Minific: Prismatic · 9:49pm Nov 12th, 2023
Red. Orange. Yellow. The coloured strands wavered across her vision like grass in the sunset.
Rainbow Dash stood poised on the edge of the cloud, her mane blowing freely in the wind that caught at the edges of her feathers, insistent – tugging at her, inviting her to jump. To lean into it, to fall and twist and soar.
To be free.
But Rainbow lingered there, in that one rare moment of peace. Suspended above the world, where houses were reduced to specks and ponies to silence. Looking down on it all, knowing that not one bit of it had the power to touch her up here. The earth below was nothing more than a painting, laid out for her to view – a work of art.
Her eyes traced that tangled web of colour, shocking in its complexity. The dark ashy green of the forest. The yellow squares of wheat. Little bright splotches of earth-bound civilisation, and the white beacons of the cloud cities above. A silvery wisp of a river threading through it all as it led toward the great vast blue beyond.
Rainbow Dash lived for the thrill of the dive, of the chase. For the wind howling in her ears and tearing at the very roots of her mane. Her heart hammering in her ears. Breath catching in her throat as it approached – that feeling of raw, unadulterated power as the living rainbow blossomed behind her, her magic arcing across the sky.
There was nothing like it.
But these moments, these fleeting, floating moments…well, they weren’t so bad either.
She tilted her head, mane billowing as the wind picked up, and squinted down. Was that…there, that pinkish-purple smudge just beside the Everfree’s edge. That was Ponyville. She shot a glance up at the sun, which was climbing high overhead.
Almost noon. She was nearly late.
Her friends would be down there. Rarity would be locking up the boutique, Fluttershy would be leaving the sanctuary. Pinkie would be bouncing down the street right now, and any second the crack of Twilight’s teleportation would sound. Applejack, punctual to a fault, bless her – she would have left the farm three-quarters of an hour ago to be sure she was on time.
Only one ingredient was missing. Rainbow herself.
But still she lingered. Just a little longer, up here in the blue and the quiet. Silence was not something that came naturally to Rainbow Dash. She preferred the roar of the crowds at the Wonderbolts shows – or better yet, the roar of the wind, wild and unadulterated. She liked the laughter of her friends or the comforting honey-treacle tones of AJ’s voice late at night. Silence…well, she could do without it most days.
But sometimes, like right now, it hit just right. It was times like this that Rainbow remembered why she loved to fly.
And then somewhere far below, a hawk screeched, and the silence was shattered. The moment was lost. Rainbow Dash sighed, grimaced, and stuck her tongue out at the distant interloper who dared to fly where no pony would. Nopony but her, anyway.
And then she shook it off, that sense of vague disappointment in the ephemeral nature of peace, and spread her blue wings wide. A grin spread over her face, and she tensed the powerful muscles of her shoulders.
“Alright, then,” she said, eyebrows lowering into a glare. “You wanna go?”
It was a look that was at once both challenge and invitation. There was nopony in sight, but it was a challenge nonetheless. Rainbow Dash never went. She raced.
She rolled her head, listening to the vertebrae crackle. “Because let me tell you, buddy, I can go.”
She waited for a moment, but no response came from her invisible opponent. She laughed, a noise that was more an expression of defiance than of humour, and took a step toward the cloud’s edge. Then another. And another.
And then, with less fanfare than an earth pony exiting a train carriage, Rainbow leaned forward and simply let gravity take her. She fell like a stone, the wind pushing the flesh of her cheeks back to bare her teeth in a vicious grin.
She spiralled down, the world blurring into a mish-mash whirlwind of colour – a kaleidoscope run mad. And then, just as the force pressing on her eyeballs grew almost too much to bear, her wings snapped out. Her fall became a swoop and she banked out, the wind screaming behind her, the colours of her tail already blurring to show the rainbow forming behind.
“Aw, yeah!” The whoop echoed behind her as she soared away.
And far behind her, far above, the lonely little cloud continued on its solitary way as the silence and the peace returned.
Too short to be published as a story, but I hope you enjoy reading!
I do!
It's rare to see Rainbow being serene, but that just makes it more delightful when it happens.
I started copy-pasting the sentences I really liked into a reply, like I sometimes do, and quit about halfway through when I'd copy-pasted every word so far.
This is a great little story. "Great" as in "Alexander the Great", not as in Kellogg's Frosted Flakes. It even made me stop hating Rainbow Dash for a little while.
I hope you make an anthology story for your under-1000-word fics, like my The Twilight Zone, and publish this there, so it doesn't get lost.
I meant to get things done this afternoon, but I wrote this review of it instead.
Love it, you captured the moment wonderfully
5754938
Shaslan, please, do this! 😀
5754938 Hey, writing a review is things.
5754948 I hereby second the motion. All in favor?
Seriously, we twisted GapJaxie's arm until it almost came off when he published Dressing Room, and all that twisting got us a character portrait of each of the Mane 6 in the Actingverse (which turned into a book at Bronycon). Every character deserves that moment of perfect beauty, when the soufflé comes out of the oven just the perfect shade of brown, or reading a book that you've read a hundred times and pausing before turning the last page because you know it ends there.
One moment of perfect beauty
Dash embracing high-altitude serenity is a lovely image. I also hope you make an anthology story for your shorts; in my experience, just about every author can use one. In any case, thank you for sharing this.