Rainbow Dash's crackly, throaty giggle was the only sound to puncture the stillness of the night; though the contact was slight, the kinetic jolt of magic blossoming through the delicate flesh of her hooves as she struck the dense white mass of the cloud obscuring the sky ahead was enough to send a ticklish wave surging throughout her entire body.
The first time it had happened to her she had only been a child and she'd spent the intervening days racked with worry that there was something hideously wrong with her, but a conversation with her parents had quickly informed her that it was simply an uncommon side-effect of a pegasi's weather magic at work. It was rumoured that there were far more interesting reactions than just that, but they'd been strangely reluctant to clarify what, exactly, that meant and Rainbow Dash had thought it best not to press them.
She paid no mind to the fact that her silky coat was left soaked by the death throes of the bursting cloud; it was a hazard of the job, and she would soon dry off as she continued her exercises. Craning her neck, Rainbow Dash smiled in satisfaction as she saw the moisture drop away from her gently flapping wings in a thin, slick curtain.
Her sinewy blue body flowed easily through the darkness, leaving a polychromatic trail in her wake bringing with it a brief false dawn that lit up the grassy plains over which she flew; a few sheep looked up, startled, before losing interest and returning to their grazing. A smirk broke out across Rainbow Dash's muzzle as she remembered how she'd once practised her stunts above Ponyville until the citizens had banded together one day to tell her that her prismatic light shows were robbing them of sleep.
Why would you sleep when you could bear witness to all this?
Only the moon, hanging so high above yet also giving off the curious impression of being close enough to touch, with its silvery, pearlescent glow was able to compete with the pegasus for attention; while Rainbow Dash knew that she could temporarily blot out its brilliance with her spectacular backwash, the moon had permanence and was quickly able to restore its rightful position as the brightest object in the skies of Equestria, regarding the pegasus as nothing more than a pest rather than as a challenge to its dominance.
Extending one wing higher than the other in order to carefully adjust the pattern of the breeze swirling around her, Rainbow Dash soon found her body twisting itself smoothly into an inverted position; it was as if she was doing the backstroke in a swimming pool, though it had been quite some time since she'd last done that. Pinkie Pie and her beach-themed parties ... wet feathers were just the worst.
The effulgent moon, the shimmering stars, the multi-hued streamers of the distant Horsehead Nebula itself extending themselves like the undulating tentacles of a nightmarish monster, were all reflected in her brilliant cerise eyes and Rainbow Dash's already substantial grin increased as she soaked up the ambience. “The day is overrated,” she said out loud, trying to take in as many of the constellations as she could. Dimly, she remembered how she had been made to memorise all their names for a quiz in flight school one day, but that information was now long buried in the dusty recesses of her mind just as it was with everything else that didn't involve the Wonderbolts, flying or her friends.
A plaintive wail shattered her dreamy introspection; Rainbow Dash perked up her ears and slowed her pace down to, what was for her, a crawl and listened intently. It wasn't the dramatic, over-the-top sobs of a Rarity that she heard, but the quiet, tugging-on-the-heartstrings lament of a Scootaloo. For a moment, she almost thought that it was the filly weeping somewhere out there until she got a grip on herself and remembered that it had only been a matter of hours since she'd personally escorted Scootaloo to her home after an evening of flight practice.
Besides, she would know better than to sneak out to the Everfree Forest in the middle of the night alone.
Knowing that the cry was coming from that abomination of a realm gave the pegasus only a second's pause; now that she was closer to the source, she knew for sure that it was a pony in distress and not simply a wild animal trying to bait her. If they were trapped there … well, as the Element of Loyalty, wasn't it her duty to render assistance to a pony in need? Rainbow Dash descended through the thick canopy of trees, wincing slightly when the thorny vines and gnarled branches took careful aim at her body as they competed to see which could leave the biggest gash in her coat.
After a few tense moments of following the course of surging river, making sure to keep high enough that any nasty water-dwellers couldn't pluck a pegasus out of the sky for a midnight snack, Rainbow Dash decreased in speed as her sensitive ears triangulated the source of the whimper; apprehension gave her a nasty sucker punch to the gut, however, causing her to nearly stop dead in mid-air as her mind questioned her suitability for this task. Surely a Fluttershy or Pinkie Pie, or even Twilight Sparkle, would be so much more suited to this job. The ignorant, tactless flygirl with her head in the clouds, as she was often described by those who knew her, was notgenerally noted as a bastion of sympathy by the five new friends she'd made following the incident with Nightmare Moon.
“Hello?” she said, her voice cracking just that bit more than it normally did as she approached the silent form, its largeness amplified by the shadows it was swathed in. Her usual cockiness was only marginally subdued by an element of wariness. They were sitting on a rock, their head bowed, apparently studing themselves intently in the glistening pool of water. “Are you … I mean, I heard … oh, Celestia, I suck at this.” It took Rainbow Dash a moment to realise that she was still talking and she flushed hotly.
A startled gasp escaped the figure and they turned to face Rainbow Dash.
“Luna?” As smoothly as she could, the pegasus affected her best impersonation of a formal bow. “Er, Princess Luna, I mean.”
The Princess of the Night dabbed at the sides of her eyes with an elegantly-shod hoof. “I'm sorry, I don't believe we've met before?”
“Uh, I'm Rainbow Dash,” she replied, fighting down her natural impulse to be angry at the fact that somepony didn't immediately know who she was. “We, uh, we've briefly met a couple of times.” Not in the best of circumstances either, but I probably shouldn't mention any of that.
“Rainbow Dash.” Luna mulled the name around her muzzle for a moment or two before the stray memories clicked themselves into place. “Oh, of course, my apologies, Miss Dash. One of the six Elements who rescued me from my purgatorial state and-” her eyes narrowed as her face contorted into a reproving glare “-the troublesome prankster who brought such disarray and near-disaster to my visit to Ponyville on Nightmare Night.”
“Er, yes,” said Rainbow Dash, grinning in a mixture of pride and embarrassment, rubbing the back of her mane gently as she did so. “In fairness, however, you did get me back pretty good,” she added, remembering the painful electric shock she'd received from the playful princess at the end of the night. Her butt still had phantom pains whenever she thought about it.
“What brings you all the way out here so late at night?”
“Practicing.” Rainbow Dash extended one wing boastfully, giving it an impish shake. “Gotta keep these things in shape if I want to be a Wonderbolt, right?” Shaking her head, remembering why she was here, the pegasus asked, “What brought you out here, Princess?" Remembering who she was talking to, the pegasus quickly added, "Um, if you don't mind my asking.”
The Princess of the Night turned away, her head lowering once more as she uttered a heartfelt sigh.
“What's wrong, Lu-Princess?” asked Rainbow Dash, her stubborness not allowing her to back down despite the difference in power between them. Even though Luna was a princess and she could zap her with a lot worse than a measly bolt of lightning. She approached the sitting alicorn carefully and placed one foreleg on her chest as she puffed it out. “It's okay to tell me, you know? I'm the Element of Loyalty and on my honour I promise that nothing you say will-”
“-Celestia hates me-”
“-be heard by any… what the what?” Rainbow Dash's eyes went wide at that.
Luna wiped at her eyes again, let out a world-weary sigh and a dense cloud of mist hung heavily in the air in front of her. The words had tumbled out of her, unbidden, and she so desperately wished that she could suck them back up. Everypony in Equestria loved Celestia so, and it would be difficult for them to believe that she had any faults. Why shatter their pretty delusions of their illustrious leader? “Ever since my return, things have been … different. I mean, I didn't expect our relationship to pick up from where it had left off, but she's become so cold and distant since my return, as if I'm just another troublesome thing that she has to deal with and not her sister. I thought that-” she cast her mind back to the night following her return and her heartfelt apology which Celestia seemed to have accepted “-I don't know what I thought.”
On sudden impulse, Rainbow Dash's foreleg snaked out hesitantly to embrace Luna's withers; the gesture made without the princess' leave might have, on another night, got her sent to the stockades - or worse - but this was not any other night. Luna seemed to relax somewhat at the touch. Her shoulders were certainly less visisbly tense, anyway. “Sisters don't always get along with each other,” she said knowledgeably. She couldn't even begin to imagine what problems two eternal goddesses might have, and she wasn't sure that she wanted to know either. “They fight, bite and argue, but deep down they love each other and nothing will change that.”
Princess Luna's beryl eyes hardened. As if a thousand years of strife could be so neatly packaged. She shrugged herself out of Rainbow Dash's grasp. The pegasus was doing her best not to show her annoyance at this behaviour, though if it had been anypony else it was likely that she'd be preparing for war now. “What would you know of such things?”
“More than you'd think,” Rainbow Dash said, her own eyes moistening as emotions, long repressed, bubbled to the surface.
“Oh, is that so?” asked Luna, the dismissive edge to her voice also containing with it a note of challenge.
“There are two ponies that I consider to be as close to me as sisters, Princess." Rainbow Dash, poked listlessly at the ground with her forelegs. “One, I have cared for since we first met as fillies. I did my best to protect her from all the bad stuff in the world. I suppose I'm still doing that even now.” She looked down for a moment before continuing. “I think, sometimes, she considers me to be a reminder of a past that she'd rather forget, but our bond is one of the most important things to me. I think, I hope, it's as important to her as it is to me.”
Luna's eyes softened, guilt gnawing her as she realised that, in her anger, she'd misjudged the pegasus and done her a terrible disservice. “And what of the other?”
“A young filly from Ponyville." Rainbow Dash's felt her eyes flit ever so briefly in the direction of Ponyville. "Much like I was at her age, she's full of fire, desperate to prove herself, but she's also oh, so brittle and afraid of letting anypony else see that. Her parents are away a lot because of work, so I check in on her as much as I can. She, uh, can't fly yet so I've been trying to teach her. No luck so far,” she said, finishing in a rather flat, defeated tone.
“Do not blame yourself for that, Rainbow Dash,” Luna said quietly, putting both forelegs around the other pony's neck. She'd seen countless dreams of pegasi who had yet to truly stretch their wings and her heart ached for all those who would never get to do so. “It just happens that, every once in a while, a pegasus is born flightless.”
“I haven't given up yet. Not Giving Up is my middle name.” Rainbow Dash, perhaps emboldened by the princess' embrace, found herself nuzzling into Luna's side without really thinking too much about it. When she realised that she was snuggling one of Equestria's rulers, a faux pas that might've earned rebuke on another day, she quickly stopped and, smiling abashedly, said, “Hey, I was supposed to be comforting you. Not the other way 'round.”
“You have taken my mind off the issues that have been bothering me, Miss Not Giving Up Dash.” Luna said with a soft smile, disentangling herself somewhat awkwardly from the pegasus. “Consider me comforted. Celestia is a most complex individual, and there is a chasm of a thousand years separating us. Like you with your friend, however, I consider my bond with her to be the most important thing in my life and I will do what it takes to restore it to its former glory. My own ill feelings aside.”
After a moment of companionable silence had passed between the pair, Luna unfurled her own majestic wings, prompting an envious look from Rainbow Dash.
The Wonderbolts would accept me in no time if I had those puppies attached to my sides.
“Fly with me, Miss Dash,” Luna said, flapping gently until she was hovering a few feet off the ground. “It has been a long time since I have … just flown with anypony. I miss doing so.”
“Rainbow."
Luna gave the pegasus a questioning look.
Rainbow Dash chuckled softly, cracking a wide smile. "You don't have to be so formal with me, Princess. You can just call me Rainbow. I feel like I'm back in primary school every time I hear the words Miss Dash.”
“Very well." Luna felt her lips curve upwards in an exuberant smile. "In that case, you may call me Luna.”
“Okay, Luna,” said Rainbow Dash, trying to ignore the strangeness that she felt at referring to a member of the Royal Family by their name. Shaking her head free of these unimportant thoughts, the pegasus spread her own wings to their apex, then took up a flanking position alongside the alicorn. “Where to, then?"
“Up,” replied Luna simply, favouring Rainbow Dash with a radiant smile.
Together, they flew; they wheeled, they arced, they chased, spinning in and out of each other's paths as if they had been doing this all of their lives. They continued to climb until the air became thin and specks of frost formed on their noses.
“Wanna see something really cool?” asked Rainbow Dash, calling to Luna who was hovering a few metres away from her. Once upon a time, the thought of doing what she was about to do in front of a princess would've scared the Tartarus out of her, but now it all seemed so easy.
Luna's head turned to face the pegasus. “Cool? Isn't it cold enough up here already?” she asked, confusion creasing her muzzle as she felt a shiver run through her body that made her hairs stand on end.
Laughing her crackly, infectious laugh, Rainbow Dash said, “Cool as in Awesome, Luna. Stay there. Keep your eyes on me the whole time, okay?”
“Very well,” the Princess of the Night replied uncertainly, a sense of trepidation creeping its way along her spine as her new friend prepared to do whatever mysterious task she was about to perform.
With a speed unmatched by anything in nature, Rainbow Dash shot toward the ground, leading with both forelegs extended as far forward as possible; a lump formed in Luna's throat as she did some quick maths and realised that, no matter how acute her reflexes were, there was no way for the pegasus to pull out of her dive in time to avoid becoming a filthy blue smear on the landscape. In her stupor, the thought of teleporting into Rainbow Dash's path and trying to slow her down telekinetically didn't even occur to Luna.
She almost couldn't watch as Rainbow Dash drew ever closer to the cold, unforgiving terrain below, but in the split-second before collision, the pegasus suddenly banked sharply upwards causing a strangled cry to escape from the princess' taut throat as the Laws of Physics were defied by nothing more than a spunky attitude. Almost as soon as Rainbow arched, a brilliant prism of light shattered the darkness, the concussive force of the shockwave spreading in every direction. Trees were ruffled, almost uprooted, by the blast, the contents of the river flared upwards in a mushroom-shaped column, and the animals which had been lurking nearby scampered deeper into the forest in fright.
Luna felt the tingles of the outward edge of the sonic rainboom permeate her body; it was as if something electrical was surging through her, tickling her from the inside-out. A side-effect of the pegasus and alicorn magic mixing, she guessed. She laughed. Not the delicate, musical chime of her sister, but an uproarious bray that cut through the darkness. Something mad, unbelieving, erupted from her throat. When Rainbow Dash returned, panting heavily, Luna applauded the show. “Most spectacular, Rainbow Dash!" A little more crossly, she added, "Please, do not frighten me like that ever again, however. I thought for sure that you wouldn't be able to pull out of your dive in time.”
Wiping the sweat from her brow, not able to respond right away due to the toll that stunt had taken on her, Rainbow Dash acknowledged Luna's praise and censure with a self-conscious smile. When she finally could speak, she said, “ Sorry about that, but I'm glad that you enjoyed the show all the same.” Sucking in a great lungful of air, she added, “Phew, that was a tough one. I don't always get it right.”
Smiling sadly, Luna's head turned in the direction of Canterlot Castle, faintly visible to their eyes through the clouds as nothing more than a mere pinprick on the horizon. “It's getting late. I should probably be returning home now before Celestia sends the guards out searching for me." She faced Rainbow Dash, smiling warmly. "But I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you did, Rainbow Dash. It has been a long time since I've felt the kindness of another pony.”
“You're welcome,” said Rainbow Dash, feeling an acute sense of embarrassment course through her as her cheeks turned a rosy red colour. This mushy-mushy stuff just wasn't her, even if the nuzzling hadn't been ... entirely unpleasant. “I had a lot of fun, too. Uh, if you ever want to hang out some time …?”
“If my schedule permits, I would be honoured to hang with you, as you say.”
Luna crossed the distance between them quickly and pulled the pegasus into a tight hug that utilised both legs and wings. It took the startled Rainbow Dash a few seconds before she was able to respond in kind, her muzzle practically glowing in the murky white light as her wings extended of their own accord.
Breaking apart after a moment, Luna said, “Good night, Rainbow Dash.”
“Good night, Luna.”
As they parted in opposite directions, a curious sense of completeness followed both of them on their respective journeys.