Rainbow Dash sits on a leather couch in a cold and dank apartment and stares at nothing.
“The orchard is radiant with spring blossom,
Paradise on earth it is to see!”
Her face is illuminated by the flickering white glow of a test image on the TV screen. It’s harsh, sterile light casts the room into sharp contrast. It drowns natural colors, turns the leather of the couch black, the shelves into apartments for ghosts.
“And this is that beautiful land,
“Oh Zubrowka, Zubrowka!”
Her essay to the Equestrian Military Academy, written on fresh white paper, shines like a torch in that artificial light. It glows, so much that it burns her eyes to gaze directly upon it. It is a radiant surmise of her future, and it demands her attention.
“Glorious nation of the Pegasi!
And with a strength that frustrates all defiance!”
She reaches out, picks up the pliers, and uses them to turn the prong where the TV’s power knob is supposed to be. It goes off with a click, the sound abruptly stops, and the room is again dim. She rises then, past the top of the TV, past the plastic christmas tree covered in lead paint, until she is eye to eye with her father’s medal case.
Around the case are hung pictures of their family. Rainbow Dash is in a few of them, a buck-toothed little filly clinging to her parents legs. But there are no pictures with her and her father where she is older than five, and precious few before that. Most of the pictures are of her mother and father as a couple.
Her mother and father flying. Her mother and father at their wedding. Her mother and father canoeing. Her mother and father at the observatory, at Blue Square, toasting to their health at some party. Them in that very apartment, when it was new and full of hope, looking at the camera and smiling.
There are several of her father alone, mostly formal photographs of him in his uniform. But, she notes, none of her mother alone.
So she returns to the kitchen, and finds her mother -- that old, overweight, anxious mare who wears a dress like a circus tent -- working on the day’s crossword puzzle. “Oh,” she says, looking up when Rainbow enters. “Are you done already?”
Rainbow finds her throat is thick. It is difficult for her to speak. “What did you do to celebrate Hearth's Warming before you met dad?”
Her mother shrugs, confused. “Oh, you know your grandparents. They insisted on having all the foals together every holiday.”
“You didn’t marry dad at seventeen,” Rainbow insists, voice oddly stilted. “You went to college. So there was a time when you were not a child, and were not living with grandma and grandpa, and were not married. During that time, what did you do to celebrate? I’m curious.”
“Oh.” Her mother frowns. For several seconds, she struggles to retrieve the information, pulling it out of some dusty and little-used archive in her mind. “Well, I… was never much for holidays at that age. I thought they were silly. I would go flying. Sometimes with friends, but sometimes I got a bottle of wine and flew up to the observatory over the campus. I didn’t mind being alone.”
“You flew a lot before you met dad, right?”
“Yes, it’s how we met. Track and Sky.” Her mother tilts her head, growing more perplexed. “But you knew that. Rainbow, is something wrong?”
“I think holidays are silly too,” Rainbow says, suppressing a sniffle. “And I know I can’t drink yet, but I’d love to fly up to the old observatory -- you know, the one on the hills over the park? And just… hang out. You can get wine if you want, I have some money hidden in my boots.”
“Oh, I don’t know…” her mother hesitates. “That’s a long way off. I haven’t flown that far in years. And we have to be back at your aunts by six.”
“Mom,” Rainbow says, voice strained. “I’m not good at… feelings. Or expressing them. But I think that after dad died, you had to work very hard to keep this place. And to keep me safe, and off the street, and keep me from getting into fights and keep my nose out of drugs. And I feel like… maybe doing all that took up your whole life. Your whole life is remembering dad and taking care of me. And I’m about to leave. I’ll always need you as my mother. But I won’t need you to watch over me and pick me up from school and pay our rent and… and all that.”
When Rainbow blinks, tears become visible in the corners of her eyes. “And I feel like by leaving, I’m stealing your life. Like I’m taking everything away from you. And all you’ll do is sit here and wait for me to call. I want to know that after I’m gone, you’ll get into Track and Sky again, and… explore. Or travel. Do something other than the crossword. I want to know you don’t think your life is over because you’re past fifty. I want…”
She bites her lip. “I’m about to be an adult. And I want to get to know you, as an adult, not just like a child knows mom. I want to get you. And… and for Celestia’s sake, you hate Auntie Effie and I do too. She tortures the family every Hearth’s Warming with her sugar cookies. They’re so hard I could crack a tooth and she’s such a pain if you don’t say how much you like them.”
Tears form in the old mare’s eyes, and she rises from her seat, reaching out for Rainbow. The two hug tight in the cramped little kitchen. “Your aunt has always been difficult,” her mother says, words thick. “Rainbow, where did this come from?”
“I uh…” Rainbow sniffles. “I watched a movie. A cheesy one. Very sad and dramatic, lots of shots of ponies staring out windows in the rain.”
“And that made you want to spend time with your mother?” the old mare asks, giving a thin little laugh as she lets Rainbow go. “Well, I won’t question it. You’ll have to fly slow though. I’m not in the… shape I used to be in.”
“I’ll fly laps around you, it’s fine,” Rainbow says. “You can um… tell me stories. From the old days.”
Rainbow gets her good boots and pulls a hooffull of wadded bills out of them. She throws on a scarf over her father’s bomber jacket. Her mother wraps a shawl around herself, and packs crackers and a jar of jam in her saddlebags. One by one, they turn out the apartment lights.
Then they step out, and shut the door behind them.