Wingmares

by CouchCrusader


Chapter Three

“What do you mean, ‘I’m not going’?”

Several days after her pardon, Rainbow Dash lay in a winded pile of mane and feathers at her counselor’s hooves, having made the five-minute flight to the shuttle station in less than three. Her nap had lasted longer than what she expected. But the be-whistled pegasus standing before her on the open platform refused to move aside.

“Just because another pony put in a good word for you back at the office doesn’t mean you’re getting off that easy,” he said. “You’re not going back to the Circuit for the rest of the summer.”

“What? That’s not fair!” Rainbow Dash tried to push her way past her counselor, but wasn’t having any of it. Once again, her vertical absence worked against her. “How am I gonna get better at flying if I don’t go with everypony else?

“Too bad.” Amber Swift kept his biggest headache at hoof’s length as he back-stepped onto the shuttle. “You’re to remain on the training course until we return. We’re going to be practicing on the Circle Slalom today, so I expect you to pay close attention to that part of the training course.” He signaled the chauffeur to set off, and the shuttle departed with the campers of Team Firefly minus their most colorful member.

Rainbow Dash glared at the retreating shuttle as it curved to the left and down out of sight. She rubbed her cheek until the hoofprint her counselor left there buffed out. What did they feed ponies on his home planet? Circle Slalom had actual turns in it—large, high-speed arcs like the writhing of a roller coaster. The training course had a line of poles bunched so close together that even she tagged them with her wings every time she flew them. Circuit flights were part and parcel of flight camp—why stay at the latter if she couldn’t fly the former?

Well, the counselor could take his orders and... and do whatever ponies did with what they took. He wasn’t gonna be around to watch her. If she got in trouble, so would he. Holding her tail high, she hopped into the air looking for things to do.

There was the camp further up the hill, but the rainbowfall on the other side of the lake caught her eye in particular. She started from the prismatic haze it kicked up as it splashed into the lake, following its descent upward until her gaze settled on the promontory from which it fell. A solitary pavilion stood there, both source and guardian of the tumbling stream.

Skyhead Falls was one of the very first things she saw walking out of her tent every morning. She had always wondered what it would be like to fly up there—but she never had time to do so, or always forgot to go when she did. It was like remembering to look at the night sky when the new moon was out; it was still there even if nopony paid attention to it.

That was that. She spotted a pair of daisy-chained updrafts not too far off from the shuttle station, and she rode them until she was well above Rainbow Lake. As much as she enjoyed flying fast, she held a quiet appreciation of gliding close to herself. Something about the way the warm air felt shoring up her wings from below, tilting her side to side in a natural rhythm—it was a way to fly and a way to take a breather at the same time. What pony couldn’t find something to like between the two?

More updrafts appeared to Rainbow Dash high above the lake, their presence betrayed by the little vapor wisps they plucked from any cloud hapless enough to wander too close. She surrendered to their currents, and as the yards fell away beneath her, her previous irritation fell away with them.

For fun, she banked out of the updrafts every now and then to pass behind the rainbowfall, where the falling colors echoed curiously against the cloudface they concealed. She would emerge flicking specks of green and orange from her wings, and she watched them spiral their way down to the lake below.

Soon a different sound filled the filly’s ears: a quiet kind of rush, carrying with it an abundance of primal force, but dampened before it could build itself up to a roar. The apex of the rainbowfall came into her view. With a sudden surge of adrenaline, she burst out of her updraft to flap the final few yards herself. The air this high up had grown cold enough to notice, but not cold enough for her to care, and she came to rest in the corner of the pavilion she had spotted back at the station.

The source of the rainbowfall rose up from a generous, straight-cut channel in the middle of the pavilion, bisecting the floor in the process. Scrolled pillars placed all around the perimeter held up a marvelous, angular roof inlaid with friezes of flying creatures like rearing dragons and screaming gryphons. Rainbow Dash tapped her hoof on the floor and heard it echo.

She turned around, and all of Cloudsdale opened before her there like a storybook. There was the campground, the Circuit (she skipped over that feature quickly, before it ruined her mood), and the Cloudesseum in the distance, leaning out from its circular foundation like a trumpet bell. She saw little colored dots walking or flying over wide, white promenades, or milling together in an open square. Pennants sprouted from every other rooftop like little flowers.

Rainbow Dash sat against a pillar, only then noticing a slight sheen on her coat from her journey up to Cloudsdale’s highest point. With a constant easterly breeze flowing over her, she would be comfortable and dry in no time, free to pass the hours in solitude.

Solitude? Yeah, solitude. It wasn’t like she was much bothered by being alone.

“That’s enough of that! I mean, only if you’re, um, finished.”

Her ears perked up. That voice again—it couldn’t be. It had come from the far side of the pavilion.

“Get outta my sight, you cretins! Well, maybe cretins is a bit strong for the word I’m looking for...”

What the hay? Rainbow Dash descended onto the promontory and looked back toward the pavilion’s far side. She didn’t see anypony there, but when she looked closer, she saw a trail of colorful droplets start from the side of the rainbowfall channel as they made their way outside. Maybe someone was around the corner?

“Do you know who you’re talking to? Because I think you could be a little less mean, personally. You might be liked better for it.”

Unable to contain her curiosity any longer, Rainbow Dash flew to the corner to have a look.

Boy. She got one. “F— Fluttershy?”

The filly’s wings shot up with enough violence to make Rainbow Dash flinch in sympathy. Yep—it was the same pegasus from the Circuit and the cafeteria, except she looked... well...

Her mane and tail had been cut short and ragged as if she’d been mauled by a gryphon, except that the rest of her was not on the verge of falling into fine ribbons. Instead, she looked like Andy Warhalter had used her as a paintbrush. Red splotches engaged oranges and yellows for territory on her forelock while greens, blues, and purples quarreled over her crest. Her tail had suffered a similar fate, where all six hues crashed together in a grand mêlée.

Fluttershy hit the cloud as soon as she recognized Cloudsdale’s true one and only rainbow pegasus-in-residence. “I-I-I-I-I’m sorry!” she blurted. “I-I really didn’t expect you to come up here!”

Rainbow Dash fell onto her back. “Baaaa-hahahaha! Whoo-ah-hahahaha!” Her legs couldn’t kick the air hard enough to uncoil the huge knot in her belly, and tears streamed from her eyes like water from a pair of fire hoses. She made the mistake of looking in Fluttershy’s direction again, saw atrocious jumbles of color, and paid dearly for it. “Gyaaaah-hahaha! Someone, help! I can’t breathe! Whoo!”

Fluttershy blushed so hard that a layer of cloud vaporized beneath her face.

“Oh, Celestia, I can’t believe you did that.” said Rainbow Dash, standing up and wiping her eyes. She couldn’t stop laughing.

“I-I know.” Fluttershy got to her hooves as well, unable to suppress their trembling. “I... I think I’ll just leave and never ever ever come back.”

“Ah-haha—” Rainbow’s ear twitched. “Wait, what?”

The yellow pegasus said nothing. Instead, she turned and jumped off the side of the promontory.

“Wait!” Rainbow Dash’s brain managed to say that much and nothing more. Her legs took over from there, propelling her over the edge and downward, downward, downward into the keening gut of free fall.

Catching up with the other pony would be the easy part. The hard part was negotiating the hail of rainbow drops she trailed in her wake. Getting one of those in the eye was a guaranteed ticket to a dark cot in the nurse’s cabin, and Rainbow Dash could only fly so fast with one hoof covering her face.

Still, she had Fluttershy within her sights. The other filly was on the wrong dive angle, and her wings were snapped closed against her sides. All it would take was one bad pocket of turbulence, or a lapse in concentration, and—

“Ahhhh!” One of Fluttershy’s wings wrenched open, sending her into a violent tailspin.

“Hey!” yelled Rainbow. “Just stay calm, okay?”

Fluttershy kept screaming, her hooves flailing as if somepony had attached rockets to them.

“You’ve got to stop spinning!” Rainbow checked ahead. The bottom of the cliff was approaching awfully fast. “Flap your opposite wing from the direction of your spin!”

“Helllp!”

“That’s what I’m trying to do, featherbrain! You—” Rainbow Dash groaned. She wasn’t getting through at all. She focused her eyes on the other filly’s tail, which remained fairly motionless compared to the rest of her—a tail still dripping with rainbow.

“Hang on,” she screamed. “I’ll get ya!”

She lashed the air with her wings once, twice, three times as more drops of rainbow splattered against her foreleg and coat. But now she had caught up with Fluttershy, the latter’s tail whipping just before her mouth.

Oh, she was going to regret this. She bit down.

Her head exploded in an instant.

She wished it had, at least. Tasting a rainbow was like having an Aristrotle treatise on everything in the universe punch its way out from the center of her brain. The experience would leave you a better pony: able to outplay the Princess at chess, perhaps, or to convince everypony that eating brussels sprouts really would turn you into a mutant—if only it left you with your memories intact afterward.

Rainbow Dash wasn’t quite sure what happened in those following moments, but when she came to, she and Fluttershy were lying in the back of a demolished cart surrounded by a bunch of unfamiliar, crispy green globes.

“Fluttershy?” She poked the motionless filly beside her. “You okay?”

The other pegasus’ eyes blinked themselves open. “R—Rainbow Dash?”

“Oh, geez.” Rainbow Dash pulled Fluttershy into a swift hug. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

The two ponies clambered over the pile of globes toward the back of the cart and hopped off—short of a couple of tender spots, they stood on their hooves without much pain. As they trundled off toward the campers’ tents, they didn’t notice the cart’s owner, an aging, brown-coated pegasus with an ash-colored mane, stagger around its side to assess the damage.

“...It happened again. Just when I thought I’d gotten away from it all. It happened again.” The luckless stallion sank to his knees, and a single tear traced the curve of his quivering cheek. “My cabbages...”

“So, what exactly were you doing all the way up at the top of the falls?” asked Rainbow Dash, quite able to ignore the sudden wailing behind her.

“Oh.” Fluttershy’s eyes shifted from side to side. “I’d rather not say.”

Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. “Really, now? You were talking up a storm while you were up there.”

Fluttershy’s facial features scrunched inward as if she’d just swallowed a jar of lemon drops. Unable to speak, she lowered her head and shook it solemnly.

“Be that way then,” said Rainbow, snickering. “Here’s what I saw up there. I saw you marching all over the place with an awesome new manestyle and color job. You were saying all of these really brave lines, too. Y’know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to imitate somepony,” she concluded, nudging the other pegasus in the ribs.

“Ah.” Fluttershy’s gasp was so tiny, so quiet, that the very air stood still to hear her.

Rainbow Dash cackled. “You know what, Fluttershy? I like you. You’re not half bad. We should hang out more often.”

The cowering pegasus’ wings shot up in surprise. Giving Rainbow Dash a sidelong glance from beneath the blue part of her mane, she mumbled, “Really?”

“Totally. The rest of summer flight camp’s gonna be a blast with you around.” Rainbow Dash extended a hoof. “What do you say to that?”

Fluttershy stared at the offered hoof for a long time, her ears flicking this way and that. Her mouth was unsure whether to cringe or smile or yelp or frown. She failed to find a compromise between the four. Her hoof came an inch off of the ground. “Do you really mean that?” she whispered.

“Of course I do. You’re the first interesting pony I’ve met here.”

Rainbow’s words hit the filly like a swell of applause. By degrees, her wings lowered themselves back to her sides and unclenched, and she drew closer to her first flight camp friend. She stood taller, more radiant, and the ridiculous collage of colors coating her mane and tail suddenly suited her posture very well.

“You got it.” The two fillies bumped hooves, breaking out into laughter soon afterward.

“It’s settled,” said Rainbow, strutting by the other pony’s side. “You’re my pal from here on out. If you ever need me for anything, I’ll be there for you.”

Fluttershy smiled. “Same with you.”

“Lets go get you washed up before dinner, then. Say—how did you even get on top of Skyhead Falls in the first place? Did you fly up there?”

“No, I walked the trail.”

“Ah.”

The conversation between the two fillies blended with the afternoon glow of the sky as they arrived back at the campers’ area, making their way between the rows of tents.