//------------------------------//
// The Neighborly Thing to Do 
// Story: Timed Ramblings 
// by Midnight herald 
//------------------------------//

Applejack knew Rainbow Dash passing well. After all, she had to yell at somepony when there wasn’t enough rainwater to grow her trees strong and her beanstalks high. And Applejack would never claim to know her well, but it still came as a surprise when Rainbow Dash had locked herself in the old Library building two weeks ago. Applejack steeled herself and knocked on the door, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. Seemed like the neighborly thing to do.

“Door’s unlocked,” Rainbow Dash called out. Applejack nudged it and watched as both halves swung open on creaky, rusted hinges. Rainbow Dash paced in tight, sudden movements, her matted tail lashing out, murmuring something, some litany under her breath. Her wings stretched out high and agressive, and her ears twitched and wandered in odd directions. Her colorful mane looked oddly washed out in the half-moon light that filtered through the only open window, and her face seemed tight and stretched in the shadows. Applejack cleared her throat and Rainbow Dash whirled around suddenly, catlike.

“Applejack. You came.” Something like relief colored the pegasus’s husky voice, and something like a tear glinted briefly on her half-lit muzzle.

“Miz Dash? Is there... somethin’ I can do for you?” Applejack asked, taking a slow step forward. Everything her pappy had taught her about approaching wild animals was running through her head. Stay calm, be the boss, but don’t approach too quick or they’ll react. There had to be a candle or lamp somewhere, and Applejack didn’t really trust Rainbow Dash in the dark, not with how she’d been acting.

“I’m not ‘Miz Dash’,” Rainbow Dash snarled. “Of course you don’t remember. Nopony remembers!” Rainbow Dash smacked her head into a table again and again, muttering “no” over and over again and... pleading? Praying? it was hard to hear over the hearty ‘thwacks’ her head made against the solid oak before her. 

Applejack smelled sulphur and tallow, fumbled around, and found the box of matches and unlit taper her nose had pointed out. She struck a match and lit the wick in the flare of sudden brightness, and took a closer look at Rainbow Dash in the flickering golden glow. A closer look wasn’t anything pretty. 

Rainbow Dash’s mane was lank and filthy, greasy, unkempt. Her wings twitched and shivered, her face looked sunken, and her striking eyes looked bloodshot and haunted. Applejack looked closer still, saw the tip if Rainbow Dash’s swollen tongue flick across her chapped and bloody lips.

“Rainbow Dash, when’s the last time you ate?” Applejack asked, taking another step closer. “Or slept, for that matter?” another step closer, and Ms. Dash flared her filthy, shaking wings, letting loose a low growl. Applejack lifted her tail and the candle a bit higher, and finally saw what Rainbow Dash had been pacing around, staring at, whispering to. A soot-stain on the old wooden floor, in a strangely familiar six-pointed star shape, revealed itself to Applejack’s searching eyes. She moved a bit closer, to get a better look at the odd burn mark.

“Don’t touch that!” Rainbow Dash snarled, shocking Applejack from her seeming trance. “Don’t you dare touch that...” Applejack flinched away from Rainbow Dash’s burning glare, away from that cursed spot on the floor, and backed away slowly, never once showing her back.

“Alright, sugarcube,” she soothed gently. “Alright now.” She closed the library door behind her and slowly walked away as Rainbow Dash began her mutterings again.

She barely caught a “Twilight, I tried...” as she plodded back home. She’d drop by the library tomorrow with some food and clean water for the ex-weatherpony. It seemed like the neighborly thing to do.