//------------------------------// // Outcome // Story: Rainbow Dash Around the World // by MagicS //------------------------------// She had woken up hours ago feeling colder than ever before. The warm fire she had started last night had allowed her some level of comfort as she finally drifted off to sleep, but now it seemed that warmth was gone. Even after she had torn open a box to find an old sheet to wrap herself in as well, Rainbow Dash still woke up a frozen, shivering, mess. The fire she had made sure was still going when she fell asleep was now little more than a few embers in front of her. But even that should’ve provided her some warmth along with everything she was wearing. So why was she still so cold? She already knew the answer, really. It’s just how this place was. It’s how all the Reindeer and these foxes too had frozen despite having shelter and supplies with them. Nothing did anything to stop the cold of this place, not for long. Now she was wide awake and shivering through her jacket and sheet, eyes locked on the slowly dying embers in front of her. Rainbow Dash could hear the powerful blizzard still tearing through the world outside. It hadn’t died down yet in the slightest. She wondered how she had even slept through such a racket in the first place what with how it pounded against the dome. Snow fell through the holes in the walls of the dome as well, Rainbow Dash wished she had a way to block those but last night she hadn’t even been thinking about it and today she didn’t think she had the right tools anyways. Rainbow Dash slowly peeled the sheet off her, it wasn’t helping her anyways, and stood up before the fire. Her body was a deep blue and frost somehow clung to wherever she wasn’t covered by the jacket or boots. Her tail was like ice and her teeth chattered in her mouth during every breath. She needed to get this fire back to being as strong as it was when she first made it last night. Otherwise she wasn’t going to last this morning, she couldn’t leave the dome when it was this cold, when the wind was raging like that and snow was falling like it was going out of style. It frustrated her, but she had to wait out the blizzard inside here. Fire was the only thing that could keep her from freezing right now. Unless she had some way to safely take it with her outside, she couldn’t leave this spot. Not like the blizzard could last forever anyways. Right? Right? Rainbow Dash opened up her eyes the next morning to find herself in the same predicament. Frost coated her muzzle with actual ice forming at the corners of her eyes and icicles hanging from her chin. And of course the blizzard hadn’t let up one bit. She could hardly even remember much of what happened the previous day. She remembered sitting around her fire, waiting for the wind and snow to let up outside. But it just never happened. Besides that it was all mostly a cold blur to her. The hours probably all congealed together as she just sat there staring at the fire until she finally fell asleep. “I can’t just do that again today… I have to do something,” Rainbow Dash said to herself. She looked up at the holes that were continuously leaking in snow and the freezing wind. “No nails to board those shut, geez.” Her eyes went to the foxes, and a number of the boxes she had opened up and looked inside, but nothing really stuck out to her. She hadn’t found any more particularly useful tools nor any warmer clothes than what she was wearing. She was so unbearably cold that she just wanted to scream about it. Maybe Twilight could think of something to do with all this stuff, but Rainbow Dash wasn’t a thinker like her friend. Stuck in a dumb situation like this where her survival was at stake was not what she wanted. If she could just power through and fly her way south that would be fine but Rainbow’s body just couldn’t do something like that right now. This weather… it actually was starting to get the better of her. An awful, angering thought. A lightbulb suddenly turned on right above her head as Rainbow Dash got an idea. “Okay!” She said and started gathering up a bunch of the snow on the ground around her. She shuffled it all together and started building a small snowpony. Her boots molded its shape and formed the head and mane and she even made sure to make a small horn. Rainbow Dash vigorously nodded as she finished it up and smiled down at the snowpony, her face still covered in bits of ice. “Okay, okay, this is perfect.” She said to her creation. “Alright, Twilight, how do I get out of this?” She blinked a few times with a dumb grin on her face as she waited for the snow Twilight to respond. Another couple of blinks and her grin turned into a frown as she swatted the snow Twilight into smithereens with her hoof. “Ugh! Now I’m just going crazy!” Rainbow Dash lifted her hooves to her face and pulled down on her eyes, trying to relax and get her sense back. This blizzard was driving her nuts and she hated being cooped up in here. And talking to a snowpony Twilight wasn’t going to help her one bit. She just didn’t have any idea what would. What she did know for sure was she at least needed to help this fire stay strong. There were still plenty of things in the dome to help her with that but Rainbow Dash was already really tired of her days becoming little more than keeping a fire going. She paced around and around the cedar pole in circles, both to stave off boredom and keep her blood flowing, and occasionally played tic-tac-toe with herself in the snow. But that got really boring and lame very quickly. Grumble~ The loud growling of her stomach made Rainbow Dash wince and reach to feel her hungry belly. She hadn’t had anything to eat since those seeds. So now she had hunger to worry about in addition to freezing. Wonderful. She started pacing even faster, teeth gnashing together when they weren’t chattering. The pounding of the wind and flying snow outside was nearly deafening at this point as it attacked the foxes’ dome. Ice pierced through her entire body and soul even as Rainbow tried not to think about how cold she was. It was just impossible to ignore. “S-So this is what happened to all you foxes, huh?” Rainbow said as she circled the pole, not even looking at the pile. “W-Wonder how long you l-lasted before you f-froze...” Rainbow Dash paused and stared at the fire. “Wonder how long I’m going to last.” She then grit her teeth and shook her head. “No! That’s loser talk! I’m not freezing in some stupid snow pit! I’m a pegasus, the greatest, coolest, pegasus ever! No dumb blizzard is beating me, you hear!” She was breathing hard as she finished yelling at the storm and it still continued to rage outside without any regard for her anger. When she had tried opening up the door to see how long she could last outside, she ended up having to close it and come back in almost immediately. Now she was back lying in front of the fire and barely able to do anything. Her strength had left her. There was only cold. If only… if only what? I don’t even know anymore. Rainbow thought as she stared into the flames that practically offered her nothing now. Snow that was blown in through the holes in the wall fell around and on top of her. Soon she’d be buried under it, despite the size of the fire it couldn’t even melt the snow. Rainbow Dash’s breaths came out in shudders. She could see them practically freezing in the middle of the air right as they came out of her lungs. Her body was shaking as nothing but cold filled her entire being. No matter what, she knew she shouldn’t fall asleep like this, but her eyelids were becoming so heavy, and she felt so tired. Slowly her eyelids fluttered shut and closed, at first just for a split second, then one second, then for a few seconds each time. “Am I… dying?” Her eyes closed for a long time. She may have even fallen asleep. A vision of her friends back in Ponyville flashed through her mind and Rainbow Dash’s eyes shot back open. “No… no way,” Rainbow Dash stood up. “There is no way the most awesome pegasus in the world can go out in such a lame way. And even if I do I’m not going to take it lying down.” Her eyes searched around the entirety of the dome until they came across her discarded sheet and a plank of wood from one of the boxes she had torn apart to use as firewood. Rainbow Dash still felt the cold creeping up all over her body like death, so she wanted to act fast. She quickly walked over to the plank and sheet and started tightly wrapping the sheet around one end of the plank. Satisfied with that she then grabbed some snow off the ground and rubbed it over the other end of the plank to get it cold and wet. Rainbow Dash nodded and went over to her smoldering fire. “Blizzard or no blizzard, I’m not staying here for one more second,” Rainbow Dash said and stuck the sheet-covered tip of the plank into the fire. As soon as it caught ablaze she withdrew it and turned to the cedar pole in the middle of the dome. “You foxes deserve better than to just stay here like this. Let’s heat things up,” Rainbow Dash walked over and lit the cedar pole on fire with her torch, watching as the flames climbed up it to the roof of the dome. As soon as she was satisfied that the whole place was going to catch fire she nodded and turned around to walk to the door. The torch she was holding offered only a meager heat to her and Rainbow Dash could still hear the wind wailing outside and feel the icy teeth of coldness biting into her. But she didn’t care. She was done sitting around waiting for a blizzard to stop when it clearly wasn’t going to. She’d take her chances traveling and moving on like she always had before. Rainbow Dash kicked open the door to the dome and walked out into the white abyss while it went up in flames behind her.