//------------------------------// // Rainbow // Story: Love, or Twilight Learns That Joy Wants Eternity // by Cynewulf //------------------------------// Twilight surveyed the joyous riot that was her Self, her Court. It was not entirely solid, but it was certainly getting there. Physically, if that was a word one could apply to anything in the Inner Court, it was just the inside of her palace. The chairs were arranged around the Cutie Map as was normal, the decor was the same as it was when she was awake. Yet this hall in the waking world was mostly empty, and in the Court it was brimming with life. Ponies crowded around, chatting amiably here and there in little clumps. Her friends, her close inner circle of friends, hung around the chairs at the center of the room, laughing. Twilight floated above them all with lazy wings that worked by different rules and smiled wide. A warmth had settled into her chest. Cadance had the Court of Love, so she called it. Celestia and Luna obviously had Sun and Moon respectively. But all of them had puzzled over what sort of Court Twilight would have. Luna had envisioned something more like her own dreaming, with an active and adventuring court, always building or doing. Cadance had imagined something more along the lines of her own, a great gathering of friends and loved ones. Celestia? Celestia had offered several ideas, but had explicitly hoped that Twilight’s Court was not like her own. But it was like none of these, or at least not entirely like them. Her friends and loved ones were here, and they were active… but not in the way that the other Courts might imagine. Twilight lighted down on her throne and straightened her feathers. With outstretched hooves, Twilight asked loudly for silence and received it as two dozen smiling, cheerful faces looked inward towards her. She greeted them all, and then asked her five companions to take their seats. Court had begun. “Firstly, I’d like to thank you all for coming!” Twilight began with a bright sing-song. We’re going to have a long night tonight, I think.” Pinkie bounced in her great seat with obvious excitement. “Oh! Oh, what’s first?” “Don’t you get too excited, Pinkie,” the Court’s Applejack said as she tipped her hat and slouched lazily. “I have a feelin’ at least one of the bits of business won’t be easy.” “You’d be right,” Rarity said, and summoned a mirror to observe herself. “Excellent. Everything as it should be, and more than ready for serious business.” The mirror vanished, and a glass of wine replaced it. “Whenever you’re ready.” “I um…” Court Fluttershy squirmed in her seat until a kitten bounded from the crowd around them and curled up next to her in the slightly too large chair. “Ready,” she said. “And yeah, I’m ready,” Rainbow said. “If that’s the thing we’re doing, I’m ready. But I think I’m leading this one, right?” “Yes,” Twilight said. “I think you should.” “Gotcha. Alright! Listen up, ladies,” Rainbow said and cracked her joints. “This one is about me. I mean, like, me-me. Not Court me? I don’t really know how else to say the Not Court Rainbow. Look, it doesn’t matter. There’s something up with her, maybe something big, and nobody seems to know what is wrong. That about cut it, Twi?” “More or less,” Twilight said, furrowing her brow. “We know some things. We know that whatever it is that’s bothering Dash, it’s been bothering her for a few weeks now. She’s been hard to find and not really forthcoming with any information about her doings. She’s missed a few get-togethers, absences which can’t be explained by work or something else simple like that. I asked around, and everypony says that she’s been exhausted or grouchy or just generally… “Off,” Court Fluttershy said. “Yeah, I don’t like it,” Pinkie said. “I mean… it’s just not right. Rainbow Dash should be up and at ‘em! Or at least up. She’s lazy sometimes, but this isn’t just laziness.” “Avoiding the orchards,” Applejack said. “That ain’t normal.” “I have no idea what’s wrong,” Court Rainbow said. “I mean… It could be, like, a lot of things! Tons! I have no idea, you guys.” “Well, what sort of things?” Twilight asked, leaning her head on her hoof. “Give us some possibilities, and we’ll think about it.” Rainbow shrugged. “Well… Commander Spitfire said that she hadn’t messed anything up with the Bolts, so that’s out.” “Could it perhaps still be related to them?” cut in the Court’s Rarity. “They are a rather large part of her life now.” “I mean, yeah,” Dash conceded. “You’re not wrong. It could be related to them. But it isn’t, like, about them specifically? You would know. I would know.” Rarity hummed and sipped her wine. “Keep going. Think, Dash,” Twilight said. Rainbow bit her lip and looked up at the ceiling for a bit before rattling off a list. “Could be something with mom and dad. Could be one of the Bolts said something she didn’t like. Weather team doing poorly makes her feel guilty, or doing well makes her feel like she’s forgotten. It…” she screwed up her face. “I don’t think it’s romantic problems, for sure.” “Yeah, not thinkin’ so,” Applejack answered. “I hope not,”Rainbow murmured, half to herself. “That would be unfortunate,” Rarity commented, still sipping it. Twilight hummed. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. We have to. It’s why the court of amity is here!” In the waking world, Twilight Sparkle flew over Ponyville. It really was a wonderful place. She felt like she could wax poetic on it forever if given the chance, but she wouldn’t. Today, she had something else in mind. In her mind, the Court still murmured, but the chaos was starting to stabilize into something more coherent. It was not like hearing voices, as she had read about in books. It was not like madness at all. If anything, she felt more sane with these new, bright connections. It was hard to imagine a time before the Court, even though it was a new development. But wasn’t how things went? Change, and then gradual forgetting about what life without that change was like? It didn’t matter. The Court and herself were focused on a single point, or rather a single pony. Rainbow Dash, junior speedster, Wonderbolt, paragon of swiftness, and all around layabout on warm summer days. If you needed the sky cleared or a storm gathered, Rainbow Dash was your mare. Loyal to a fault, impervious to dismay… or well, so she seemed. Applejack’s orchards had been her first stop. Applejack still hadn’t seen their mutual friend in any of her trees. Sugarcube Corner had been next, with similar results. Pinkie’s sudden attempt to join the search had been cut short by a friendly yet firm Mrs. Cake who had pulled her back into the kitchen. And no Rainbow in the Library… so where else? Her cloud house seemed like a good choice, so Twilight Sparkle had set off through the sky to make a house call. The house was a bit bigger now. Rainbow Dash had made something of a project of expanding her home when she was in the off-season, to keep herself busy. The weather team was glad to let her help on occasion, but they’d filled the gap that she had left behind and helping out two or three hours a week wasn’t enough for a mare of action. So it was more of a cloud mansion now, which probably fit her new status as a Wonderbolt. Twilight stopped at the gate, made of cloud of course, and pondered how utterly ridiculous it was. Why a gate? Flying was a prerequisite to even come to this place, and that sort of implied three dimension of movement, so the whole point of a gate was moot. She rolled her eyes. A button. For a speaker. To call in. Rainbow Dash had litterally no need of this, and yet there it was sitting proudly next to her imperious gate, because of course it was. It probably wouldn’t even work. She pushed it anyway. A speaker--for she saw now there was one held tight beneath the cloudcrete--sparked to life. “Ah… um, hello,” she said, still trying to come to terms with the fact that Rainbow Dash had either paid some pegasus to install a completely unnecessary magitech component into her cloud house or had learned how to work with electrical magitech on her own. There was no answer. So, she continued. She might as well. “Hi, Dash! Just checking in! It’s Twilight, by the way. I mean, you can recognize my voice so I guess saying that isn’t really useful or neccessary but maybe the speaker distorts it. I’m not really sure. But it’s me. I got back yesterday and hadn’t seen you, and I know you’re on off season, so I figured I might drop by while you had leave and catch up!” Resounding silence. “And, uh, you know… maybe we could go flying? Because you like flying? And I like flying! I mean not as much as you… like… flying…” Nothing. “Oh, ponyfeathers. This is dumb. I’m just coming in, Rainbow!” Twilight stomped uselessly on the cloudcrete, spread her wings, and hopped the superfluous fence in a single effortless bound. Celestia had taught Twilight Sparkle many things. As a foal, she had learned civility and manners alongside magic and math. Logic and music and art and thaumaturgy and alchemy, all subjects in which Celestia had tutored her and which she had lost herself in. But she had learned things after, too. After the wings came, one of the lessons had been this: sometimes, you just need to break a stalemate. Were stuffy dignitaries spending days getting to the point? Do something outrageous, but not too outrageous. Perhaps your staff was getting too reliant on you because it was easy--why, what better cure for that ill than to be absent for a few days, not too far away but hard to find. In war, she showed up without a weapon at all and a disarming and alarming smile. In peace she showed up late with bells on and a Wonderbolts military parade before sheepishly and falsely apologizing for scheduling all of this hubbub on the wrong day. Celestia called it playing dice. Taking chances and looking ahead, knowing that the world was strange and never worked like it was expected to work, knowing that you had time to try over and over again but that no circumstance repeated exactly. Twilight just called it cutting through the bullshit, no dice, and for her it meant finding Rainbow Dash and hopefully dragging her out into the sunlight. The door was unlocked. Somehow, Twilight wasn’t even remotely surprised. The inside of the mansion was a strange and unthinking mixture of spartan and opulent. Her bannister, carved so finely as to look like marble, dominated the central hall. Around it, here and there, one found pedestals with trophies and awards. A few even had news clippings, either of herself or of all of the Elements.Twilight walked with her eyes on swivel, taking it all in. It occurred to her that they had rarely visited Rainbow’s house. She always came down for them. It made sense, didn’t it? Only two of their circle of friends could fly, so it wasn’t a practical spot. But even after she’d gained her wings, Twilight hadn’t visited more than two or three times. Rainbow was just so rarely at home. “You can sorta tell she doesn’t come home much,” Twilight said to herself with a frown. Aside from the small pedestal’d shrines and a single portrait in the main hall, there wasn’t much to the decor. A few boxes here and there, yes, but that was it. She hadn’t even unpacked completely after her renovation. “Rainbow!” Twilight called. “Rainbow, where are you? I know you’re in here.” No answer because of course not. Twilight explored the first story, wandering from room to room. She found what had probably been meant as a home theatre of sorts, complete with a projector that she was quite sure Rainbow hadn’t yet used. She found a library--or what she guessed was a library from the flock of small book-filled boxes scattered about it with a amorphous soft cloud to lie on in the middle. Rainbow evaded her, so she mounted the stair. Halls with tall windowed openings to the bright blue sky and a few more cloudcrete-pasted portraits, held in place by old pegasus arts. Until, along the last of those halls, she heard something stirring. Definitely Rainbow. Twilight went flat immediately, hugging the ground and flaring her wings to jump if she had to. Ponies always forget to look in two directions: up and down. Pegasi aren’t immune: they always forget to look down. It was why Rainbow Dash kept clipping thatched rooves and careening into windows. Being below eye-level might give her a few seconds of advantage to strike. Which was way, way more aggressive sounding than she needed, even if she was planning to be pretty aggressive about this. It’s what Dash would want. Probably. Another rustling, and then as she creeped she heard someone trying to control their breathing on the other side of a door. Twilight grinned. That’d be Rainbow. There were Alicorns and alicorns, but regardless of origin, they all possessed the same lightness of hoof. It was not an absolute thing, but her apotheosis had brought with it a certain degree of grace. So when she threw open the door and jumped into the gap, she fully expected to catch Rainbow Dash and bear her down into the cloud. But Rainbow Dash was fast. More than fast, Rainbow was the very image of a pegasus in her perfection. Twilight had the momentum, but Dash had all the skill, and so even as Twilight’s hooves touched her she was gone. Twilight fell forward and landed face first in cloud. Or, rather, she landed and her face went through the cloud an inch or so. While Twilight squirmed and pulled her head out of the clouds, Rainbow Dash was yelling. “Twilight! What the hell were you thinking? You could have been some kind of robbery in progress! What if I had tried to kick you into next week when you came in?” Twilight shook her head, rubbed her sore neck, and then sighed. “Rainbow, I called you on your speaker. And then I called you from almost every point in the house. I’ve been calling for you for awhile.” “So?” “So if I was a robber, you’d have known already. I’m hardly even intruding, seeing as how you were pretty quiet about me saying I was coming in. Not the best defense against the charge, I know.” Rainbow Dash’s brow furrowed and she crossed her forelegs as she hovered irritably in place. Twilight gave her a quick lookover. She seemed fine, physically. So she wasn’t sick, as the Court’s Fluttershy had thought she might be--good news. But there were bags under her rosey eyes and she looked like a mare running on too little sleep for too long. “What was so important that you had to give me a heart attack?” Twilight sighed again. “I didn’t. You knew I was here. I wasn’t a surprise. Why were you avoiding me?” Rainbow Dash growled, “Do I have to talk whenever you command it, your Highness? Are you ordering me to have company over?” Twilight blinked, and her cleverness fled. Her whole body seemed to go slack under Rainbow’s wilting glare. “I…” But Rainbow Dash advanced, pointing an accusing hoof. “How’d you think this was gonna go over? You were just gonna bust up into my house, bother me when I could be napping or whatever, and then just assume that the fact that you wanna talk means that I have to come out and do whatever the hell it is that you want? You don’t think sometimes I just wanna be alone? You think maybe sometimes I just wanna little Rainbow Dash time to figure out what Rainbow Dash wants to do, and I don’t want anybody yelling in my halls and trying to tackle me through my own house, and waking me up? You ever think that?” Twilight Sparkle’s tears came unbidden and traitorously. She tried to wipe at them, still reeling. “I… I was just…” “Just what, your highness?” Something snapped. Twilight Sparkle began to cry, but her teeth ground together, and she pushed Rainbow back. “You know what? I’m here because I’m worried about you. Everyone is worried about you. Fluttershy was too busy and she was too nervous and the others can’t fly, so that’s why I’m here. You ever think that maybe when you intentionally avoid all of your friends the entire time you’re on leave, then yell at the only one that sees you, that maybe there’s something wrong about that?” “So I’m tired!” Rainbow Dash threw her forelegs open. “So I’m exhausted.” “So am I!” Twilight said. “Dash, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I didn’t give you privacy, but I’m here now. I’m not trying to order you to do anything. If you really just… don’t care that all of your friends are worried sick, I’ll just go home. But I’m not coming back. Pinkie can figure out how to get everypony up here if she wants, but I’m not coming back.” She poked the now sputtering Rainbow on her chest. “I’m sorry. I really am. I didn’t mean to scare you that bad, and I kind of thought it would be funny. But you know that I worried about my friends thinking exactly that, that I was some kind of tyrant now, or that I would want to be better than them, or that I wanted to order them--you knew that and you said it any way.” “I--” Twilight shook. “This was stupid. I was stupid. I should have just let you stay in your dumb cloud mansion and rot.” She turned, and made to leave, but Rainbow Dash caught her midstep. “Wait.” “Why? Obviously this isn’t going to work.” “Just wait.” Twilight sighed and slumped. “Sorry.” “Adrenaline?” “Adrenaline.” Rainbow nodded. “Same. It’s why you don’t talk about any screw ups in the air until you’ve had a chance to lie down, eat a snack, and have a shower. Not ever. Nothing good comes of it. Let’s not do this here, okay? This is a bad place and it’s a bad time. Will you give me like… five minutes? You can wait for me in the living room. Er, the hall. Whatever the thing is called. I’ll be down in like five minutes.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “We’ll go flying. I don’t care where. We’ll talk, okay? I just need five minutes.” Twilight nodded, feeling a little hollow, and stepped back out into the hall. “Okay. I’ll wait for you.” She did not say sorry. It wasn’t quite time to say sorry. Instead, she sat on her haunches in Dash’s foyer and considered herself. Where had that come from? She’d been a little nervous this morning, sure. About Rainbow, or so she’d thought. Dash saying that had just… she shook her head. No, the anger was coming back. The hurt. Your majesty. She hated those words. She never wanted to hear them used to describe her, at least not by the likes of Rainbow Dash. Twilight closed her eyes and breathed. She counted. One. Two. Three. Three in, three out, three in, three out. Cadance had been the one who taught her this first. Celestia had walked her through it afterwards as well. Three in. Three out. When she felt too much, it helped. Grounding helped. Feeling like Rainbow Dash was taking forever, Twilight went back over the events of the morning. Breakfast with Spike. Eggs and toast, coffee and some orange juice. The newspaper, a little more coffee, some reports from the Burgher of Halftrot that she’d put off. She’d written him back with recommendations and the promise of some royal funds from her new coffers to help pay for the infrastructure that the town needed. How had she felt? Good, actually. It had been a good morning. Lunch, and then here. That was it. She’d already consulted with her friends the day before, and they’d all agreed on this. Yet, she felt ill at ease. Sick, even, if that wasn’t too extreme. She’d quarrelled with her friends before, but not quite like that. Rainbow had always been a prankster and a rough houser. Yes, Twilight had probably gone too far, but that reaction had just… Rainbow descended the stair. She did it slowly. Twilight, who had opened her eyes, watched Dash until she came to a stop right in front of her. They stood there awkwardly for a few beats, until Rainbow sighed and ruffled her feathers. She pursed her lips, looked as if she were coming up with something to say and then abandoned it, and then finally just groaned. “Well this is awkward. Look, let’s jet, alright? You, me, and a lap over the Everfree?” Twilight nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.” They didn’t say anything else until they hit the woods. “I’m sorry,” Twilight said. “About, uh, I was going to say ‘for breaking and entering’ but I think technically it was actually just trespassing.” Rainbow, flying on her left, smirked. “Trespassing sounds right. And it’s okay. It really is. Door wasn’t locked, you were worried… I get it. I’m sorry I said that.” Twilight bit her lip, and then nodded. “It’s okay.” They were quiet for a bit. Twilight wasn’t sure where to go from here. She had anticipated finding Rainbow Dash and then… well, to be honest, she hadn’t really thought much past that point. She’d assumed that Rainbow Dash would be easy to shake from whatever funk had overridden her normal mood. Dash was elastic. Sure, there were some sore spots that could send her spiralling. Every pony had things like that. Twilight had exams and tardiness. Rainbow Dash had her image as a cool, strong pony. Also her wings, Twilight noted. That was a big one. And her hooves, actually, now that Twilight thought about it. What was with that? That particular berserk button had never made sense. Could she just… ask? Just say, hey Rainbow Dash, what’s been eating you? But no, there was no way it was that easy. Ponies weren’t just easy that way. They didn’t just get to the point. There was always a whole series of layers to peel back first before you got to the important bits. “Twilight, when did you know what you wanted to do with your life?” Rainbow asked, as she lazily banked and Twilight followed her into the wide turn. Twilight, thrown for a loop, tried to answer. And failed. Twice. “What?” she managed. “You know,” Rainbow said with a grimace. “I… I mean, I sorta do? Can you elaborate? That’s kind of a big question. I mean…” “Okay, okay. Lemme start over.” Rainbow waved her front hooves, as if to dispell her first attempt. “Okay. So… like, when you were young, did you have dreams?” “Of course! Every pony does.” “What were they?” Twilight hummed. “I wanted to know everything. About magic, about the world, about the sciences.” “Yeah, shoulda seen that one coming. Okay, did you ever get there?” “You mean, did I ever know everything? Well of course not.” “Right. It was a dream. It was something way, way off. Something you had to work towards, and it didn’t matter if you never got there! Trying to get there was enough. Trying and trying and trying and all along you got better, and you always had something to do. Right?” Twilight nodded. An inkling of an idea had wormed its way into her brain. She didn’t like it. “Right.” “What if tomorrow you knew all the magic?” “Well,” Twilight said, lapsing without pause into lecture mode, “that’s not really possible. You see--” “Nah, just go with me here. Please?” Twilight sighed. “Okay. Yes. I know all of the magic, as you said.” “Right. What would you do? Would you still use magic? Yeah, of course you would. You’d use magic all the time. But would you still get excited about it?” Twilight blinked. She thought. “Not in the same way.” “Exactly.” “What’s this about?” Twilight asked. “I’m not really sure,” Rainbow admitted. She banked again, and Twilight noticed that they were starting to turn back towards town. “I just… I don’t know. I’m restless, Twi. I don’t like what I’m doing. No, okay, that’s a lie. I’m sorry. I just…” She groaned. “I don’t know.” “What was your dream?” Twilight asked, flying a little closer. The wind picked up as Rainbow led her into a dive and Twilight followed as best she could. They pulled out right above the trees, and she strained to hear her friend over the rushing cadance of her own heart. “Wonderbolts! Always the Bolts, Twi.” “That was it?” “Yeah.” Rainbow and Twilight hovered above the trees. “Yeah, that was it. I mean, really, what were my chances? I always knew it was a long shot as a kid. But I didn’t care. I knew it was a long shot when I was older, and I still didn’t care.” “And now here you are. You beat the odds.” “I did.” Rainbow flashed her a smile that quickly faded. “I really did, didn’t I? I pulled the sonic rainboom as a kid, which reall shouldn’t be possible. But I did it! I tore that baby a new one. A normal pegasus can’t pull that off without years and years of training, and a kid certainly can’t! But I did it, and I don’t even know how. I just did it!” “I wish I could have seen it up close,” Twilight said. “Yeah. It was something,” Rainbow said with another smirk. This one died even faster. “But everything has been that way. I just breeze through it.” “So you’re just too good?” Twilight asked playfully. “You know it. No, I mean… I don’t know. The Bolts as a dream was great. It helped make me who I am. It made me awesome. But like, what now? I did that. What comes after? The stuff that was supposed to keep me going for years is just gone and everything else I can try that comes to mind I know is only going to keep me occupied a few months at most. I could try and get to a triple rainboom. That might take me a year. I’m not bragging here--I know I do that a lot, and I know it gets on pony’s nerves and I get that--I’m dead serious. Give me a year, with my speed and the way I can train now that I’ve got the Bolts facilities and the team’s medical facility and I can do it in a year. Easy.” “That’s… that would be a pretty huge achievement, Dash.” “Yeah. And then what? I got a lot of year to fill, Twilight. I can’t keep going from thing to thing until I run out of stuff. It ain’t going to last me that long!” Twilight shook her head. “No, I think you’re right. That mentality isn’t sustainable anymore.” “So… what?” Rainbow Dash asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. She gestured with her head and they started back towards town. “What do you mean?” “So what do I do now?” Rainbow asked. Twilight laughed. She couldn’t help it. This was not the kind of question you asked mid-flight, and you certainly didn’t ask Twilight Sparkle. “Stars, Rainbow, how should I know? I can’t tell you what to make your life about! I’m not even sure if it has to be about anything.” Rainbow Dash shook her head. “Life’s gotta have a point, Twilight.” “I mean, does it? Stay with me here, just follow for a bit. It’s good to have goals, right? But you can’t live off of a couple of lofty goals forever. Consider this: I wanted to know everything, so I said. But imagine what that would like, if I really tried to do that. I would never have any time to do anything else. I would lock myself in libraries for months, and only leave to go to the next one. I wouldn’t talk to anypony ever. Remember how much of a shut in I was when I first moved here?” “Oh, definitely.” Twilight smiled faintly. “Yeah, well, that’s old Twilight at her most social. Imagine old Twilight at her most unsocial.” Rainbow Dash snorted. “I can’t. She’d be invisible.” “Right. What I’m trying to say, Dash, is that… not having one huge thing to structure your life around… that’s not a bad thing. You can enjoy the year-long goals as they come, and focus in, but for the rest of your life? This is going to sound pretty uncharacteristic of me, but I think life is about making it up as you go. I didn’t exactly plan to be a princess,” Twilight finished. Rainbow Dash hummed. She shrugged. “So… is that why you’ve been avoiding everyone?” “Kind of,” Rainbow replied after a moment. “Mostly. I’ve just not been in a good mood. You sending Spitfire a memo didn’t exactly make me feel better.” “She told you I sent it?” Twilight groaned. “Yup.” “Wow. Well, that was dumb.” “Very!” Twilight sighed, and followed Rainbow Dash on one last turn. “Where are we headed, Rainbow?” “The Corner!” Rainbow replied, and laughed. “Flying makes me hungry, and you owe me!” Rainbow picked up speed, and Twilight did her best to keep up as they soared over the fields around Ponyville. They fell into a wordless race, Rainbow diving and rolling and Twilight copying her move for move, without the grace but as best as she could. And it was okay. There was always time.