all-else creed resulted in her enjoying far better life than otherwise.

Unfortunately, today broke that rule, which meant the best she could hope for was something bearable.

Rarity scooped up a potful of water. The thought of warm oatmeal was enough to make her smile, even if just a little bit. Sure, it was too late to save the day from being bad, but at least she had something to look forward to. Perhaps she would even find some wild berries to add to the oatmeal on her way back. She remembered seeing some earlier, but couldn’t quite remember where.

Rarity never got the chance to properly call up the memory when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of something moving through the tall bushes on the far side of the river. The figure was large and grey, but she saw little else before it disappeared from view. Whatever it was, it was bigger than a pony and by no small amount either.

Rarity kept her attention trained on the area the creature had appeared in, but saw nothing. No shaking branches, no shadows, no anything. And on top of that, it was completely quiet. Much too quiet for her liking. Silence wasn’t something an animal that size did by mistake. It was trying to be quiet. And Rarity had no doubt in her mind about why it would want to do that: It was hunting.

The preemptive adrenaline release suggested her body agreed with her assessment, her alertness and reflexes shooting through the roof.

The predator remained elusive, but Rarity didn’t need to see it to know it was after her. In fact, she didn’t really want a good look. She had what she’d come for, so all she had to do was simply return to camp, and hope that there truly was safety in numbers.

She backed away slowly at first, cautiously watching for movement with a vigilant eye. When no threat presented itself, she turned around to make the jaunt back. To her dismay, turning around put her face-to-face with what she assumed was a friend of grey figure in the bushes, and a good look of it she most certainly got.



•  •  ❖  •  •



A terror-filled scream ripped through the sky above the trees. Rainbow Dash, slouched near the top of the giant sequoia, jolted up at the sound, her head raising into the air like a meerkat.

“Rarity!?” she called out as she frantically darted her eyes across the landscape.

She heard another scream followed by her name being called, though it was muffled by the leaves and from the distance it had traveled to get to her.

Rainbow Dash launched herself off the tree limb and made in the direction of the screaming Rarity. “I’m coming Rarity!”

Even with Rarity’s life presumably in peril—and by Celestia if she was just throwing a fit over stepping in something gross, Rainbow Dash was going to kill—even so Rainbow Dash couldn’t help but spare a few glances at the opening in the trees where they had made camp as she soared overhead. Her last glance was met with what she was really looking for, the sight of Fluttershy, now also responding to the call for help. Rainbow Dash watched as she ran up to the tree line, but stop short of entering, turning in place and looking around worriedly. It crossed Rainbow Dash’s mind that maybe she was looking for her, but right now… she just… couldn’t. She couldn’t go down there, not with everything Fluttershy now knew and especially not now while Rarity was in danger. She had to keep moving, even if that meant leaving Fluttershy in a panic.

Rainbow Dash had already passed over the camp by the time she heard Rarity call out her name again.

“Hold on!” Rainbow Dash shouted back.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Rarity ran, darting, leaping, and panting through the trees. Just behind her, thick, black claws ripped up twigs and leaves from the ground and threw them into the air. They belonged to a creature which shared traits with both reptiles and mammals. It had the head, torso, and legs of a wolf, but the heavy, muscular tail of an lizard. The majority of its body was covered in a coat of grey fur, aside from three rows of black, spiny scales which ran the full length of the creature’s back and onto its serpentine tail. From the topside of its wolf-like snout sprouted a streak of hard, armoured, black scales, starting at the end of its nose, and coming to a point between its piercing, snake eyes—A fearsome tatzeldrake, though Rarity had no way of knowing that’s what it was.

A grey blur darted through the woods to Rarity's left, and another to her right. They were surrounding her. The only option she had was to to continue forward and hope she could keep up her pace. All around her came hissing and snarling and a strange attempt at barking. Rarity could see the two tatzeldrakes to her sides and knew of the one behind her, but there must have been three or even four more on top of that just from what she could hear.

“Help!” she screamed.

Why hadn’t Rainbow Dash found her yet? It felt like she had been running for ages, and she wasn’t sure she could keep it up for much longer.

Ahead, the ground appeared to drop off into some kind of ravine. As Rarity got closer, the gravelly, boulder-ridden slope of the far side of the ravine came into view. It was no gentle slope by any means, but Rarity hazarded a guess that she could make her way down safely if she had to. Not that she had any other choice.

Rarity wasted no time hesitating when she got to the edge. She threw herself over, immediately beginning her descent. She slid and stumbled, but kept her footing the whole way down until she found herself at the bottom. She turned and ran along the length of the ravine, the tatzeldrakes only now making their way down the slope, having briefly stopped to assess the safety of doing so.

Rarity's breathing was asthmatically heavy by this point. She took in an especially large breath so she could let out another call for help. “Somepony help!”

The ravine petered out into normal, flat, forested ground again, the only difference about this part of the forest being that it was slightly more open, with larger, more spread out trees and sparser underbrush.

In no time at all, the tatzeldrakes were right on her tail once again.

“Rainbow Dash! Fluttershy! Anypony!” Rarity pleaded.

When Rarity spotted a large patch of bushes, she seized the opportunity to use her size to her advantage. She scurried under the low canopy, just high enough for a pony, but too low for her pursuers. She emerged on the other side and kept running until leaping down off a shallow overhang in the earth.

She turned around and paused. It was as good a hiding spot as any. Better than most, actually.

A short distance off she heard the tatzeldrakes making their way around the patch of bushes, their nonstop growling and hissing giving them away more than anything else. She couldn’t outrun them, that much had been made clear, so it looked like hiding just might be her only shot at survival. She wedged herself under the outcropping of stone and waited. Time would reveal to her soon enough if she had just made a huge mistake. For now, she could only hope she hadn’t.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Rainbow Dash’s wingtips sliced through the air like a finely honed blade as she diligently scanned the ground for signs of the distressed unicorn. She grunted in agitation. The dense canopy made seeing anything below it a near futile task. "Rarity, where are you!?"

No answer came, and Rainbow Dash was beginning to think she was too late.

When she passed over the river, she got a fleeting look at something small and black lying on the shore. Rainbow Dash couldn’t place it, but something about it seemed out of place, so she circled around and went in for a landing to investigate.

Upon touching down a few feet from the object she saw that it was Fluttershy’s cooking pot. It explained why Rarity had left camp in the first place, but it didn't do much by ways of revealing Rarity's whereabouts. Rainbow Dash kicked it over, hoping for any clue that could help her. Droplets of water clung to the sides of the pot, but other than that it was empty.

Except, some of the droplets near the brim were awfully red to be water.

Rainbow Dash looked closer and realized that she was definitely right about them being too red to be water. They were clearly blood.

“Rarity!” Rainbow Dash called out again, even louder this time. She waited.

Nothing.

She took off again, letting her instincts guide her, and hoping, for Rarity's sake, that they were right.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Rarity pushed her back up against the low-hanging stone, regulating her breath. She swore she heard Rainbow Dash calling for her, but now was not a time for shouting. All around her she could hear the tatzeldrakes searching for her. One let out an airy bark, communicating something to the others that Rarity had no chance of understanding, but her guess would have been that it was trying to tell them it had bronchitis.

Rarity wasn’t in love with this plan of hiding. In fact, she hated it, but running hadn’t worked. They were faster than her by no small amount, and the only reason Rarity could think of for why they hadn’t made a meal of her yet was because they wanted to tire her out first, reduce the chances of her inflicting any more damage on them. If that really was the case, then they had done an impeccable job. Rarity’s legs felt like they had been run through a taffy machine, and she wasn’t sure how much more abuse they could take. Her only hope was that the veil of shadows the rocky outcropping provided her would be enough to keep her hidden. 

Just as Rarity's lungs felt like they were going to burst from her effort to breathe as quietly as possible, a long, hideous muzzle lined with an impractically large number of teeth entered the top of her vision. The beast was standing on the edge of the overhang, using it as a vantage point. As it scanned for the marshmallow-coloured mare, with a craving for something equally as delicious, it snapped its lower jaw up repeatedly, audibly clacking its teeth together, half of which looked confused about what it meant to be a tooth from the way they were visibly sticking out at bizarre, crooked angles. Or perhaps those ones were just especially eager to get to their prey. Either way, Rarity wanted no part of them, but moreover, wanted them to have no part of her.

She noticed a streak of red, clumpy fur trailing down the tatzeldrake’s neck, leading her to conclude that it was the one she had run into earlier. The one she had introduced the concept of cast-iron cookware to, with the end result being its left eye swollen shut and bleeding profusely.

Rarity didn’t like to think of herself as a violent pony, but if these were to be her last moments, if things did turn out for the worse and she ended up as the world’s most fabulous filet mignon, at the very least she could take solace in the knowledge that she’d gotten in a fairly nasty hit on one of them.

Eventually, and to the overwhelming relief of Rarity’s lungs, the ugly beast turned around and sauntered away, in tune with the rest of the pack who were doing the same. Finally, Rarity could breath.

She drank in the oxygen with a fervor she had never before had for the commodity. Trying, it would seem, to literally get drunk on the stuff, while still being mindful of the volume of her breathing, because it wasn’t likely the pack was too far off just yet. 

Rarity took a moment to peer over the overhang and get an idea of the course the tatzeldrakes were taking. From what she could see, they were...

...

They weren’t scampering off in any one of the multitude of directions that lead away from Rarity to eat some other unfortunate soul. Because, of course, that would have flown right in the face of the day’s current trend for Rarity. Fate had ordained that she suffer. For what reason, Rarity didn’t know, and at the moment she didn’t have time to figure it out because, not even a shouting distance away, the tatzeldrakes were circling back toward her, only now she would be exposed, masked only by her stillness and the slight shade of the overhang. It was only a matter of time before one of the them picked out her white body against the mossy stone backdrop.

With each of their steps they drew nearer, making Rarity all the more likely to be spotted. Closer and closer, until Rarity was certain that they were just faking not seeing her. They had to see her. She simply couldn’t accept that they still hadn’t. Yet they continued along their course, apparently oblivious to the fact that, by total coincidence, it would run them right past Rarity’s hiding spot.

Part of Rarity was yelling at her to run, to get the hell out of there before they got any closer, to make a break for it, the sooner the better. Then there was the other, larger part of her that told her that making a break for it would be difficult and require courage that she frankly just didn’t have at the moment. It told her how inaction was so much easier, and that tough decisions are, well, tough, and that not making one sounded like the way to go.

The anticipation mounted until Rarity’s mind was screaming at her to do something as the pack slowly closed the remaining distance between them. It wasn’t until they were close enough that Rarity could smell them that she took the initiative and leapt out from her cover. She magicked up the largest stone she could find and hurled it at the pack leader. It connected with a clonk against its thick skull and sent the beast reeling back, whimpering in pain as it knocked over one of its comrades. The remaining tatzeldrakes left their incapacitated allies and took chase after Rarity.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Rainbow Dash continued to fly above the land, intently looking for Rarity, or clues to lead her to her. All she had to go on was the direction she thought Rarity's voice had come from last, but even that she was unsure about.

It wasn’t until she heard a high-pitched shriek that she had anything solid to go on. It sounded like a dog getting its tail stepped on. It was out of the ordinary, so that was where she was going. Rainbow Dash banked right toward the sound and doubled her speed. Hopefully it wasn’t nothing.



•  •  ❖  •  •



Rarity magicked up another large stone as she ran and launched it behind her. The tatzeldrakes, having figured out Rarity's capabilities by this point, dodged the incoming missile with ease.

The trees became sparse, then abruptly ended when Rarity broke out into an open meadow full of lovely purple and yellow flowers. With open space for maneuvering now abundant, the tatzeldrakes took the opportunity to again surround Rarity as they pulled up alongside her. Two held their positions at Rarity's sides, while another behind her did the same. One more lunged out in front and cut her off.

Rarity's hooves dug into the grass as she slid to a stop. She whipped her head around in frenetic bursts, hoping to spot an opening between two of the predators wide enough for her to make an escape, but no such opening existed. Slowly the beasts began to circle around her, cautious of any attacks she might attempt. Their eyes trained on the unicorn’s form, intent on not letting her get away again. Foamy saliva flowed from the corners of their snarling, copiously-toothed mouths, falling onto the grass and flowers below. It carried a strong, pungent smell that had Rarity holding her breath just to keep the contents of her stomach where they belonged. The one with the bloody gash near its eye passed in front of her, snapping its mouth shut, letting it fall open, then repeating. With each passing second Rarity grew more certain that she wasn’t just food to them, she was their entertainment, a toy, something to be played with until it broke, at which point they would eat her then promptly forget about her.

The quick, hard thump of Rarity's heartbeat in her chest served as a reminder that she was still alive, if just for the moment, but she couldn’t help but think of each thump as being part of a dwindling countdown approaching one final beat. Rarity pushed the thought aside. It wasn’t a particularly useful one to focus on at the moment. What she needed was a good idea, some sort of cunning plan to save her skin.

As the tatzeldrakes continued to circle around Rarity, they seemed almost eager to let her be the one to make the first move. Not that she was complaining. She was happy they were giving her time to figure out how to best them, though she still didn’t want to try their patience. She just needed to make a quick, rational assessment of her situation so she could weigh all her possible options and come up with a plan of attack. Annoyingly, her quick-thinking kept being interrupted by a distracting multi-hued streak in the periphery of her vision darting about above the horizon. Eventually, (though, in retrospect it took far too long) it dawned on her what exactly that multi-hued streak was.

“Rainbow Dash!?” she shouted, dumbfounded at Rainbow Dash’s appearance. She had completely forgotten that she wasn’t alone.

Some of the tatzeldrakes perplexedly followed Rarity's gaze which was now cast decidedly above their imposing figures.

“Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash, down here!”

Rarity took it that her voice had been heard when the cyan speck that was Rainbow Dash stopped in her tracks, then began her swift descent toward her location. “I’m comin’ Rarity!”

Sensing that the situation was slipping out their favour, the tatzeldrakes scrapped their plan to give Rarity the first move and readied to make their own.

Rarity instinctively took a step back, only realizing afterwards that it put her closer to the tatzeldrakes behind her. She wished she had taken the time to learn even a basic combat spell. Telekinesis was all well and good when there were things to throw, but there weren’t now, and she was starting to feel a little bitter about having neglected her gift of being born a unicorn. If she were Twilight, she could have already been on her merry way by now by having fended off the tatzeldrakes with some kind of laser-beam spell. The closest thing she had to that were the light spells she sometimes used when showcasing dresses. The thought of wooing the tatzeldrakes to death with a fancy light show might have made Rarity laugh if not for her current circumstances, but she was hardly in the mood at the moment. Then it dawned on her... perhaps those spells weren’t as useless as she had initially thought.

She looked up at Rainbow Dash. The pegasus was more than halfway to her, but the stance the tatzeldrakes were assuming hinted that she didn’t have the precious few seconds she would need. She decided that a last ditch effort was better than no effort at all and began readying a light spell. As quickly as she could, Rarity channeled all of the magic she could harness into her horn, closing her eyes before releasing the energy in a blinding white flash so powerful that it seared the tip of her horn, causing her to yelp in pain.

She opened her eyes and started running before she could even register if it had worked, assuming it must have from the immense pain it had caused her. The sight of the tatzeldrakes blinking, trying to regain their vision, confirmed to her it had as she slipped between the first gap she came across in the tatzeldrakes’ formation then bolted for the treeline. It wasn’t long at all before the tatzeldrakes had regained enough of their vision to take chase after her.

Rarity sprinted across the meadow at record speeds, but casting such a powerful spell had taken a lot out of her. The combined toll of running, spelling-casting, and to top it all off, pain, caused Rarity's vision to blur as she approached the edge of the meadow. She tried to clear her head with a quick shake, but she knew she had been running on empty since casting the spell. All she could think about was the searing pain creeping down her horn and spreading out across the top of her head. By the time she made it to the outermost tree of the forest, she was stumbling, a few steps further and she collapsed.

“Get away from her!” she heard Rainbow Dash say, though her current state made it sound like she was underwater. She didn’t even possess the mental fortitude to notice the whirlwind of pink leaves rising up around her. She took one last glance at the tatzeldrakes through the thickening swirls of brightly-coloured leaves and saw Rainbow Dash keeping three of them busy while a fourth lay on the ground unconscious. Darkness slowly seeped into the edges of her field of vision, making its way to the center. The last thing Rarity remembered after her vision gave out was a pleasant, warm feeling, followed by a pervasive feeling of calmness and serenity.
> A Long Time Coming
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

An excerpt from The Ultimate Expeditioner's Handbook:

For the sake of padding out the page count and making this treatise appear more substantive on a bookshelf, as well as allowing us the pleasure of using a larger, more tasteful, typeface on the spine, the next thirty or so pages will feature the letter "a" many times over. Should you not wish to read this, you may skip to the end. 

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...


•  •  ❖  •  •


Rainbow Dash eyed narrowly the pale pink leaf in her hoof. Like the dozens of others scattered about, it was small, elliptic, and at the moment, rather mundane. The remaining Tatzeldrakes had all fled shortly after her frenzied arrival for whatever reason, leaving Rainbow Dash free to investigate the area.

She flipped the leaf over a few times, noting the powdery yellow residue rubbing off onto her hoof, as if the leaf had been lightly coated with a fine dust of pure gold. It felt soft like flour, and smelled sweet and soothing like nothing Rainbow Dash had smelled before. She brought the leaf to her mouth and gave it a tentative lick, only to find that it tasted of dirt. Curious to see if anything would happen, she tore it in half. Nothing did, so she discarded it.

Looking around, she could find nothing else worth investigating, which meant that was everything Rainbow Dash had to go on. Rarity was gone, vanished into thin air, and the only clue as to her whereabouts were some leaves that smelled kind of nice but tasted like dirt.

With a groan of frustration, Rainbow Dash took to the skies and began searching. Just like before, she scoured the ground, looking for any specks of white through the trees below.

It occurred to Rainbow Dash that maybe it was wrong of her to feel frustrated. She had every reason to feel the way she did, considering she’d been just a few feet from swooping in and saving Rarity when she’d vanished right before her eyes, but for all she knew, those leaves could have done something totally horrible to her.

She knew she should be worried. But… she wasn’t. Not really. She didn’t feel like Rarity was in any danger. And not just because the leaves were pink, a colour not frequently affiliated with malevolence, though that played a big part.

Right now, her gut told her Rarity was going to be okay, and Rainbow Dash often found that her gut was smartest organ she had. Still, she decided it would be a good idea to ask Fluttershy if she had read anything about magical pony-teleporting leaves in that book with the impossible-to-pronounce title.

Rainbow Dash came to a hover, stopping her search momentarily. She’d been so focused on saving Rarity that she’d completely forgotten about what had happened that morning, the complete disaster that had transpired.

Every embarrassing detail flooded into the forefront of her mind. Everything she’d said. Everything Rarity had implied. Everything Fluttershy might have overheard. How was she supposed to explain any of that to her?

She shook her head. She didn’t want to think about any of that right now. Rarity was still missing, and for Rainbow Dash, that was as good of an excuse as any to push the unpleasant thoughts aside to be dealt with later. She resumed her methodical search, slowly fanning out as she covered more and more of the area around Rarity’s last known location. The tedium was only broken when she spotted a tiny yellow speck in the distance pop up from beneath the trees. It looked like she was going to have to think about it after all.

Fluttershy quickly spotted Rainbow Dash, who looked to have not yet noticed her. In truth, Rainbow Dash was just happy to put off meeting up with Fluttershy for as long as possible. It had happen eventually, and she would be forced to confront Fluttershy about… well everything, but the present seemed like a great time not to.

Rainbow Dash was so focused on trying to look like she hadn’t noticed Fluttershy that it took her by surprise when she heard Fluttershy’s voice right behind her.

“Rainbow Dash, where’s Rarity?” Fluttershy asked as she drew even to Rainbow Dash. Her eyes only fleetingly fell upon Rainbow Dash’s cyan coat as she spoke, and never did she try to look her in the face.

Rainbow Dash, for her part, did the same, trying to disguise her reluctance to look Fluttershy in the eye as searching for Rarity. “She’s gone.”

“Gone?” Fluttershy echoed, a tinge of fear in her voice.

“Not gone gone. She just… vanished. There were a bunch of pink leaves, and… I don’t know what happened, she’s just gone.”

“Pink leaves?”

“Like I said, I don’t really know what happened. Rarity passed out, some pink leaves came out of nowhere and started swirling around her, and then she just... disappeared. That’s all I know. I was hoping you might know something about them,” Rainbow Dash tried to explain, but it only lead to a barrage of questions from Fluttershy.

“She passed out? What happened? Is she alright?”

Instead of answering the questions directly, Rainbow Dash decided it would be best to start from the top. 

She told Fluttershy about the weird half-wolf half-lizard things that had been chasing Rarity, and the blinding light spell Rarity had cast to escape. She told her about how Rarity had passed out soon after casting her spell, and the pink leaves ostensibly responsible for Rarity’s disappearance. She even slipped in the fact that she had knocked out one of the tatzeldrakes with a flying kick to the head but found herself in no mood to brag about it at the moment.

“And that’s pretty much it,” Rainbow Dash concluded. “That book about this place didn’t say anything that might help us find Rarity, did it?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “It talked about some things that sound a bit like what you told me, but nothing that would help.”

“Dang,” Rainbow Dash groaned.

“I hope she’s alright.”

Without a word of response, Rainbow Dash resumed the search for the missing mare, Fluttershy taking off after her.


•  •  ❖  •  •


Hours passed as Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy searched for Rarity. Few words were spoken between the two, and the only ones that were were about the task at hoof. At no point did either pony mention the events of the morning prior.

It was painfully awkward for Rainbow Dash, and she assumed the same was probably true for Fluttershy, but she knew that, in time, everything would return to normal between her and her friend. Just as it always did, no matter what the issue was. 

“I think we should head back to camp and get our things.” Fluttershy meekly suggested. It had been over half an hour since either had said anything.

Rainbow Dash’s response lacked her usual liveliness, and came out sounding almost mechanical. “We still haven’t found Rarity.”

“I know, but I don’t think she’s in the area. We’ve been searching for so long, if she was around here, we probably would have found her by now.”

“So, what? We’re just going to give up then?”

“No.” Fluttershy looked down, a distraught crease in her brow. “We all agreed ahead of time to keep heading toward the mountains if one of us were to get separated, so that’s what we have to assume Rarity is doing. If we keep heading there as well, we might run into her on the way. If we don’t, we can wait there until she shows up.”

Rainbow Dash thought over Fluttershy’s suggestion and concluded that it did have some merit to it. “Okay,” she relented, “but if she’s not there when we get there, I’m not going to just sit around and wait for her to show up.”


•  •  ❖  •  •


Rainbow Dash took point on the walk to the mountains, continually searching for Rarity to keep her mind off the fact that Fluttershy now knew of the crush she had wasted so much effort concealing from her. Rarely did Rainbow Dash spare a glance back at Fluttershy, and she only acknowledged her company when necessary. None of these things however could suppress the overbearing elephant-in-the-room feeling. 

Fluttershy held no illusions that Rainbow Dash was doing anything other than avoiding her, despite the fact that she was keeping pace just a few feet behind her. And when Rainbow Dash did speak up, her tone was emotionless and distant, a hollow echo of her usual brash self.

Eventually Fluttershy mustered the courage to speak up with hopes of tearing down the conversational wall between them. “Rainbow Dash?” she said, swallowing.

“Hmm?” Rainbow Dash replied. She kept her attention ahead, not slowing her pace or deviating from her path in any way.

“We’ve been walking for a while, and neither of us have had breakfast…” Fluttershy tentatively came to a stop, fully expecting Rainbow Dash to shoot down her suggestion. “don’t you think we should stop to eat?” she said, cowering behind her mane.

Rainbow Dash stopped. She began to turn around but halted halfway. “We’re almost to the mountains. We can eat there.”

With that said, she carried on.

As time passed it became clear the mountains were not a short jaunt away like Rainbow Dash had assumed. Grudgingly, she acceded to Fluttershy’s wordless protesting and stopped, dropping hers and Rarity’s bags and relishing in the sweet relief the simple action brought.
 
“Alright, this is taking longer than I thought. I’m up for lunch if you are.”

Fluttershy gave Rainbow Dash a shaky smile as she removed her own bags and began digging through them for food supplies. “If you want, we can just have a couple of granola bars and keep going…” she offered. It wasn’t what she wanted, but Fluttershy was nothing if not accommodating.

“No. We already skipped breakfast and probably lunch by now, too. And It’s not like it really matters when we get there anyway.”

It was impossible to tell, but Rainbow Dash was stopping solely out of compassion for Fluttershy. She would have preferred to keep going, to stay hungry simply because it helped to distract her from her uncomfortable reality, but doing so would be unfair to Fluttershy.

Fluttershy prepared the same thing for them as she had the previous day: PB&J tortillas and granola bars. When she finished, she handed Rainbow Dash her lunch and began nibbling on her own.

Fluttershy didn’t seem to have any intentions of starting up a conversation while she sat quietly, eating. It was obvious that she wanted to say something. She occasionally glanced Rainbow Dash’s way, but her eyes never lingered for more than a second before nervously darting off to look at something else.

Seeing how awkwardly Fluttershy was acting, Rainbow Dash was beginning to think it might be in her interest to take the initiative and be the one to say something first, just to make things slightly less awkward. If she simply addressed what they were both thinking about, then immediately shut any further conversation down, Fluttershy might not press the issue.

So with that plan in mind, Rainbow Dash ate as slowly as she could bear, keeping her mouth perpetually full as an excuse not to speak. She wanted to be the first to say something, but she still wasn’t in a rush to do so. Eventually she ran out of things to shove in her face, meaning that she had no other choice than to do that which she dreaded.

“So, uh… read any good books lately?” In a display of remarkable willpower, Rainbow Dash managed to not smack herself for saying the stupidest thing she could have imagined at that moment. She wasn’t sure where the idea for idle chit-chat had come from, but it wasn’t what she had planned on.

Actually, now that she thought about it, she hadn’t really planned anything past saying, 'Listen, ‘Shy, about earlier…' She figured everything would just sort of flow from that point.

Now that she really thought about it, she was starting to think she was a really stupid pony.

“Not really,” Fluttershy stated simply, hardly looking up from her lunch.

For better or for worse, Rainbow Dash was committed to the topic now, but Fluttershy wasn’t giving her much to work with. She reached over into Fluttershy’s bag to pick out one of the books inside. “What about this one?” she asked, holding up The Ultimate Expeditioner’s Handbook.

Fluttershy shook her head. “That one’s not very good at all." She wanted to stop at that, but this was something that had actually been bothering her. “Honestly, I stopped reading it for the advice after the first couple pages, but it's so strange that I kept reading anyway. I still don't understand what would make somepony write such a thing. And not only that, but the last half of the book is just the letter ‘a’ over and over. ”

Rainbow Dash disbelievingly flipped open the book and leafed through the pages. She saw that the last half was, in fact, wholly composed of first letter of the alphabet. “Wow. What a rip off. You didn’t pay for this did you?”

“No. I got it from the library.”

“Was Twilight there when you picked this one out?”

“She was, but she was sick, so it was just me who picked it out.”

“Yeah, I remember you telling me about this now...”

With that topic thoroughly exhausted, Rainbow Dash used the lull in conversation to say what she had intended to in the first place. As much as she didn’t want to, she felt it was long overdue.

“So… uh… as soon as you’re done eating we can get moving again.”

Or perhaps not.


•  •  ❖  •  •


Rainbow Dash marched onward through the forest with Fluttershy in tow a few paces behind, things seemingly having reverted back to the way they had been for much of that morning with neither pony saying much, and both avoiding eye-contact.

“Rainbow Dash, stop… please.” The sound of Fluttershy’s voice was just as much a surprise to Rainbow Dash as it was to Fluttershy herself, who had been trying to coax the words out unsuccessfully since they had stopped for lunch.

Rainbow Dash slowed to a stop. She took a deep breath and prepared herself for the worst before turning around, the action feeling more like facing a firing squad than a friend. The crestfallen frown and forlorn eyes she was met with cast a far stronger plea than anything the shy pony could have said.

“Rainbow…” Fluttershy dropped her gaze to her hooves, unable to hold the eye contact. “I… I don’t want to pretend this morning never happened,” she stammered, nervously rubbing one leg against the other.

Rainbow Dash shuffled around as she tried to throw together a response. “Fluttershy, it really doesn’t matter,” she said.

“It matters to me,” Fluttershy muttered, chancing a peek up at Rainbow Dash

“Well, I really don’t feel like talking about it, so just drop it. Okay?”

Fluttershy hesitated before ignoring the command. "Was it true what you said?"

"Like I said, it doesn't matter." Rainbow Dash made to turn back around, but the hurt in Fluttershy’s voice when she next spoke stopped her halfway.

“Rainbow, you promised you would tell me!” Fluttershy begged. As well as being offended by Rainbow Dash breaking her promise, she found it hard to not be insulted by Rainbow Dash’s insistence that something she cared a great deal about didn’t matter. “And if none of this matters, then why have you been treating me differently?”

Rainbow Dash sighed and turned her head to look at anything other than Fluttershy.

“Well?” Fluttershy’s voice shook, a clear sign to Rainbow Dash—who wasn’t looking—that she was on the verge of tears, if not already crying.

Rainbow Dash stayed quiet.

“Was it true?” Fluttershy repeated. She doubted the answer was no, but she needed to hear it said.

As far as Rainbow Dash was concerned, there was nothing she could say that wouldn’t make things worse.

“Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy begged.

“Fluttershy, it's nothing!”

“It's not nothing and you know it!”

Again Rainbow Dash was quiet.

“Was it something I did?”

Even knowing Fluttershy for so long, it still came as a surprise to Rainbow Dash that she was trying to blame something which was clearly not her fault on herself. She didn’t even know what Fluttershy was trying to ask by that. What was ‘it’? Before Rainbow Dash could think of anything to say, Fluttershy had already moved on.

“If you won’t tell me, then please at least promise me that we can stay friends.” Fluttershy reached up to wipe away the little beads of liquid forming at the corners of her eyes. “Please…”

 Seeing Fluttershy how she was pained Rainbow Dash. There was a wrenching in her chest which served as a reminder of why she'd kept her secret so long.

“Fluttershy, you're the closest friend I have ever had, and we’ll never not be friends. I just… I need some time to think.”

“About what?” Fluttershy walked closer to face Rainbow Dash.

“I don't know!” Rainbow Dash nearly shouted, instantly regretting her outburst. Sighing, she allowed her head to drop. “Listen, all that really matters is that it didn’t start that way. I didn’t become your friend for any other reason than because you were a good friend to me, alright?”

Fluttershy heaved a sigh. In all the years she’d known Rainbow Dash, that was the closest thing she had ever gotten to an answer about why they ever stopped spending time together, but that just went to show how poorly these conversations had gone in the past. "No. No, that's not alright. We used to spend every second together when we were fillies until one day when we just stopped—when you stopped. All of a sudden you always had an excuse to not be around me. You always had other plans."

“I’ve already said all I have to say,” Rainbow Dash interjected.

“Well I’m not okay with that, Rainbow,” Fluttershy asserted, tears running down her cheeks, matting her fur. “I’ve put up with you either avoiding the question or just plain lying to me for years now, but I’m not going to anymore!” 

The volume of Fluttershy’s voice didn’t amount to much but Rainbow Dash knew that, for her, it was shouting. The anger and pain in each word stabbed into Rainbow Dash’s heart like red-hot nails.

And the worst part was that she was right. Fluttershy deserved an explanation. “Fine,” Rainbow Dash quietly relented. “Yes, everything I said back there was true.” She breathed deeply. Every word was suffocating, but with the first out of the way, pushing on felt much less daunting. “And I never wanted to avoid you, Fluttershy. I just…” she trailed off, not knowing how best to put it.

Fluttershy hesitated before urging Rainbow Dash to continue. “You just what?”

Rainbow Dash took on a solemn, thoughtful appearance, her eyes unfocused as she rummaged through the deepest reaches of her mind, and only when she was ready did she speak up. “You told me once that I was the first friend you ever had.”

Fluttershy nodded.

“Well, I don’t know think I realized it at the time, but, in a way, you were kind of the first friend I ever had, too. The first real friend I ever had. And I didn’t want anything to ruin that.”

Fluttershy titled her head, cocking an eyebrow. “What about Gilda? You were friends with her before we even met. And you always seemed so excited whenever she would come to Cloudsdale.”

“Well… yes and no. Me and Gilda got along, and we were ‘friends’ but we weren’t really friends, if that makes sense.” Rainbow Dash sat down, letting her saddlebags fall off before taking another deep breath and continuing. “It always felt like I was putting on a show when I was around her, y’know? Like I couldn’t be the real me around her. I had to be this little piece of me that was cool enough to hang out with her, and everything else just wasn’t allowed when we were together. And if that wasn’t enough, like you mentioned, she was gone for most of the year anyway. Which, now that I think about it, probably wasn’t such a bad thing, because I’m not sure if I could have handled Gilda year-round, but whatever, that’s not really the point.

“At the time, I thought Gilda was the best friend I could ever ask for. Because at least with her I didn’t have to worry she was going to turn around and stab me in the back like the other ponies I was ‘friends’ with back then,” Rainbow Dash snarled. She had begun to rub her temples with her hooves. “I just accepted that all ponies were like that, and that’s how friends acted towards each other. If you showed the smallest vulnerability, they would turn their backs on you and make fun of you. And compared to that, I guess Gilda was a great friend, but I still couldn’t be me. She never made fun of me, but she still wouldn’t accept anything that didn’t fit her idea of cool.” 

Rainbow Dash’s eyes flicked about as if she just noticed she was still in the present. They momentarily passed over Fluttershy who had been listening intently to every word, and was waiting for Rainbow Dash to continue. “Anyway. When me and you became friends—real friends—I didn’t have to put up with any of that stuff anymore; no faking, no pretending, just me and you being me and you. I didn’t want there to be anything to take away from that. And I thought that if you found out that I had started to sort of… y’know... like you...” Rainbow Dash said quietly, trailing off, the words accompanied by a tinge of red on her cheeks. “I thought that it would make things too awkward between us or that you might assume that was the whole reason why we were friends in the first place, and our friendship was just a way for me to get you to like me.”

It was Rainbow Dash’s turn to look pleadingly at Fluttershy. “But that's not why we became friends, and it was never about that.”

Fluttershy sat down next to Rainbow Dash with an air of trepidation about her but forced herself to look directly at Rainbow Dash when she spoke. “I don’t need to hear you tell me that our friendship was real. Nothing in the world could make me doubt that.” Rainbow Dash gave her a weak smile, but it was crushed almost immediately after. “But what I don’t understand is why you decided we couldn’t be friends anymore.”

“Yeah…” Rainbow Dash muttered. “I didn't mean for that to go on for so long and I’m really sorry that it did... but I just couldn’t take it anymore, ‘Shy.”

Fluttershy cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

Rainbow Dash sighed. “I didn’t actually decide that we couldn’t be friends. It’s just that… any time we were together, I was constantly worried that I would slip up and you’d find out. It killed me to just be in the same room with you, and eventually it got to the point where I hated spending time with you,” she ranted. “and I hated myself for that...” 

Rainbow Dash drew lines in the dirt in front of her to let out the nervous energy practically bursting at her seams, wishing that her cheeks would stop broadcasting just how embarrassed she currently was. “It just got to be too much, so I stopped going around you. It was just supposed to be a short break. I thought that if we stopped spending time together for a little while, the feelings would go away and things could go back to normal, but I guess that ‘little while’ ended up being a pretty long one.”

Rainbow Dash adorned an especially uncomfortable look. “And then when I finally stopped having those feelings, It’d been so long that I just didn’t know how to start things back up between us. I mean, what was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, I know I haven’t really talked to you for, like, a couple of years now, but let’s hang out later’? It wasn’t until Twilight came along and the six of us became friends that I thought I might have a chance at fixing things between us.”

Rainbow Dash ran a hoof through her mane, letting out an exasperated breath. It had been a marathon of an explanation.

She could have kept going. There were little things that had gone unmentioned, little things that might have given Fluttershy a clearer picture, but they were still just that: little things.

“So... I’m sorry. I never wanted things to happen the way they did. They just kind of played out that way.”

Rainbow Dash felt hooves wrap around her, surprised to find Fluttershy hugging her.

It wasn’t long before Fluttershy nervously pulled away, the gesture feeling a bit too intimate for the time being, all things considered.

Rainbow Dash cocked an eyebrow. “What was that for?”

“It was difficult, what you just did. And I appreciate you doing it.”

Though she now had what she wanted, Fluttershy found that the explanation had done little to ease her mind, or the feeling in her gut that had been bothering her since that morning. She reasoned that it must be because of how worried she was about Rarity.

Rainbow Dash got to her hooves. She was beginning to get antsy. “So, can we get moving now?” 

When Fluttershy nodded, Rainbow Dash took to the air. “I’m going to scope out the path ahead before we get moving again.” she called down to her, deftly ascending through the treetops, dodging and weaving between branches before breaking out into the open sky.

More than anything it was an excuse to get a little space from Fluttershy, but assessing what lay ahead was still a worthwhile endeavour nonetheless, so Rainbow Dash got to it.

Directly ahead lay their destination. Towering above everything else on the island, the twin peaks made for an iconic fixture of the landscape. It had been easy to misjudge just how large the mountains were from a distance. For Rainbow Dash, seeing them up close felt almost surreal. The sheer cliff-faces abound littered with trees and other plant life clutching to the stone for dear life had a way of giving even Rainbow Dash, a pony rarely grounded, the slightest case of acrophobia.

From her vantage point, Rainbow Dash could also see that the forest which they had been traveling through thinned as it drew nearer to the massive landmark, meaning the walk ahead would be an absolute breeze. Not that the going had been very tough to begin with. As far as Rainbow Dash could tell, it looked like they’d be there in less than one more hour of walking.

It crossed Rainbow Dash’s mind that they could fly the rest of the way, but she didn’t see much point in trying to expedite the process. She didn’t expect Rarity to have beat them there so getting there faster would only mean waiting longer for Rarity to show up. If she showed up. And until then it would be just her and Fluttershy with only words to fill the time.

Surprisingly, Rainbow Dash didn’t dread that thought as much as she thought she would. Scoping out the landscape had been her unsubtle excuse to slip away from Fluttershy for the time being, but now that she had had a little time to digest everything, she supposed that, all things considered, it really hadn’t gone that bad. She had been ashamed and embarrassed admitting the things she had, but now she felt… well, not exactly good… but she at least felt a little better. Maybe this would turn out to be a new start for her and Fluttershy.

Before heading back down, Rainbow Dash spotted something she had almost overlooked. Out near the horizon above the ocean were dark clouds—stormclouds, violently swirling and churning, gathering energy and water from the ocean as it skated overtop. Being not only a pegasus, but also a weatherpony, Rainbow Dash could tell that the storm was headed their way. She’d need to let Fluttershy know about it. All they could really hope for was that it would blow over before the airship came back to pick them up.

On the ground, Fluttershy was running mental circles. She had finally gotten Rainbow Dash to tell her what she wanted to know, but for some reason it had done nothing to placate the uneasy feeling in her stomach. If anything, it just made her feel more troubled, so it couldn’t be that she was just worried about Rarity. She repeatedly asked herself why that might have been, but each time was as fruitless as the last. It also occurred to her that she had sorely neglected her cataloguing of the island’s wildlife for the whole morning, which only made her feel worse. There could have been dozens of critters she’d missed and wouldn’t see again. She had gotten so swept up in her own personal concerns that she had completely forgotten the reason for her being on an island in the middle of the ocean in the first place.

Fluttershy continued musing about the myriad of things on her mind until something caught her eye. Down through the branches overhead, fluttered a rain of unnaturally-coloured, deep-blue leaves. They were the colour of a moonlit sky... and they were coming from where she had last seen Rainbow Dash.

“Rainbow Dash?” she called. 

No response came. The only sound was the pitter-patter of the leaves, one-by-one, hitting the ground.

She tried again, louder. “Rainbow?” The situation was all too similar to what had happened to Rarity.

All around her the trees jostled in the wind, but still she heard no sign of Rainbow Dash. Despite this, Fluttershy found herself hesitant to fly up and check for herself, afraid that her suspicions might turn out to be true. She called out once more. 

“Rainbow?” Fear clutched at her throat, making the word that came out an unsteady whimper, nothing Rainbow Dash could have heard even if she was up there.

Fluttershy’s bit her bottom lip. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest and her
breath beginning to quicken. Her eyes, like her thoughts, flicked about franticly. Soon the pressing need to know for sure overtook the paralyzing anxiety keeping her grounded, and she took to the air and ascended through the tree cover. When she emerged, she found nothing of any comfort. There was nothing there to find at all.

Rainbow Dash was gone. And Fluttershy was alone.
> Antisymmetry
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

An excerpt from The Ultimate Expeditioner's Handbook:

It is without dispute that the world can be differentiated and thus categorised in an infinite number of different ways. However the most useful means of categorization is to dichotomize experience into those things which are known to the observer those which are not.

This has many upsides in that it grounds the observer into the reality which they are perceiving, and turns neutral, objective facts into  subjectively significant tools with which one can build an actionable plan for confronting reality.

However there is, as with all things, a problem with this thinking, which is that of it's efficacy. While it may be the "most useful" way of viewing the world, above it's frankly paltry competition, that doesn't imply that it's sufficient. It's not.


With a bleary slowness, Rarity’s eyes flitted open as she finally started to come to. Immediately, she clamped her eyes shut and clasped the sides of her head, overcome with a dull pounding emanating from her swollen forehead. She let loose a pained grunt and ground her teeth with each painful throb. Rolling onto her stomach, she buried her head in her hooves as waves of pain washed over her head from front to back.

Her horn.

Rarity remembered now the spell she’d cast in a desperate effort to save herself. She remembered how it had singed her horn and left her in a daze, and how it had almost blinded her even through closed eyes. She’d known the dangers involved with casting a spell so far out of her league, and this was it.

Several minutes passed—or what Rarity assumed to be several minutes—and the mind-numbing pain began to gradually subside, allowing her to finally think clearly for the first time since waking up. Keeping her face planted in the crook of one of her legs as she carefully moved the other hoof up to test the area around the base of her horn. It was noticeably swollen and sensitive to the touch, which was a clear sign that there was some degree of internal damage, but she had already deduced as much from the rhythmic pulses of pure agony that had consumed her consciousness for the last few minutes. 

A damaged horn was the greatest fear of any unicorn, and Rarity was no exception to that rule. External damage could be repaired professionally, assuming it didn't heal on its own, but internal damage, especially to the root of the horn… She hardly wanted to entertain the thought. At best, she could expect a few weeks without magic to allow her horn to heal with a few weeks to magical therapy to follow. At worst… 

Rarity let out a long groan as she shakily lifted her head out of her hooves, then opened her eyes once again to take in her surroundings. The movement was enough to leave her seriously nauseated, but what she saw was enough to make her forget about that development entirely.

All around her in every direction were dozens of pink-leaved trees with white trunks made, not of wood, but of a cloudy white crystal, like milk mixed in water. The crystal trunks were each made up of hundreds of smooth, flat faces that met at straight edges, and every one of the faces had a flawless polish that would have taken hours to achieve by hoof.

Countless fallen leaves speckled the grass below, which was, oddly enough, more blue than green, and every second more leaves fell, seemingly without end.

The very air itself seemed to glow a warm yellow, like the sun on a summer day, as if a mist of pure gold hung in the air, softening the hard, rigid contours of the crystal trees.

Rarity cautiously took a few steps forward until she reached one of the many crystal trees and placed a hoof against its trunk. The tree didn’t react in any way, but the action had the effect of making Rarity feel... quite happy. Unusually happy.

She looked up at the brightly-coloured leaves above and watched them twitch and sway with the passing of a gentle breeze, and for whatever reason, she couldn’t help but give a smile at that.

It only now occurred to Rarity that she was free of pain entirely. She brought a hoof up and prodded the swollen area. The action was met with slight discomfort but little else.

Rarity didn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten there, but she felt no desire to question it. The only thing she wanted now was to go for a stroll to see what more this Crystal Forest had in store. Since nothing seemed particularly special about any given direction, she chose one at random and began walking that way.

As Rarity walked she became aware of a baritone hum resonating in the air that she hadn’t noticed until now. It evolved constantly from second to second, wobbling in pitch, and rising and ebbing in volume, yet none of these things were enough to hold Rarity’s attention for long. Soon it became just another pleasant background noise, and Rarity went on ignoring it.

In the distance, Rarity could make out a ledge up ahead where the ground cut off. Initially she assumed it was a cliff, however, as she got closer, fragments of land began to materialize where only emptiness had been before.

Rarity stopped. Her sense of self-preservation told her to turn back, to avoid the unknown… yet it carried no weight. Rarity felt safe. She felt at ease. Soon she found herself continuing forward towards the newly-formed land, as though nothing at all was amiss. Each step was followed unfailingly by shards of new terrain blipping into existence several yards ahead, cutting off Rarity’s view of what, if anything, lay over the edge.

Despite all this, despite how unnatural everything seemed, Rarity felt nothing but delight from her circumstances. It was as though she was the center of her own quaint little universe. And she loved it.


•  •  ❖  •  •


Rainbow Dash darted through the air amid near-absolute darkness, searching for any opening in the dense canopy of black crystal branches and blue leaves overhead. She wedged her front hooves between two branches and tried to pry them apart, but to no avail.

“Fluttershy!” she called out into the dark. Her voice echoed almost endlessly before fading into unintelligibility.

She continued searching for a way out until she came across a patch of spindly branches which were much thinner than anything she'd seen so far. She rammed into them with her shoulder, but the mesh of black twigs was far stronger than anything Rainbow Dash could throw at it. She kicked and clawed at the weak point, tearing leaves from their branches, but still the interlaced branches remained rigid and unmarred.

Eventually, after thoroughly exhausting herself, Rainbow settled down on the ground to catch her breath and used the time to take in her surroundings. She stood on what looked to be a path. To both her sides were trees with black crystalline trunks spaced so closely together that not even the thinnest of ponies could have slipped between them. The canopy above was, likewise, incredibly dense. Not even a shred of sunlight made it through. The only light for Rainbow Dash to see by came from small glowing bulbs of a glass-like substance which hung from some of the crystal branches, giving off a weak blue light. They were slender, long, and bulged at the end, like elongated teardrops. The path Rainbow Dash stood on was straight, yet she could only see a few feet ahead of herself before everything faded to black, as if there was a literal fog of darkness blocking her sight of what lay beyond.

Rainbow Dash couldn’t help but stare into that pitch blackness, searching. She felt distinctly that there was something in it, something just out of sight. Her heartbeat began speeding up again and a chill ran up her spine. She could feel another pair of eyes staring back.

Rainbow Dash took to the air and flew slowly in the opposite direction. She told herself that there was nothing there, that her imagination was playing tricks on her. She had every reason to be nervous, but she didn’t want to freak out without cause. No danger had presented itself to Rainbow Dash yet, and until that was no longer the case, she just needed to keep a cool head and figure out what to do next. However, it was hard for Rainbow Dash to know what to do when didn’t know how she had ended up where she was.

She remembered descending through the treetops, planning on warning Fluttershy about the stormclouds in the distance, only to emerge below the treetops in an unknown, and highly unnerving location.

She continued flying slowly through the dark, only now noticing that there was a deep, eerie hum that wobbled all around her, a quiet bass thrumming that peaked just above the lower limit of pony hearing. Just one more thing to add to the laundry-list of things she didn’t like about her current surroundings. Still, the fact remained that there was nowhere for Rainbow Dash to go other than down the path ahead, so she did the only thing she could, and carried on into the darkness.


•  •  ❖  •  •


Rarity rested beside a quiet little pool of water, feeling calm and cheery as she stared at its flat, reflective surface with her head propped up on a hoof. It gave the impression of a koi pond; shallow with clear water, calm and peaceful, the only thing lacking were the fish, or any animal life at all for that matter. In fact, now that Rarity thought about it, she hadn’t seen a single animal since she’d woken up, which may have been cause for concern, but Rarity quickly discarded the thought and searched for something else to occupy her mind.

She looked up in time to catch sight of a gentle breeze plucking two leaves from a branch so they could dance together in the wind. She watched, captivated, as they twirled around one another, sailing ever-closer the ground, until eventually coming to a rest on the teal-blue grass like all the leaves before them.

The display left Rarity feeling downright giddy, but for reasons she couldn’t explain, and truthfully, she didn’t see the point in looking for an explanation. Everything was perfect as it was, so any action she took only stood to detract from that. For now, she decided it was best to continue lazing about and enjoying every little thing she saw.

An hour passed before the possibility of doing something different even occurred to Rarity. Boredom, it seemed, no longer had any power over her thoughts. The only thing that drove her to find a change of scenery was the desire to see what else her little universe had to offer.

She stood and stretched her legs then began in a random direction, humming happily to herself. Any time she would pass a crystal tree, she would absent-mindedly brush a hoof across its smooth surface, enjoying the fleeting contact and the warm feeling it instilled in her. She kept like this until the pink-leaved trees of crystal gradually gave way to trees of wood, and the sounds of birds chirping took over. The feeling of joviality soon left Rarity when it occurred to her that the air no longer hummed to her, and it had ceased to glow.

She turned around to head back, but couldn’t find anything to head back to. She was standing in the middle of a rather normal-looking forest, and the crystal trees she had so quickly grown attached to were nowhere to be seen.

It was a jarring transition from one world to the other, which left Rarity feeling empty and at a loss for what to do next. That is, until she heard what sounded like somepony crying nearby.


•  •  ❖  •  •


The narrow path Rainbow Dash walked seemed to go on forever into the dark. There was little room on either of her sides. She couldn’t have walked with her wings outstretched without her feathers scraping against the walls of black crystal tree-trunks, and that, more than anything else, was the worst part for Rainbow Dash; not the darkness, not being lost, not losing Fluttershy—What got to her most was the confinement. It was the one thing always on her mind. She felt like a coin lost in the cushions of a sofa.

Rainbow Dash never admitted it to anypony, but she had a pretty bad case of claustrophobia, and the only thing presently keeping her from descending into a state of panic was the fact that she could keep moving forward.

She moved cautiously through the dark, watching her step insomuch as she could, until she spotted something curious: A scuff in the dirt which appeared to have been made by a hoof. Whoever it belonged to, they were traveling in the same direction as Rainbow Dash. She picked up her pace, and called out ahead of herself.

“Fluttershy? Rarity? Anypony?” The words echoed before fading away.

She stopped when she came upon another scuff in the dirt. It looked very similar to the one she’d seen twenty or so paces ago. In fact, it looked exactly like the one from before. Not only that, but the whole area—the trees, unearthed roots, leaves, even the faintly glowing crystal orbs overhead, everything suddenly felt eerily familiar

She increased her pace to a swift canter. The scuff on the ground disappeared into the darkness behind her, then, out of the darkness, another appeared ahead—The same mark.

Rainbow Dash didn’t want to believe it, but the conclusion was unavoidable: It was the same stretch of forest repeating over and over, an infinite loop with no exit.

She broke out into a gallop. It felt like the world was closing in on her. The repeating pattern of trees flowed by with no end in sight. The mark in the dirt would come and go every few seconds, until Rainbow Dash eventually slowed to a stop, tears forming in her eyes. She turned and punched the closest tree as hard as she could. Her hoof clacked against the crystal and she let out a useless shout. She wanted it to all be a dream, she wanted to wake up and have everything be fine again, but she knew that wouldn’t happen, because it wasn’t a dream. It was all hopelessly real. She was trapped with no recourse of any kind, and so she did the only thing she could:

She curled up on the ground, and she gave up.


•  •  ❖  •  •


“Rainbow Dash? Is that you?”

Rainbow Dash’s ears perked up. She lifted her head and spun it around to find that her ears had not deceived her. The black crystal trees had been replaced with trees of wood, and the sun’s light illuminated everything in bright, vivid colours. And there Rarity stood, practically an angel in Rainbow Dash's eyes.

“Rarity!” Rainbow Dash burst out as she clambered to her hooves. She dashed over to Rarity and threw her forelegs around the unicorn’s neck. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you,” she said with a relieved laugh.

Rarity returned the hug hesitantly, taken aback by the show of affection. “Rainbow, it’s... um... nice to see you as well,” she said, then pulled back, examining Rainbow Dash's puffy red eyes and tear-stained fur. “Darling, have you been… crying?”

“No.” Rainbow Dash said reflexively, quickly wiping her eyes. “What happened to you? Fluttershy and I looked all over for you, but we couldn’t find you anywhere.”

Rarity thought momentarily about pushing Rainbow Dash on why she'd been crying but decided against it. She knew that wouldn't get her anywhere with a mare like Rainbow Dash. “It was the strangest thing,” she said. “All I remember is waking up in a place where… I don’t know what to say, really.”

Rarity paused, finding that nothing she’d ever experienced could help her truly put into words what she’d felt. “It was like a little world of its own, filled with these… these lovely-looking trees made of crystal. And they had beautiful, absolutely vivid, pink leaves as well,” Rarity said, breathlessly.  “It was perfect. More than perfect. Oh, I wish I could show it to you so you could know what it was like.” Rarity's eyes lit up as she thought back on the short time she’d had there. She quickly snapped out of her reverie, then looked around curiously. “Rainbow Dash, where’s Fluttershy?”

Rainbow Dash's ears drooped. “I don't know. We were together one second, and then the next... I was somewhere completely different. It was dark, and…” Rainbow Dash cut herself short, shaking her head.

“Rainbow, are you—” Rarity was cut off when a large raindrop smacked against her horn, and she let out a yelp.

Rainbow Dash cocked an eyebrow. “What was that?” 

“Sorry.” Rarity said, bringing a hoof up to gently rub the sensitive area. “It’s my horn. I injured it when I cast that spell.”

More raindrops fell. Rainbow Dash glanced up to the clouded sky above, and was hit by a drop on the nose. “Does it hurt?” she asked, wiping her nose.

“When I touch it, yes.” Rarity also looked up, seeing the gray stormclouds that loomed overhead. “I think we have more imminent problems at the moment.”

Rainbow Dash nodded. “We need to find some kind of shelter or we’re going to get soaked,” she said, beginning the search for somewhere to ride out the weather, not waiting to hear Rarity’s thoughts on the matter.

Rarity watched with concern as Rainbow Dash took off without her. She could tell something was off with Rainbow Dash, but couldn’t place her hoof on exactly what it was. Clearly she was upset, that much had been made clear when Rarity had first found her, but she also seemed… avoidant. Before Rainbow Dash could get too far away, Rarity started after her. Perhaps she was just reading too much into things.

As time went on the rain increased from a drizzle to a downpour, and soon the rain was coming down so hard it was as if a giant, city-sized water-balloon had burst above the island.

Only after several minutes of trudging through the freezing rain did Rarity spot something which looked like an adequate shelter. She pointed over Rainbow Dash’s shoulder at a short, rocky cliff in the distance, mostly obscured by trees. “How about over there?” she shouted over the sound of rain hitting leaves. “There might be a cave or perhaps an overhang to hide under.”

Rainbow Dash flipped her soaked mane out of the way so she could see what Rarity was pointing at. “Anything’s better than this rain.”


•  •  ❖  •  •


Rarity and Rainbow Dash lay side-by-side under a roof of solid stone, soaked and shivering, but out of the rain all the same. They had found the shelter they were looking for in the form of a horizontal crevice in a large wall of granite rock, but not before being soaked to the bone and sapped of every last ounce of warmth in their bodies.

The shallow crevice the two ponies had tucked themselves into was far from spacious. Water cascaded down over the entrance by the gallon, just inches from where Rarity and Rainbow Dash lay, and every so often a gust of misty wind would blow into the crack in the rock, keeping the two in a perpetual state of dampness, though Rarity had the misfortune of taking the brunt of it. It wasn't great, but it was the best shelter around and decidedly better than traipsing aimlessly through the mud and rain.

Rainbow Dash passed the time by preening her wings, which had been unwelcomely ruffled in the storm. Rarity didn’t do much of anything, other than occasionally remarking on the weather. It being dreadful was more or less what she had to say each time.

Rainbow Dash finished straightening her feathers then turned to face Rarity. “Alright Rarity, what's going on?” she said in an uncharacteristically serious tone.

“Hmm? Whatever do you mean?” Rarity responded, turning to look back at Rainbow Dash and wiping her wet mane out of the way.

“I mean, why aren’t you being as nosy as you usually are? You haven’t asked me a single question about this morning. What you caused this morning,” Rainbow Dash sneered. “Just get it over with. I can tell you're trying to be clever somehow.”

“Am I?” Rarity said. She wasn’t sure if she should be pleased or offended by the accusation. “And how exactly am I trying to be clever?”

“I don't know, you just are. You’re always looking for ways to trick other ponies into doing what you want.”

Rarity put a hoof to her chest in mock offense. “Well I must say I'm insulted by how readily you would accuse me of deceit, Rainbow. As if I would ever coax information out of somepony they wouldn’t normally share.”

Rarity received only a wordless glare from Rainbow Dash.

“Alright, I apologize for prying earlier. That was a little rude of me,” Rarity admitted. However, the glare she was getting from Rainbow Dash only deepened. “And the only reason for why I’ve avoided the topic is because I was trying to be courteous,” Rarity snipped. “You seemed rather upset when I found you, so I thought I’d leave it up to you to decide when you’re ready to talk about it. If that’s in some way manipulative, then I apologize.”

“You almost ruined everything…” Rainbow Dash stated quietly, nearly whispering the words. 

“Oh, pshh. So Fluttershy knows you have a crush on her, it’s not the end of the world.”

Rainbow Dash did her best to keep her voice calm while she spoke. “I don’t have a crush on Fluttershy anymore.”

Rarity hummed incredulously.

“I don't, Rarity!” Rainbow Dash shouted.

A gust of cold mist blew into the stone shelter, hitting Rarity mostly. She wiped her face, but there was little else she could do to dry her fur without a towel.

“Fine, you don’t,” Rarity conceded, though only for the sake of progressing the conversation. “Now how exactly did I almost ruin everything? I’m not sure you realize this, but I hadn’t intended for Fluttershy to overhear our conversation, so it’s hardly fair for you to lay the blame at my hooves.”

Rainbow Dash gave an annoyed groan. “If you hadn’t been so nosy in the first place, there wouldn’t have been anything for Fluttershy to overhear!”

“And why is that such a bad thing?” Rarity retorted. “What damage was done because of my inadvertent involvement?”

Rainbow Dash grumbled and turned away.

“Is that it? You aren't going to tell me what actually happened between the two of you?”

Rainbow Dash stayed quiet.

Rarity settled herself into a more comfortable position. “Fine,” she said, curtly.

Patience was a virtue Rarity had long ago mastered, and if nothing else, she could always resort to asking Fluttershy. That is, if they could ever find her.


•  •  ❖  •  •


The rain had slowed to a calm, continuous shower, the wind had stopped, and night was beginning to fall. The thought of sleep tantalized Rarity, but her wet fur and incessant shivering left her without the remotest chance of getting any sleep at all, despite how absolutely exhausted she was. She lay staring at her front hooves, her vision unfocused, but she made no fuss.

Rainbow Dash, likewise, felt the bite of cold at the end of her nose and the tips of her ears, but as far as she could tell she was holding up much better than Rarity. In fact, Rainbow Dash was beginning to think that Rarity was showing the first signs of hypothermia.

Rainbow Dash’s knowledge about hypothermia was limited to what she’d learned during weatherpony training, which wasn’t a lot because she hadn’t paid much attention for the in-class lessons, but she did remember that it was nothing to take lightly.

“Hey, Rarity?”

Rarity responded with an atypical delay. “Hmm?” 

“You feeling alright?”

“Umm… I'm…” Rarity’s teeth chattered audibly. “Uh… Well I am rather cold.” She finally said, emotionlessly. By this point Rarity wasn’t even capable of feeling sorry for herself.

Rainbow Dash watched sympathetically as Rarity continued to shiver.

“Rarity, I think you’re starting to get hypothermia.”

Rarity didn’t respond immediately. She was finding it surprisingly difficult to attach meaning to the words Rainbow Dash was saying to her. It felt a lot like she’d just woken up.

Eventually though she lined up all of the words in her mind. “Remind me again what that is.”

“It basically means you’re too cold.”

“Oh...” Rarity mumbled half-heartedly in reply. A few seconds passed while Rainbow Dash waited for Rarity to say something more, but she seemed content with her simple ‘oh’.

Deciding something needed to be done, Rainbow Dash slid over so she was touching sides with the freezing mare, and with a bit of hesitation, stretched out a wing and wrapped it tightly around her cold, damp body. “Just don't tell anypony about this, alright?” she said.

The last thing Rainbow Dash needed was to lose her reputation as a daring flier extraordinaire in favour of being known as the kind of pegasus who throws around winghugs. Few things rank lower on the awesomeness-scale than that, and even though in this instance it was necessary, Rainbow Dash knew all-too-well that rumours have a way of eliminating nuance. “And don’t think this means I’m not still mad.”

Rarity craned her head to look at the wing draped over her back. She could feel the warmth coming from Rainbow Dash's body where it was pressed up against her own, and the wing over her back kept her own body-heat in. “Of course,” she said, resting her head on her hooves. “And... thank you.”

Rainbow Dash returned to watching the torrential rain as she would for most of the rest of the night. By now most of the ground was covered in an inch of water, and only a few patches of unsubmerged land could be seen still. On and on the rain fell, beating down on the trees and curtaining over the entrance to the rocky shelter, a never-ending downpour which carried on through the night.

Rainbow Dash briefly glanced back to Rarity who was teetering toward sleep and adjusted her wing to make sure in covered as much of Rarity’s body as it could. “Don't mention it.”


•  •  ❖  •  •


Fluttershy had managed to make it to the foot of the mountains before the rain had started and gotten her tent up just before the downpour. It provided ample protection from the whipping and roaring wind, and a dry place to sleep for the night. Beside her in her tent she had her own, as well as Rarity and Rainbow Dash’s bags which she’d been forced to carry all three of after Rainbow Dash’s disappearance. Whether that had been a burden or a blessing, Fluttershy couldn’t decide. The constant struggle had provided a much needed distraction to keep her mind from spiraling into a panic attack, but now, having nothing to keep her thoughts at bay, her mind was free to wander. The thoughts she'd successfully avoided all day suddenly seemed inescapable.

What had her worried most was that, in two days the airship that dropped the trio of ponies off was supposed to return to pick them up on its voyage back to Equestria. But the weather, if it didn’t improve, would make that task impossible. Not to mention that Rarity and Rainbow Dash had vanished without a trace, and may not be present for the airship’s arrival if it even came at all.

Fluttershy knew she shouldn't, but she couldn't help but blame herself for everything. Rarity and Rainbow Dash's disappearance really did seem to be her fault. It had been her idea to bring them in the first place, and none of this would have happened if she hadn’t.

What if she was next? What did that mean for her? There was nothing she could do to stop it. Any action she took would be an exercise in futility. She had no idea what she was up against, or if what she was up against was worth worrying about at all. How could she possibly proceed under those circumstances?

Fluttershy curled up into her sleeping bag. Nothing about her situation could have been more different than last night when she’d shared her tent with Rainbow Dash. More than anything, she wished she had Rainbow Dash by her side again.

She didn't try to stop the tears when they came. Just another exercise in futility, as far as she was concerned. They left cold, wet spots on her sleeping bag where they fell, but Fluttershy couldn’t be bothered by that.

Just yesterday everything had gone so smoothly. She’d spent most of the day among the wildlife, documenting creatures not known to exist in Equestria, accompanied by her two closest friends. True, there had been the incident with the mushrooms, but compared to today…

Fluttershy squeezed her eyes closed tight and clutched at the fabric of her sleeping bag, drawing it close to her chest and letting out a choked sob. 

She’d lost Rarity. She’d lost Rainbow Dash. And she had no idea what to do next.
> Turmoil
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

An excerpt from the final published work of Starwind Veil:

It has become clear in these first years of Luna’s banishment that her absence has damaged the soul of Equestria. Luna breathed life into the toiling of Celestia’s day. This was her gift, offered generously to all. Yet it has been smothered by the sun and its perverse methods of casting light where light ought not shine. Scorched by Celestia’s flames were both heart and soul, whose domain is the night. It was Celestia’s eternal gaudiness which blinded the ponies and turned them arrogant. All vividness and mystery was stripped away for the comfort of clarity and knowledge, and what remains now of the world is but an empty husk.

Luna was not banished upon the night of that fateful battle. She was banished when the hearts of her subjects no longer knew her, and she was made a stranger in her own kingdom.

Now in the sole rule of Celestia, the untempered light of the sun scorches the life of the earth and leaves no shade wherein the spirits can churn. Within a kingdom aligned only toward the sun, even the darkest caves are to be illuminated, and what monstrous beasts that rest within shall awaken. Only then will the true vengeance of the night be felt, and even the most sturdy of resolves shall forever be humbled.


•  •  ❖  •  •


Fluttershy cast a blank stare over the dreary landscape stretching out before her, watching from the security of her tent as the storm battered the island. She’d set up before nightfall underneath the umbrella of two sturdy trees, seeking any form of refuge from the rain, but the weather had taken a violent turn in the night. Much of the rain was directed away from her tent by the leaves overhead, but the fear of falling branches was becoming an ever-greater fear for Fluttershy as the night carried on. It was unlikely her tent could survive out in the open, and face down the brunt of such a storm, so the risk needed to be incurred if Fluttershy wanted to make it through the night at all.

After the exhausting day she had just suffered through, Fluttershy was in desperate need of a restful night of sleep, but the wind tearing at the taught fabric walls of her shelter prevented any such rest, which only worsened her mental state, as her mind played out various anxieties in a continuous loop. She was currently at the foot of one of the two mountains where the land just started to incline, a milestone of her progress that should have been worthy of celebration, but the fact still remained that she was alone, and Rainbow Dash and Rarity were nowhere to be found.

There had been no hint to what time it was when Fluttershy had first woken from her fitful sleep. And in those fleeting seconds between the formless world of sleep and the stark reality of consciousness, she had felt for a moment as though she wasn’t alone. In that short time before fully waking, when Fluttershy had yet to open her eyes, she’d distinctly felt as though Rainbow Dash was there with her, just as she had been the night before. The illusion, however, was shattered when she reached a hoof out and found only empty air. When she dared to open her eyes, the reality was only confirmed, and though her heart resisted, all feelings she had felt of safety and contentedness evaporated. 

For the rest of the morning, Fluttershy reflected on what Rainbow Dash had told her the day before, as well as what she remembered of their shared past. Of all the stories Fluttershy had conjured up to justify Rainbow Dash’s bizarre and elusive behavior, not one had ever included Rainbow Dash having crush on her. That most definitely changed things. Which was somewhat bothersome, because the primary feature of the past, as far as Fluttershy was concerned, was that it didn’t change. Yet here she was, lost in the present, with an indeterminate past. 

The thought played in her mind again, as it had repeatedly throughout the morning: A crush.

How could she have not noticed? Was Rainbow Dash just good at hiding it, or was it naïveté on her own part. How many other crushes had she gone blissfully unaware of? And why her?

It was that final question above all the rest that gnawed at the inside of her skull. Why her? What could Rainbow Dash have possibly seen in her. She seemed lacking in every attribute Rainbow Dash strived for. She wasn’t a good flier, or even physically fit for that matter. She avoided confrontation wherever possible. For pony’s sake, she didn’t even particularly like winning! By every measure, it seemed like a crush on Fluttershy was a sad misjudgment on Rainbow Dash’s part. That would at least explain her embarrassment. Of course she would be embarrassed to have had a crush on a pony like her…

Fluttershy toyed with this possibility for some time, but it simply wouldn’t sit comfortably in her mind. Rainbow Dash hadn’t really seemed embarrassed so much as she seemed ashamed, or even afraid… Or both.

For her whole life, Fluttershy had presumed that her falling out with Rainbow Dash had been entirely her own fault. The way she perceived herself—as deficient, as less than, as a pony undeserving of friends—was in no small part based on that notion. It had seemed to her that the sort of ponies who lose friends were those who didn’t deserve them in the first place. Which was partly why Fluttershy had spent most of her life trying to be invisible. If she wasn’t friend material, then it was for everypony’s sake that she should avoid making friends, no matter how that made her feel.

But by Rainbow Dash’s account, all of those things Fluttershy had believed to be self-evident were merely morbid fantasies. Maybe Rainbow Dash had spared her feelings by omitting important details… but Fluttershy couldn’t believe that. Not a single word of her confession had been demeaning or accusatory in any way. In fact, she hadn’t blamed Fluttershy for anything at all, which meant that all those years of feeling worthless and alone… had been wasted.

The latter half of her school days: Wasted. The hours after school that she spent alone in her room: Wasted. Her first years after moving to Ponyville: Wasted.

The more Fluttershy dwelled on this, the more it made her feel…

She felt…

Fluttershy could hardly admit it to herself, but she felt… angry.

Normally she tried to see things from other ponies’ points of view, and she always trusted that other ponies had good intentions at heart… But she couldn’t bring herself to see it that way this time. She didn’t want to this time. 

How could Rainbow Dash have let her go through those years of pain and doubt? How could she have not seen the weight Fluttershy carried around when they were together? How could she have let their friendship die, and do nothing to mend it? 

Tears welled up in Fluttershy’s eyes. She knew how to feel about her pain now. She was furious! Her first friend, her best friend, had abandoned her because she wasn’t half as strong as she pretended to be. Rainbow Dash had sat by and let her agonize over the past, and then she’d had the gall to think that they could just get over it and never bring it up again, as if nothing at all depended on resolving the central issue—As if everything wasn’t all her fault.

Fluttershy buried her face in her hooves and choked out a scream. The thoughts were unbearable. The few seconds of brooding she’d allowed herself filled her with as much disgust as anything she’d learned from Rainbow Dash, but now that she’d entertained the dark thoughts, they wouldn’t go away. Her resentment possessed a drive of its own, and she’d willingly given it a voice.

Fluttershy stayed there, head in her hooves, and wept without restraint—at Rainbow Dash, at herself, at fate. Her mind was so overwhelmed and exhausted that she lost any sense of time and her thoughts lost all coherence. Everything seemed to slowly dissolve away. And in the end all that remained was the aching of her heart.