//------------------------------// // Endings, Beginings // Story: Little Glimpses // by Skijarama //------------------------------//     Four days later…     “Dangit!” Rainbow groaned in severe frustration just outside of the Cloudsdale hospital. She had just finished spending the last four days there having her wing healed up after her crash. This would be the last day they could spend in Cloudsdale before having to return to Canterlot. Princess Celestia, Twilight and Fluttershy all gave the prismatic pegasus looks of sympathy.     It was Celestia who spoke next. “I know how badly you wanted this visit to go off without a hitch. I am sorry that things turned out so… poorly,” she then shifted her eyes briefly to Twilight. “But please remember that they could have turned out far, far worse had Twilight not caught you.”     Rainbow nodded with a heavy sigh. “Yeah… Yeah, I know,” she turned her glum expression on Fluttershy and gave a weak smile. “Sorry we don’t have more time…”     Fluttershy shook her head and smiled back. “It’s alright, Rainbow. I don’t blame you. You got hurt and needed to get fixed up.”     Twilight gave a small nod of her own. “Exactly. And besides, there’s always next time.”     Rainbow perked up just slightly and looked to her adoptive mother eagerly. “Oh! When can we come again?”     Celestia deflated slightly at that question, knowing she was about to disappoint Rainbow Dash. “I’m not sure, Rainbow. It will probably be a few months at the very least, and that is a very generous estimate.”     Rainbow sighed and lost her smile at that. “Oh… alright.” she scuffed the ground with a hoof and then began to trot forward. She paused next to Fluttershy before leaning over and giving her a quick hug.     “We still have a few hours, Rainbow,” Twilight pointed out hopefully while looking to Celestia for confirmation. The alicorn nodded, giving Twilight the green light to continue her thought. “We can still spend some time with Fluttershy before we have to go home. Just, you know, nothing too active.”     Rainbow glanced at Twilight and then to Fluttershy with a small frown. “No more of that board game. I’m not suffering anymore losses while I’m here.” she said firmly, to which everypony else gave responses of amusement. Fluttershy giggled, Twilight snorted with a smirk and Celestia held a hoof up to cover her own small laughs.     “Actually,” Fluttershy ventured with her smile growing. “I have something in mind if, you know, if that’s okay.”     Rainbow grinned widely and nodded. “Well, yeah! Let’s hear it.”     Fluttershy nodded and gestured with a forehoof towards the flight academy, which was currently closed for the day. “We could go and relax by the old racing rings. Where you did the sonic rainboom, remember?”     Rainbow raised an eyebrow before glancing between everypony present. “Er, why there, out of curiosity?”     Fluttershy reached out and gently tapped Rainbow’s shoulder. “Well, that’s also when I got my cutie mark. The rainboom scared all of those little critters and I had to comfort them. I don't think I would have ever found out how much I love animals if it wasn’t for that. I guess I… want to reminisce?” she explained before shrinking slightly. “That is, if it’s okay with you.”     Twilight gave her own nod of agreement. “Hey, that sounds fine by me. I’ve kinda been meaning to ask a few questions about that, actually…”     Rainbow looked between the two and then nodded with her own smile returning in full. “Alright, I got’cha. Let’s go.”     For the last while, Rainbow, Fluttershy and Twilight had all been sitting on a stray cloud, looking down on the flight academy and the race track. At first it had been silent between them, just relaxing. Gradually, though, conversation began to spring up between Rainbow and Fluttershy as they discussed the day she had performed the rainboom. Twilight listened with interest for a while, but once again she found herself zoning out. The white tendrils were appearing on the edges of her vision as she looked down upon the race rings. If she listened closely, she thought she could hear another set of voices, both distraught…     You don’t know what it’s like to lose a friend because of a cutie mark!     Twilight blinked when Rainbow Dash pressed a hoof to her shoulder, shaking her out of her trance. “Huh, what? Did you say something?” she asked, blinking rapidly and shaking her head to clear the fog. Rainbow flinched back from Twilight’s response.     “Uh… yeah. I was asking if you wanted to ask your questions about my rainboom?” Dash asked with a small frown of worry crossing her face. She leaned over and looked at Twilight in the eye very critically. “You alright?”     “Yes, Rainbow. I’m fine,” Twilight said, playfully shoving Dash away while being careful not to agitate her still tender wing. “And sure. I guess the first thing I want to know is what was the date you performed the rainboom on? Like, the day you got your cutie mark is kind of like a second birthday. Everypony remembers there own.”     Rainbow gave a small smirk. “It was the fourteenth of, uh, march, I think? I don’t remember exactly, now that I think about it. The following couple of months were kinda, well, stressful, if you’ll remember…”     Twilight nodded slowly with a small look of sympathy on her face. “Right, sorry. Well, I asked because the way you kept describing it, the Rainboom, that is, reminded me of the day I got my cutie mark, which was on the fourteenth of march.”     Fluttershy leaned forward to look past Rainbow Dash at Twilight. “Really? How did you get yours?”     Rainbow scrunched up her nose a bit. “Yeah, now that you mention it, you never told me your cutie mark story either. Spill!” She declared with an eager grin forming.     But when I stop the Rainboom… YOU WILL!     Twilight gave a small grunt, her head throbbing in protest. A forehoof reached up and pressed itself just under her horn, hoping to lessen the sudden pain. “What the…?” she mumbled.     Glancing up, she noticed that Rainbow Dash had also reached up to her head, grimacing in discomfort. “Ow, this is different…” she grumbled, her eyes losing focus.     Twilight gasped slightly, unable to formulate much of a response through the sudden flickering white in her eyes and the heaviness in her head.     And when I destroy this scroll, THERE WILL BE NO WAY FOR YOU TO CHANGE IT!     Those words echoing in Twilight and Rainbow’s minds, they both let out startled cries as their senses were overwhelmed by a flood of sights and sounds. From the outside, Fluttershy watched the two fearfully, realizing that they were both succumbing to a flash.     “Starlight, you’re right! I don’t know what you went through, but I do know you can’t do this!” An adult, alicorn Twilight Sparkle cried out in despair while reaching out for the bright lilac colored unicorn who stood on the clouds above her. Twilight leaned forward in desperation, pleading. “I’ve seen where this leads, and so have you!”     From where she stood, young Twilight watched the proceedings with wide eyes and a slack jaw. For the first time she was watching from outside of the flashes depiction of her. When she looked up to the unicorn, her eyes caught sight of somepony else standing to her right. Turning to look, she saw Rainbow Dash looking up with a slack jaw and wide eyes as well. She turned to Twilight. “Are we… BOTH having this?!” she asked, clearly flummoxed.     Twilight turned back to the two mares confronting each other and grimly nodded. “I think so…”     “I only saw what you showed me! Who knows what will really happen?!” The unicorn dismissed furiously, a magical scroll, half rent, floating by her in a bright blue magical aura.     The alicorn glanced behind her at something moving not far away. Twilight and Rainbow followed her gaze and went rigid at what they saw. “The race…” Rainbow whispered disbelievingly, watching as her own younger self shot by with the bullies struggling to keep up with her.     “I’ve seen it a dozen times! Things don’t turn out well in Equestria without my friends!” The alicorn tried again, taking a hesitant step forward. The unicorn snapped her eyes shut, a shudder visibly passing through her.     “UGH! What is so special about your friends?!” she demanded, the scroll tearing a little bit more. She opened her eyes to show they were going bloodshot. “How could a group of ponies that are so different… be so important?!”     The alicorn slowly strode forward, a small, hopeful smile appearing on her face. Seemingly ignored now, the race continued, the moment of the rainboom drawing closer. “The differences between me and my friends are the very things that make our friendship strong…” the alicorn said gently.     The unicorn opened her eyes once more, having slammed them shut when she tore the scroll again. Tears were welling up in her eyes, and her entire body was trembling. “I thought Sunburst and I were the same… but we turned out different, and it TORE OUR FRIENDSHIP APART!” the mare screamed out, the tears now flowing freely down her cheeks to fall through the clouds.     Twilight looked up along with Rainbow, observing the race continuing the unfold.     “So try again!” The alicorn suggested, raising into the air on her wings. “Make new friends. And if something happens that you can’t control that changes things, work through it together! That’s what friendship is.”     The race continued on. The unicorn dropped her gaze, her eyes losing some of their fiery intensity to one of doubt and longing. The alicorn continued on after a moment. “And it’s not just my friendships that are important, to Equestria, everypony's are! When yours ended, it brought us here. But just imagine all the others that are waiting for you out there if you just give them a chance.”     The unicorn closed her eyes again, struggling to withhold her emotions. “How… how do I know they won't all end up the same way?”     The alicorn drifted down to stand before the unicorn with a forehoof outstretched. “I guess it’s up to you to make sure they don’t.”     From where they stood, Twilight and Rainbow felt a spike run through their heads at the same moment. Both of them collapsed, wrapping their forelegs over their heads in an effort to suppress the sudden, intense pain. Looking up, Twilight saw the younger Rainbow Dash, upon reaching one of the rings, suddenly turn up. There was an explosion of blinding light and colors, a ring of prismatic light expanding out from the point where the sound barrier had been thoroughly broken.     A feeling passed through Twilight and Rainbow then, like something clicked into place. After a few moments, they looked back just in time to see the alicorn and unicorn disappear into a hole in the sky, which closed immediately after. For several moments, everything was quiet, save for the distant cheering of excited pegasus foals.     Then, the younger Rainbow flew around to stand almost directly in front of Twilight, looking out to where the alicorn and unicorn had been just moments prior. She tilted her head curiously. “Who were they…?” she asked in confusion.     As soon as she said that, Twilight and Rainbow Dash felt like they were yanked hard to the side from within their own heads. They both toppled sideways, the world spiraling and melting away around them. Twilight looked up once she regained her balance. Her mouth hung open and a gasp left her mouth. Both she and Rainbow were in that white void, a ribbon of multi colored light stretching and weaving through the endless expanse. The ribbon shuddered and, from one point, it began to dissolve along the length. New energy began to form where the old had been.     Rainbow turned to Twilight with a look of shock and confusion. “Twilight, what are we looking at?!”     “I… I don’t know!” the lavender filly replied fearfully, looking around and scanning the environment, looking for any clues to explain what they were looking at. After a few moments, she looked up and gasped. That alicorn and the unicorn she had been speaking to could be seen, standing on a slowly disintegrating platform of purplish crystal. The mare had closed her eyes tight, looking like she was prepared for something horrible to happen. The alicorn looked up at Twilight.     And the vision shattered, leaving Twilight and Rainbow Dash to pass out on the clouds next to Fluttershy upon the clouds overlooking the course where Rainbow Dash had performed the sonic rainboom...