Dance in My Moonlight
Prologue
Rainbow Dash always loved overcast skies at night. She enjoyed the seas of clouds that would stretch on for what seemed like eternity, like a soft blanket that covered the world. To her it always meant that she could really cut loose with her training. She could shape the clouds into massive columns, rings, and any other manner of obstacles that she wanted. It also meant that she could go faster and harder than any other practice sessions because she had tons of thick soft padding to cushion her if she ever lost control of herself. However, the seas of clouds really took on a whole new meaning for her during the night. At night, when all the stars and Luna’s moon shined down from the heavens, their light reflected back off the clouds and filled her world with truly awe inspiring sights.
It was during these times that she would practice another kind of flying. One that she’d never told anypony about because it was totally uncool even if it did help her immensely with her aerobatics and even if she actually enjoyed doing it once in a while. It was a form of dancing that was developed by pegasai many, many years ago. It was similar to waltz or swing dancing that unicorns and earth ponies did, but instead of only using two axis of motion the pegasai incorporated all three. What made it appealing to the athletic pegasus was that it pushed her limits in terms of finesse, grace, and timing, faster and farther than just regular aerobatics training alone. But those times at night with the clouds blocking and reflecting the heavenly lights back upon her were her favorites.
To her it felt like she was performing for the greatest audience with the grandest stage setup, apart from the Wonderbolts coliseum that is. The clouds would swirl around her, their constant movement always changing the lights and shadows. The moon acted as a large spotlight, basking her in its radiant light. The stars were her captivated audience whose attention was only for her and their twinkling was the highest praise.
On some extremely rare occasions she would even create a small opening in the clouds and go beneath their cover to dance in the beam of light that would filter through. Her Moonlight, she called it, because even though it was Luna’s moon, on those cloudy nights only a pegasus could allow anypony to see it. She would only dance below the cloud cover rarely for fear of the increased chance of being caught, but she loved to do it because it only intensified the feeling of a spotlight meant only for her. This was one such night.
She found a spot that was both thinner than the rest of the blanket of clouds and also directly below the moon. She carefully peeled back the cloud until there was a small opening. Then she smoothly widened and shaped the hole so that when the moon’s light poured through it, it would expand out like a cone. Once she was done she dropped down and fell until she was about halfway between the clouds above and the ground below.
She hovered there for a minute deciding which song she wanted to end the evening on. Finally she decided on one of her favorites. It was a newer rock and roll song but was rooted in the older style. It was much faster than what the style of dancing was meant for, but for her faster was always better, and it made the dancing more of a challenge which she wanted.
She hovered for a few seconds more, setting the timing in her head. She began her choreographed routine for this particular song as it began playing in her head. She danced gracefully all around inside her spotlight. She performed several twirls, spins, rolls, and loops incorporating all of her limbs, not just her wings, to not only add more flare and dynamism to her performance, but also to help shift her weight at the proper moments to smoothly switch from move to move.
She ended her performance by flying back up through the hole she made and bowing to the applause from the stars. She sang the last line of the song out loud, “Dance in my moonlight my ooooollld friend.”
*****
“Uuggghh! No, no, no, no!” Twilight growled in frustration for what must have been the thousandth time that day. Actually when she thought about it she realized that was physically impossible for it to have been that many times since it’s only been about three hours since she started and a song is roughly a few minutes long and. “Aaarrg, that isn’t helping Twilight!” she growled again.
The purple unicorn flopped down on the ground in her frustration with her fore-hooves over her head, glaring at the source, or rather sources she thought, of her torment. They were a phonograph making an occasional skipping noise at the end of the record, an open book sitting next to it, and a flyer sitting on the opposite side of it. The flyer was an announcement for an annual dance competition that Princess Luna would be holding in a couple of months, the book was one on dance technique, and the record came with the book.
The reason she felt like they were all mocking her was that it has been one of her life dreams to be in a dance competition, but she was never very good at dancing. Over the years she’s always tried to learn, reading countless books on the subject, but she could never get it right. She was always just too slow, too fast, her steps were a little off, or her weight off-balance. Thinking about it was caused her to let out another cry of frustration.
After a while she rose to her hooves and walked over to the table where her tormentors sat. She used her magic to pull the needle off the spinning record and she switched it off. She was about to put the record and book away, but decided to push them onto the floor in her anger and depression. Hanging her head she climbed the stairs of her library up to her bedroom. The unicorn mare climbed into bed and tried to go to sleep; thoughts of her most recent failure weighing heavily on her dreams.