Little something · 8:57pm Aug 21st, 2015
Something from an early chapter of the rewrite. Check the last blog for some more WRTMI details if you so desire, since I was too dumb to tag the story.
“Jus'... jus' think about what Ah said, Dash, that's all.” Applejack finished her drink and remained where she sat, swaying slightly, staring into her empty tankard. “Safe night.”
Rainbow Dash nodded, tapping her hoof against the wall before it found the door. Aha! she thought in triumph, falling sideways as she put her weight upon it. She staggered into the street, grinning contentedly as she let out a rich burp. Shops all around her were long closed, the darkness of the alleyway unhindered by the light their windows had cast earlier.
Scootaloo, though...
She frowned. That was a worry for tomorrow. Rainbow had drank so much of that iceberg ale that she was liable to go blind before she reached the edge of town. Still, the thoughts clung to the inside of her head, sticky honey resting inside the honeycombs of her brain. It was hard to focus on where she was going, but after a solid five minutes, she had reached the sleepy town square and started down the road out of Ponyville.
How, though? It's not just open and shut!
“Aaah, shaddap!” Rainbow Dash shouted at herself, pushing away from the fence she had nearly fell into. “Tomorrow! I'll deal with it tomorrow!”
With a great effort, she steadied herself long enough to get a respectable take off. With a whoosh, Rainbow began to climb with heavy wing beats and straightened out her body, accelerating ahead. Ponyville began to shrink below. Higher and higher she rocketed, tail whipping in the wind, keen, if bloodshot, eyes locked onto the distant arrangement of clouds and marble that made up her floating home. Two minutes later, she touched down on the front step. Hooves haphazardly stepping as they tried to readjust to having to walk, Rainbow Dash exhaled. Celestia, she was drunk! Opening her door, she clutched to it as it swung wide. It closed with a snap from a buck and she slid the bolt over. Turning away from it, she trotted a few paces before slamming into the stone bust. Swearing colourfully, she caught it as it fell off its plinth, which crashed to the floor. Carefully returning both bust and plinth to their respective locations and orientations, she sat her rump down on the floor and sighed.
“How the hell am I going to pull this off?” she asked the silence, burying her face into her hooves. “This is just a disaster waiting to hap—” She hicupped. “—waiting to happen...”
It took her thirty seconds. She got to her hooves, shaking her head amiably. She even gave a bit of a chuckle, though stopped in fear of getting sick. She had to breath steadily, nose practically touching the floor. Finally, it passed.
“You're overreacting,” she informed the floor, snapping her head up and flicking the end of her nose with her left hoof confidently. “You know her. You wanna do the squirt good! I'll do it, I'll find a way, I always do, I always will!” Nothing could snuff out her certainty. “Isn't that right, Pegacelsus?” she asked the bust before leaving the spacious foyer and cantering to her kitchen. “I know what to do!”
She found her liquor cabinet, throwing the little door open and thrusting her forehoof inside. Biting her tongue and concentrating, she tried not to knock over half the shelf as she seized a small flask of amber liquid. Closing the cabinet, she flapped her wings and flew again.
“And I'll fly, and I'll fly...” she mumbled smoothly, zipping back into the foyer and up her curving stairs, smacking her wing painfully against the upper bannister, “until the end of the... man, that friggin' hurt!” She landed and waved the wing gingerly. “Good job, Dash. Ten out of ten.”
Once into her bedroom, she went to her bed and flopped down onto her back. Sending no less than three Daring Do hardbacks onto the floor, she laid the bottle on the bedside table and screwed off the stopper. Her throat burning from a swig, she placed it back down and threw herself over the opposite edge of the bed. Resisting the returning, momentary urge to spill her stomach onto the floor, she leaned down and poked her head under the bed, everything upside down.
“Gotcha, bitch!” she swore gleefully, snatching at her photo album. “Always under my butt!”
She slipped off the bed and fell head over hooves, finding herself staring at the ceiling. She closed her eyes, willing her stomach to chill out. After a moment, she crawled into bed, drank some more spiced rum, and sat up, the album resting in her lap.
The noise of the plastic pages tearing apart as she opened it made her ears twitch. The pages were a little sticky to the touch, the buildup of grime over the course of many long years creating a nearly adhesive surface. Behind the protective covering, the photos looked faded with the years.
The sticky surface made turning the pages a little easier for someone with a set of hooves, as they lifted easily. Rainbow Dash paused here and there on certain photos, trying bring the scenes to life in her head with the same vividness as she could see her own world. Rainbow wondered for the millionth time who these ponies were, as there were no captions. Old relatives of her mother and father, perhaps? That would make them her relatives, too, though some of the older ones were long dead, to be sure. The locations were mostly familiar; she saw Cloudsdale here, what was unmistakeably the Manehattan skyline across the beach there. There was her father as a little colt.
She had had his messy mane when she was that young. He and a few childhood friends were sitting around a picnic table, forehooves wrapped about one another's shoulders, beaming for the camera. Though the colours had faded, his brilliantly coloured mane, just like her own, stood out clearly in contrast with his friends. Rainbow sighed, staring wistfully at the page.
“You'd know what to do, Dad. You always had the answers...” But she didn't know where her father was.
She moved on, flipping the pages slowly, studying the images carefully. Finally, she she saw the first photograph that had what she was looking for. Radiant Dash was a handsome young stallion, dressed in military fatigues and hoof-in-hoof with a dewy-eyed mare. Her mother.
Heavens Above's broad, young smile was like a friendly wave, leaping from the thin photographs to reach out to touch her. The happiness in these two young souls struck her so hard at that moment, knowing it was never fated to last long. What was worse, this wasn't the pony Rainbow Dash remembered. Heavens was so healthy and youthful in appearance. It wasn't fair, she mused, wiping a tear from her eye and slopping a little of the drink over the plastic covering after a hasty, shaky gulp; the Heavens Rainbow Dash remembered was frail, pale, and sick. And gone...
Rainbow Dash moved on, seizing a large chunk of pages almost angrily and turning them at once. In one photograph, she was sat upon her father's lap, maybe a year old, perhaps less. Her head was thrown as baby Rainbow Dash stared admiringly up at her daddy. Her mother sat beside them, wing wrapped around her father's shoulders with her eyes fixed upon the camera. Rainbow checked her father's eyes, just out of curiosity, and he was looking at his foal. Other pictures had the same theme. Rainbow Dash imaged how frustrating it must have been for her parents, trying to get her baby self to sit still and smile for the camera. There was always something else she was looking at. Usually Dad, by the looks of it. Looking at Mom, there... the tree, there. Dad again. Dad, yet again. Didn't think I was that fond of the old dog back then... I only remember always wanting to be with Mom. That must have been because... I must've known she wouldn't be around for much longer.
She closed the album, eyes and face screwed up, the empty rum bottle rolling down her legs and resting near the foot of the bed. Why did she do this to herself? Why even look at the pictures, as wasted as she was, if she was just going to make herself miserable? Was a dead mare going to advise her?
“What the h-hell did you expect, you IDIOT!” Rainbow Dash roared at herself, shaking her head and gasping, fresh tears flowing down into her open mouth, running down her dry throat. “What the hell were you gonna do, you st-st-stupid fi-filly?! Dig her up and ask for advice? 'Oh, gee whiz, Mom! I k-know you're busy and all that, but I ne-need to learn how to pretend to be a real mom and you're the only one I've ever known!'”
Anger and grief thundered through her blood in equal measure. The bawling and the evening's alcohol conspired together to give her a pounding headache. Her mother couldn't help her from the grave and she didn't even know if Heavens had been good at the job to begin with.
“Of course she w-was. Stu-stupid thought,” she scolded herself, forehooves wrapped around her knees and forehead grinding against them.
The love was definitely there, but aside from her foalhood, Rainbow Dash had to have been raised by her father; her mother would have been too ill to care for her. The cancer had taken her vision first, too, Rainbow remembered then. And she cried all over again. Aside from Heavens Above, Rainbow recalled precious little from her early, early filly years. The doll thing had to have come from her mom, because Rainbow Dash had grown up as a tomboy.
“I can't write to Dad until I visit the base and ask where he's been most recently deployed,” Rainbow explained to herself once she had no more tears to spill. Her mind was so weary. “I'll fly to Cloudsdale tomorrow and get the info, yes, I will remember. You'll remember, Rainbow Dash! But for Scoots... I'll ask the rest of the girls.”
Absolutely tremendous!
Aww that's so sad