“Dash, she’s fine.”
Those words did little to alleviate Rainbow Dash from the heart-wrenching sight of her closest friend, Fluttershy, lying in a hospital bed with a respirator over her maw.
“She clearly isn’t, Dust,” She spat back at her other, less close friend, who was in the room with her. “Else she wouldn’t be...”
Lightning Dust sighed and pinched her brow for a moment in irritation, and asked, “You do know why she’s unconscious, right?”
Dash scoffed and didn’t take her eyes off Fluttershy, retorting, “Of course not--and I don’t know why the hay you would either!”
“It’s not even taught in school where I’m from,” Dust replied, “It’s pretty dang fundamental, so it’s taught by our parents.” Sighing again and looking around the sterile room, and specifically at the large window that pointed out at the white cloudscape of Cloudsdale around the hospital, she continued, “I know you’re a school dropout, but you should at least know that it’s the dang altitude that’s causing her issues.”
“What the hay does that have to do with anything?!” Dash yelled back at her, whipping her gaze towards the (somehow) more knowledgeable mare.
“Dude, you have noticed it’s a bit harder to breathe up here than on the surface, right?”
Rainbow Dash stared angrily at the look her friend was giving her for a few seconds, but did pay more attention to her breathing than normal, and did end up finding it somewhat akin to being partially out of breath, though she previously just attributed that to being actually out of breath from her flight up.
Conceding, she calmed her expression and looked back towards Fluttershy, asking, “Sure. And I suppose the genius you just so happen to be here might know about that?”
“Well yeah; there’s less air up here, idiot,” Lightning Dust replied, and stretched her wings out, continuing, “There’s a bunch of science stuff behind it that I don’t care for, but it all makes the air thinner up here than down on the surface, making it a bit harder to breathe. And,” She added, flapping her wings a bit, “Me and you are pegasi, and are better at adapting to those different thinness-es of air, and while your friend is also a pegasi, she never really goes high enough to actually be used to those types of changes.”
Rainbow Dash’s gaze slowly returned to her with some level of bewilderment in it, and she questioned, “Where the hay are you from if you know all of that? I thought you were from Cloudsdale!”
“Nope; Cirracuse,” Dust replied simply, shaking her head. “It is a cloud city, though one way higher than this place. The air here is like, what, eighty percent, I think they said, of surface level. Cirracuse, though, is about ten, so it’s a lot more important to know this stuff up there.”
“Huh, never heard of that place...” Dash muttered, somewhat mollified.
“I’m not surprised; this, well--” Dust tried, but pivoted to ask, “You know how Cloudsdale keeps moving around, at least? Hay, it took us a while to actually get here ‘cuz of the janky wind hitting this place.” Dash grunted and nodded in assent, letting her continue, “Well, Cirra’s a lot lighter and the wind up there’s stronger, so it goes flying around all over the place, and it’s practically impossible to predict ‘cuz of just how dang touchy it is.”
Raising any eyebrow, Dash questioned irately, “Okay, and what does that have to do with anything?”
Dust rolled her eyes and casually replied, “It’s way higher, so you ain’t gonna see it from below, and you aren’t gonna reach its altitude normally. Even if you do, it probably isn’t even going to be anywhere near you, so anypony looking to find us is probably gonna come up empty-hooved.”
“Oh,” Dash muttered in response, and averted her gaze back toward her closer friend in the bed. “Well, maybe you shoulda told be about that stuff before we came here and she frickin’ passed out,” She retorted, though her anger wasn’t as strong as it had been before.
“I didn’t think it’d be that bad,” Dust replied, “Plus you told me before how both of you have been up here multiple times in the past, and this had never happened before.”
“Flutters always made us ride one of the cloud-buses up, ‘cuz she was too scared for me to take her there myself, at least until now...” Dash said, her voice turning somber at the end, and continuing to grow stronger with, “And look where that got us...”
Dust facehooved at the over-dramatism, and stated again, “Dude, she’s fine.”