This was weird, I could have sworn that I had just gone to sleep in my bed.
Now I was laying in a tree.
Maybe this was just one of those days, or more accurately nights, when I just forgot where I went to sleep. Maybe I had flown in my sleep. Both of those made sense, though obviously only one of them could be true. I stretched out, I was amazingly not tired. This was only amazing because it wasn’t daytime yet.
I landed on the ground, and looked around. It looked just like Sweet Apple Acres. The strangest part about it, though, was what happened when I started to walk. It didn’t seem to matter how far I walked, I was always around the tree. Sometimes I would walk straight, and it would be right there. Other times, I had ended up turning to see it again.
This was why I didn’t stay up at night. There was nothing wrong with the night, I just found it a lot better to sleep during it.
“That saddens us, Rainbow Dash.”
I hadn’t heard that voice before, I had no clue who it was. There was a swirl of blue, dark blue, and then a … whatever you’d call the princess appeared. She wasn’t quite as big as Celestia, but she was close. It took a couple of seconds for me to remember who she was.
“Nightmare Moon! I thought we defeated you with the Elements?!” I hadn’t thought that she would be able to continue her existence. The Elements of Harmony had turned her into that little foal, Luna. “I’m gonna go get the girls and we’re going to-”
I looked over, and she was crying.
Nightmare Moon didn’t cry.
“Huh? Shouldn’t you be all “Eternal Night” and “I will eat your foals”? I could have sworn that was how it went. That was what Nightmare Night had taught me, anyway. There had been a time when I had assumed it was fake, but if Nightmare Moon was real then all bets were off.
“Please don’t remind us of that. We do not want to be Nightmare Moon anymore.” She looked at me, and I couldn’t help but feel like a real mule. Something was different about her, she looked even smaller than she had when we had ran into her.
Wait.
“Princess Luna?” It only made sense that she would be a princess as well. If she was Celestia’s sister, she would be royalty as well. And I knew that the female royalty was princess, or queen. Either way, it was time for me to apologize in the only way I knew how. “Sorry about that. Guess I need to learn how to think these things through.”
I started to laugh, and soon enough she was chuckling as well.
“We forgive thee, Rainbow Dash. You did not know what had happened to us. But that is not why we are here.”
That brought forth the obvious question. “Then why are you here?” The next question it brought forth was something I didn’t bother asking. Before, when she had said us, I had assumed that there would be multiple ponies. There was only one, though. I knew it wasn’t a princess thing, Celestia didn’t really talk like that.
Part of me thought it was smarter to just not say anything about that.
Her smile widened, and she extender her wings. “We are here because it is our duty to help our subjects through their dreams.”
Heh. I had to stop myself from making a doody joke right there, this seemed like a bad time.
Maybe it was because I didn’t know what problem I was having in this dream. “But I don’t even know what the problem is. How can you help me if I don’t even know I have a problem?”
Luna looked at me, a cocky grin on her face, and then shook her head. “You went to sleep with a problem, young Rainbow Dash. Surely you don’t have that poor of a memory.”
That was right, the hours of thought hadn’t gotten me anywhere. “Maybe I’m just not meant to find anypony, Princess. It might just be my lot to be alone.” That thought wasn’t one that I liked, but it might have been true. “I don’t know anypony who I didn’t cross off because of what Spike told me.”
That grin, it didn’t disappear.
Something did happen, though, the sky seemed to break. “Our time grows short. Rainbow Dash, remember the advice. Remember yesterday. You’ll figure it out.”
With that, I was startled awake. I was actually startled enough to fall right out of bed, which was the best thing that had happened to me since I had dropped Spike off. The dream had been pretty weird, hadn’t been all that helpful. This meant that I could move, which meant I could head down to Sugarcube Corner and get something to eat.
About twenty minutes later, that was out of the way. It had been a good pie, cherry.
Today was going to be a good day. I was about to head out to do some cloud kicking, my job didn’t wait for anypony, but then I remembered that Cloud Kicker hadn’t actually given me any work to do today. It still felt weird going by that, I had been bumped down from the leader when Cloud Kicker had been forced to take over during my short recovery.
My Weather Team would eventually be returned to me, Cloud Kicker was way too focused on other things to be much of a leader for long.
Maybe I would start trying to get my team back tomorrow, I had to go see Fluttershy today. There was an apology with her name on it, maybe even a hug if the apology didn’t work. I didn’t like that second one, but it would be totally worth it if it meant that she forgave me.
Another stretch, it was time for me to head to Fluttershy’s.
As I left my house, the sound of a voice calling my name caught my attention. I looked down, and that was when I saw her.
Twilight was there.
This wasn’t going to be a repeat of last time, and I knew that flying away quickly wasn’t a sign that I was afraid. I just didn’t want to end up getting zapped again, since last time I had been stuck for Celestia-knows how long. I couldn’t give her the chance to do something, not again, I just had to rush over to Fluttershy’s and hide.
With any luck, I had lost her on the way.
I wasn’t going to take any chances, though.
A couple of knocks later, and Fluttershy had the door cracked open. “Ya gotta let me in, Fluttershy. We have a few things to talk about … and some crazy mare is after me.” I couldn’t say it was Twilight, she wouldn’t let me hide out here for the day. She looked at me, confused for a moment, and then let me in.
“You just missed tea time. I can fix some more if you’d like.”
This seemed like as good of a reason as any to say no, and it would even seem like I was doing the right thing. “It’s all right, ‘Shy, you don’t have to worry about me. I had something to drink before I came here.” That wasn’t a complete lie, I had drank some water at my house before I came here.
“Oh, all right.” Both of us were sitting on the couch before we knew it, looking ay each other. “What do you need, Rainbow?”
I wrapped my front legs around her, and gave her a hug. “I’m sorry, Fluttershy. I shouldn’t have said what I did when we went out that night. It was totally too soon.” That was not the order of things in my head. I had thought that I would apologize with words, and hug if that failed. For the life of me, though, I had hugged before I had apologized.
“Oh, it’s all right Rainbow. I know you didn’t mean anything by it.” Regardless of intention, she was hugging me back. “I could never stay mad at you.”
That was my sister for you. She might not have been biologically related to me, but she was definitely the most understanding part of my family. I loved that about her. “I just … I felt really bad about what I said. I even thought about going to see you yesterday, I had a big apology planned. I was going to go, take you to Sugarcube Corner, get you whatever you wanted. If that didn’t work, I was going to talk to Pinkie Pie about making a party for it. She would have totally agreed.”
“You’re darn right I would have.” I saw Pinkie appear from a vase, and then quickly disappear.
Both of us looked at the vase, and then started to laugh. “Oh, Rainbow, you’re the most thoughtful friend I could ask for. All you ever need to do is - wait, why didn’t you come over yesterday? I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m not mad at you.”
What should I tell her?
I thought about it for a good minute, and then I heard knocking on the door. Twilight’s voice was heard, and I quickly hid behind the couch.
“I’m not here. Tell her I’m not here.”
There was no way I was going to get zapped again.
“Tell her I just… errr… left a couple of minutes ago.” Fluttershy looked at me, confused. I couldn’t tell her that I was worried that Twilight might paralyze me again. I doubted that she would believe that it had happened the first time, it just didn’t make much sense. Twilight was usually not the type to assault her friends, but I knew it had happened.
A couple of minutes and a lie about Sweet Apple Acres later, Twilight had left.
“Thanks, ‘Shy. I guess I have to tell ya about what happened yesterday now, don’t I?”
“Not unless you want to. It’s all right if you don’t.”
If I didn’t tell her, I would feel guilty. If I told her that I had gone to see Spike, and spent the day napping and talking, she might not understand. After all, I always talked with her about my problems. This time, though, I hadn’t told her much about it. There were a lot of things that Fluttershy could move on from, but something told me this wasn’t one of them.
“A friend I hadn’t seen in a long time needed my help with something, it was kind of spurt of the moment.” That was the start of a vague truth. I hadn’t seen much of Spike, and he had needed my help. Actually, I probably needed to spend more time with him. He was my friend too, and it wasn’t like I saw him much when we spent time with Twilight.
“We ended up laying on a cloud, taking a nap.” I thought back to yesterday, which wasn’t that long ago, and realized something. It hadn’t seemed weird when he had laid on my stomach when it happened, when I had put him there. I remembered how warm it felt, how warm he had felt. Somehow, it seemed different now that I had some time to think about it. It felt kind of nice, really.
“Oh, that sounds lovely.”
I heard her, but at the same time it didn’t register. It was almost as if she wasn’t there at all, and I was just by myself again. This wasn’t the best time for me to space out, though, Fluttershy could easily see that there was something wrong. That was a bad way to put it, I didn’t think there was anything wrong. The best way for it to be described was that she could tell that there was something distracting me.
“Is something wrong, Rainbow? You seem a little … distant.”
That was one way of putting it, maybe it was the best way. Nothing was wrong, that was what I had to tell her. “I just have something on my mind.”
~Fluttershy~
I wished so much that she would tell me what.
I’m not the type to throw ponies out, or force them to tell me, but this was Rainbow. I didn’t want her to have something on her mind that might lead to bad things. The only other thing that I could think to do, I could always ask but that ran the chance of getting nothing, was to try to figure it out on my own. I had to figure out what it was that was bothering her.
Something about yesterday.
I wasn’t the smartest pony out there, but there was obviously something more to it. There had been an expression, I just couldn’t explain it. Something about remembering what had happened had led to that expression. She hadn’t told me much about yesterday, though, so I had to do something. I was going to be more assertive, and I was going to help out my friend.
“So you just napped with him yesterday? He must have been a really nice pegasus, but I still don’t see how you helped him.”
That happened, and I was so proud of myself. I had just pushed a little harder, and I was going to get some more information about yesterday. Oh, I could just hug myself. Maybe I really could be assertive, maybe all I had to do was try.
~Rainbow~
This was actually kind of nice.
Fluttershy seemed to be taking charge, and all I could do was go with it. That was going to happen after I wiped the shocked look off my face, of course. Out of everything that could have happened, this was the one thing that I hadn’t actually expected.
“Well, it was mostly advice.”
Another truth, though it wasn’t much. I should have been able to tell her everything, yet for the life of me I just kept quiet about most of it. I didn’t want to let her know it was Spike with his attempt to try to get together with Rarity. I didn’t know why, it wasn’t like she could date both of them. That wasn’t the type of thing that could have worked for anypony.
Yet I couldn’t say it.
“He wanted some advice on how to finally say something to the mare he loved.” I saw a wince, this might not have been the best subject. Fluttershy still had feelings for Rarity. This whole thing was just one giant ball of confusion. Rarity was the only one who could make a decision here, and I couldn’t say I envied her right now.
If she chose Fluttershy, Spike would be crushed. If she chose Spike, Fluttershy would be crushed. Either way, a friend of mine would end up being shot down. Which one would likely get shot down? I didn’t know anything about Rarity’s love life, I didn’t care, but it was more likely that Spike was going to end up getting shot down.
That thought didn’t help much.
“I’m sorry, ‘Shy, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
~Fluttershy~
I had to be strong, I had to say something.
“No, Rainbow, it’s all right. Some things just aren’t meant to be, and dancing around them won’t help anypony.”
I didn’t want to talk about love, it just hurt. At the same time, I didn’t want Rainbow to feel bad. The only thing I could think to do was ask more about who she was with. She still hadn’t told me a lot. I wasn’t as good about these things as Pinkie Pie, but it was always nice to know the ponies that your friends were going to be spending time with.
Apparently, this pegasus was important enough for her to drop everything and help. He must have been something fairly important to her, and so I had to do my best to be his friend as well.
“Umm … if you don’t mind … maybe you could tell me more about this pegasus that you were helping. It might be nice to meet him sometime.”