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// First breathe after a long sleep 
// Story: To Wonder On A Dream 
// by rabbitfaster 
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She sleeps up above the rooftops. 

I'm sure there was once a time when seeing her tail hang over the edge of a cloud was a surprise, a mystery. Maybe even a game foals played, seeing who could spot it first. 

But now I am sure that it seems common place to so many. Perhaps to every other view except mine. 

I wish I could blissfully ignore that rainbow shock of color whenever her cloud of the afternoon floated by. 

But I'll never be able to again. Perhaps I scribble out these feelings as a warning, some cautionary tale that... well we often forget in our endeavors to help others that when we step into their darkness, a piece of it always comes with when we step back out. The best of intentions may get you far, but there will always come that moment when you hear the troubles of another and they inevitably become your own. 

It makes so much sense why she, Rainbow Dash, is so centered on being so fast, so loyal. 

I suppose it may help you understand more of what I mean if I begin where that moment began. 

With the most peculiar sight of Rainbow Dash standing beside the local pond.  Not hovering, not soaring over, not splashing within, simply standing and staring out onto the shimmering water as the sun began to fade into evening. 

This was what caught my attention and drew me in. Never before had I seen the speedster so still, so contemplative, I foolishly assumed that perhaps it was a moment in reflection of a recent triumph but when I came closer, if even only for a moment, I saw it, the hollowness of her eyes. The empty mourning for something so profoundly lost that there was never hope of its return in the first place. 

And like so many others before me and so many that will come after, I wrote my own ticket and asked her, "what is wrong Rainbow?"
She blinked a few times and with each passing tick life returned in spades to her eyes before they rotated and locked onto mine. "Oh, Marigold. It's good to see you, your mane has grown."

My response died on my lips as the unexpected compliment soothed a nerve I hadnt known was tender. After a few wordless sputters I was able to kick my speech center back into working order. "Rainbow, Thank you but I... I couldnt help but notice that-"

"Notice hunh?" Rainbow cut in. Not brusquely, but more just as a genuine question. Then her tone took more a mirth to it to my confusion. "Do we really notice anything when it's all passing us by?"

I was stunned. I had spoken with Rainbow Dash on many an occasion and though she was due here and there for a good deep thought, this felt entirely alien. A husk was still standing here wearing the eyes of my friend and it continued when I did not respond with much more than a head tilt.

"It's okay Marigold, it's me. I had the same reaction you know? When I first realized it. Time I mean." Now her voice took on the lengths and depths of leagues, the weight of the air felt thick in my lungs as the volume in her timbre fell on those last words. 

"I..Rainbow, what do you mean?" I couldn't think clearly, all I could do was what my brain was programmed to do, question, desperately search for some meaning to cling to. I was in the thick of her mystery now and I wouldn't step back until it had been solved.

"You know that no matter how fast I fly, or run, or swim, or how many records I break....I will never have actually saved any time. In fact ill likely have used it faster. How ironic." She shook her head and her mane tousled in that way that somehow always put me at ease, and now I was more thankful for it than ever. 

"I have so much energy all the time, others say its a pegasus thing, some egghead thing about our connections to weather magic and its unpredictable nature or something. Honestly Marigold? I'm hardly ever tired."

This statement was given more weight by the sudden contact she made with her eyes again, as if she had known I would have the reaction that I would and she had been waiting for it. Waiting for the validation that perhaps she had felt the same way when this first came to her. "Rainbow, but you sleep all the time, I even look out for your cloud on my morning walks."

With the confusion evident in my voice she smiled. I will never forget that smile. 

"One day I will die. But its likely each of my friends will go before me."
It was such a simple matter of fact statement but something about it just ground inside my ears. I wanted her to stop but somewhere my heart knew it was too late.

"Time,  never stops, never slows, but some days..... Some days when I wake up Marigold I forget for a moment when it is. I've never been so happy as when those moments come. Because for a few fleeting seconds, maybe a minute, all of reality is just part of a dream and all those hundreds of days behind me are now stacked ahead of me again." 

Her wings twitched with excitement and the passion I loved bled back into those gorgeous orbs of her eyes.  Her chest puffed and she stood straighter "And every moment is mine again, not lost to the whims of a power far greater, to an all mighty chain being pulled link by link towards an inevitable end. No, " she shakes her head and her grin falters the slightest, "-No, I am the master of my soul again. I don't hear the ticking of the clock when I fly. That is the worst Marigold."

And she looks at me and I know not for the first time what heart break feels like. I step towards her and she turns towards me. "I know that it's my heartbeat. But when I fly so fast that my ears are down there are moments when I hit a sweet spot and the only noise in existence is that rhythm. Twilight says its me facing a moment of stark realization of mortality, whatever the buck that's really saying. I just know it reminds me that even my body is a biological clock."

She turns her head now and stares into me. "I...so you sleep so much...to forget that your time is so short?" and the gears are whirring inside my mind a million rotations per minute when I subconsciously recognize that my heart beat sounds like the tempo of a drum in my left ear. 

I know it's because of the scar tissue from an injury when I was young, at that moment I know that at least. But thinking back on that day as I write this I know that was the last moment of my waking life that I couldn't hear the drum of my heartbeat in my ear. 

Rainbow smiled again and stepped closer still. "Yes. Yes. I know it sounds a bit...romantic for someone like me to think that way... or really I guess it's just depressing. I...Thank you for asking Marigold. I didn't realize how much I needed to talk about that." Her smile is genuine and mine is half as we hug.

Her words are muffled until I turn my head to my good ear, and hear her asking if we can stay like this for a moment.  I remember clearly that even though it felt like my ear would pop from the pounding of my heart, that the excitement of that moment overrode the feeling for a blessed time. 

"I...yes Rainbow I would like that." 



I put down the pen from my mouth and look out the window where I can see that the cloud of dust that kicked up in my front yard was the signal of Rainbow Dash landing. Not for the first time the beating of the drum in my ear is in time to the steps she takes up to my door, her strides coincide with a small shred of my sanity falling away. 

But that is the risk we take. 

We ones who go searching in others darkness for a little light. 

Sometimes a bit of that darkness stays. 

Rainbow smiles as she opens the door and barely touches the floor between us before she is here, holding me close to her chest where for a single moment, all I hear is the consistent beating of a single drum, our hearts aligned in their beaten time. 

And as I look through a shock of rainbow hair out the window towards a clear blue sky, I have to be thankful that I'm here with her. 
I'm sure that if I was alone with this sound, with these thoughts of maddening mortality, of isolation, that I would surely lose my mind. 

We begin to speak of our days and I show her my writing, something she has always loved, and we both smile. I'll never truly know her mind, but I like to think that in this moment we both believe that the passing of time could be a comfortable thing as long as we could do it together.