There was no consoling Rainbow Dash as she paced incessantly in the library portion of Twilight's house. The friends had retired there shortly after Dash's revelation of Fluttershy still being out in the storm. They could still hear Vinyl's DJ music being played in the house across the way, but at the moment they had all been drained of the party mood.
Even Pinkie Pie was looking unusually dour.
“I never saw this coming,” Pinkie whispered to Applejack. The two reclined upstairs, looking down on Dash's pacing. They could almost see a permanent pattern being worn into the carpet, she had been at it for that long.
“Neither did I,” Applejack admitted, matching Pinkie's volume.
“What was Fluttershy doing out there to begin with?” Pinkie continued. “She knew tomorrow was Storm Day, and she's normally so cautious... Why would she risk being out too late and getting caught in the midnight hour?”
“I think she thought she could make it back in time,” Rarity replied as she walked up the last few steps to join them. Twilight followed closely behind her; no one had seen her come back from her rendezvous with Princess Celestia, but obviously she had returned safely before the storms had come upon them. Twilight had one of her many spell books out and was using her unicorn magic to keep it in front of her as she walked. She was studying it very intently.
“There was no way she could have known that Rainbow Dash hadn't programmed the clouds properly,” Twilight said, not looking up from her book.
“Whatcha lookin' for?” Pinkie asked, trotting over to Twilight. “Can I help?”
“I'm looking for a levitation spell,” Twilight answered. “It's in one of these orange-colored books I have, I know that much. There's only four of them in my collection, but they're all horribly mislabeled, so I kind of have to take it one book at a time.”
Pinkie didn't say a word, but instead simply trotted downstairs. As she neared the ground floor, the other three went over to the bannister to see what she was doing. When she got all the way down, she went over to Rainbow Dash.
“Hey, Dashie,” Pinkie said, “you wanna help me out with something?”
“Sure,” Dash replied in a very morose tone. “What's up?”
“Well... I'm looking for those three orange spell books... They're way too high up for me to get, and Twilight needs them to look for a location for us to find Fluttershy, and-”
Rainbow Dash brightened up a bit. “Oh yeah, that's right. I almost forgot how awesome she was at magic.”
“Yeah!” Pinkie agreed, maybe a bit too enthusiastically than what the situation was called for. Then again, she was just happy that her little tidbit of news could brighten Dash's spirits as they did. “So can you fly up and get them for me?”
Dash rose into the air, her wingbeats the only sound at the moment. It took her a minute to find all the books, but soon she had the rest of them.
“Thanks!” Pinkie said, smiling for what seemed like the first time in forever. Her enthusiasm, however small it was, proved to be as catchy as always, and Rainbow Dash couldn't help but smile too. Pinkie bounded back up the stairs, balancing the three books on top of her head as she went.
When she got up to the top, Twilight levitated the books and set them on top of her study table, next to her bed. Pinkie trotted over to the books and opened the first one, using her hooves to flip towards the back of the book.
“Um, Pinkie Pie...?” Twilight said curiously. “What are you doing? You can't use those books to
cast spells; you're not a unicorn.”
“Oh, I know,” Pinkie replied. She had obviously had her spirits raised by her previous encounter with Rainbow Dash. “I'm not trying to cast any of these spells. I know it's not my place to do that.”
“Then... what are you doing?”
“Looking for the index. There has to be some kind of organization to these books. You can't always have chaos, you know.” Twilight was a bit stunned, more because she hadn't thought of that first, than that it was Pinkie Pie who had done so.
Pinkie made it back to the index of the first book and scanned the contents. “Nope, it's not in this one.” She nudged it over to the side and began flipping through the second book. Twilight went to the index of the one that she was looking through, and found that the spell wasn't in that one either.
“Aha!” Pinkie exclaimed a moment later. “It's in this one! 'How to Find That Which Is Lost,” page 103.” She flipped to that page. “Yep, that one's it!”
Rainbow Dash appeared, flying near the wooden railing. “You found it? You found the location?"
“I reckon she did,” Applejack answered. Lightning cracked outside, giving them all a start.
“We simply must hurry,” urged Rarity. “Oh, I just can't bear to think of her all alone out there... How scared must she be?” That thought sobered them all with a quickness.
Twilight cantered over to Pinkie with renewed vigor. “Let me see that...” She scanned the page. In a minute, she spoke again: “Oh, wow...”
“What?” asked Rainbow Dash. “What is it?”
“This is going to be a tough one... It's going to require a lot of magic, almost all of what I have available to me. If I can even pull the spell off, I'm sure I'm not going to be strong enough to go out with you all to find her...”
“That's fine,” Pinkie replied. “You can just rest up here. We can go out and find her ourselves.” Twilight smiled. She was glad to have somepony like Pinkie Pie as her friend.
She was about to speak again, when Rarity piped up from over by the study table: “If I may... I might have found a spell in this last orange book over here that may help us.”
“Oh?” asked Dash.
“Yes, it's a spell to keep one completely and totally dry, regardless of how much water is around them.” She looked down at the page again. “And it appears it can also be used to dry oneself if they ever find themselves wet at all. Might this help us?”
Twilight smiled wryly. “Yes, Rarity, it would, but like I just got done saying-”
“Darling,” Applejack cut in, “she isn't talking about you casting those keep-dry spells. She's talking about herself doing it. You aren't the only unicorn here, you know.”
Rarity nodded, still scanning the contents of the page. “And judging by the looks of it, this isn't all that demanding of a spell. I think even though I don't have as much magic as our dear Twilight Sparkle does, I'm pretty sure I can use this on the hunting party without too much of an expenditure of effort.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Rainbow Dash asked, back- for the moment, at least- to her normal level of forcefulness. “Let's get out there and find her!”