“I love you,” the alicorn uttered, her hoof reaching out with the most tender of cares to touch the object of her affections.
The book shuddered on its shelf as she touched its bound spine and pushed it in.
Her horn aglow, the mare pulled out a novel and looked out over her shoulder, seeing the room for what her mind wanted it to be; a myriad of bound friends sat, waiting for her to uncover their secrets and to bask in their knowledge. Yes, this was her true love. This was what she was made for.
This was a distraction.
Lightning and thunder raged just outside the thin panes of glass securing her home, flashing white light on the walls and casting the books in an eerie glow. The sound followed, a low growl that paled in comparison to the roaring that was being stifled by her logical mind.
Her hoof shivered, held up to take another step towards the shadowy confines of her reading room. Behind her, the book so firmly grasped in her magic, fell, tumbling to the ground as its pages fluttered through the air, like a butterfly crashing to the ground, followed by the thump of a fatal boot.
Twilight Sparkle, the mare of mares, the Element of Magic, one of the most powerful creatures in all the land, yelped like a little filly. Panting and casting her sight from one shadowed corner to the next, the grown mare allowed time to pass as her thoughts collected themselves. “Come on, calm down, calm down and think.”
It had started when Rainbow left. The door had creaked open and the hiss of rain assaulting the pavement filled her home and the darkness of her mind. That only lasted a moment before the young pegasus trotted out, groaning as the water enveloped her. The door slammed shut. A shiver ran through the house and then all was still. All except Twilight.
She sighed, the sound akin to the growl of an angry timberwolf as it escaped her. Casting her gaze to the floor, Twilight watched the wretched, deformed shape of her book, its covers twisted open and many of its pages torn out of the binding. It was like her; given wings but unable to fly; loved but unable to love back; filled with knowledge but utterly useless when it came time to apply it.
Her hoof struck out and slammed against the book, giving it flight once more as it arced across the room and crashed into the centre pillar. The reverberation was minuscule, but still the alicorn felt it rock through her bones, and her heart swelled with a surge of adrenalin.
“Stupid,” she said just as another bolt of thunder crashed outside.
“Stupid!” she cried, her voice breaking for the first time in decades.
“So, stupid,” she repeated as a whisper.
Turning, she looked to the walls of books. Knowledge bound and held together by paper and the stroke of a pen. A million pages of words and thoughts etched for the pleasure and meditation of any that opened the covers. All of them were set in neat rows, unblemished by childish hooves, untouched by dust. Worthless.
Tendrils of magic lashed across the air like whips that pierced into the spines of the volumes and became bards, anchoring into their leather and paper backs. With a banshee’s shriek, Twilight tore her power back, catapulting the books into the air where the sharp-edged tendrils dissected them without remorse.
Thunder struck again, illuminating a rain of paper crumbles and floating squares where words of wisdom once were recently perched. The tendrils receded with a murmur. Twilight sat in the room’s centre.
Her mind caught up. Visions of her friends in a time when confusion didn’t exist. Rainbow Dash was a friend. The love that blossomed between them. Like bits and pieces of a poem read in inconsequential order, her life hailed down around her, falling into place as she connected one piece of prose to another.
“Oh, Celestia,” she whispered.
Words and letters drizzled by, touching her and accumulating on her statue-like form as they piled up on her back and head. She blinked, knowing vaguely that time had past but having no real care as to how much and what she had done in it.
Around her, like a corona of lost thoughts, was a halo of destroyed literature. Pages torn apart by the razor-sharp edge of her own magic, pieces of wood torn from off shelves, the bindings and covers of her favourite novels, hardly legible with the gashes running through their words.
One hoofstep at a time, Twilight marched out of her cocoon of destruction, paper sliding off her coat as she moved. It was over, for what it was worth.
Back to a normal life.
She froze mid-step, the world around her going quiet once more as the echo of her hoof-falls died down. Only the dust stirred through the air, dancing in the shafts of new sunlight pouring through the westward windows.
Normal? She’d just mope around, work hard but avoid all confrontation. Trot around like a moving repository of knowledge and magic, a tool for other ponies?
No, not again. She had been through too much to stay the same.
Sure, things didn’t have to move quickly. And she didn’t have to run out into the path of the lightning bolt. But she could not simply allow her life to stagnate around her.
She had to talk to Rainbow Dash.
In a blink the mare was out the door. Cool air collected in her lungs and sent a shiver coursing along her spine as she blinked away the after image of her distraught library and took in a fresh view.
Ponyville was a mess. Branches and leaves and stray pieces of waste had been blown about by the storm. Some windows had been smashed open and an entire tree lay uprooted near the town square, its branches curving upwards like the hand of a creature nearing death.
Rain still misted in the air, speckling her visage and body with a blanket of cold humidity that forced her to squint as she breathed in the thick morning air.
Still, the damn sun was out in full force, illuminating everything in bright shades and forcing even the darkest shadows to retreat into unseen corners.
Standing in the middle of it all, not ten paces from her doorway, was Rainbow Dash.
Long multichromatic stands of hair were plastered to her head and falling down around her in sensuous waves. Her eyes, half-lidded and reddened by tears, stared forwards, like a pair of knives ready to carve into the soul of any who dared to meet them. She was wet all over, but silent, her chest moving up and down in an even rhythm as she fought off exhaustion.
She didn’t looked like a mare. She was a goddess that had fought with the storm, and had won.
The mare blinked, a slick of multichromatic hair sliding over her eyes.
“Hey,” she said.
Twilight’s body rocked back, reeling from an unknown force as her mind click empty. There she was, beautiful in agony as pain and suffering flowed through her cerulean body. But she wasn’t kneeled over, she wasn’t weak. Rainbow’s back was straight, her countenance was direct and ready, and the soggy wetness was making her heavy, but she had the power to keep standing.
“Hi?”
“So, um, about before,” Dash said, finally averting her gaze to one of the puddles collecting at the base of the library tree. “I was thinking...”
“Yes?”
Her gaze shifted again, piercing into Twilight’s like the tip of a lightning bolt spearing the unprotected earth. Sparks flew. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to still be friends. We only have a little in common, I know. And we’re really different. But still, I want to be your friend, even if you don’t want to be any more than that.”
Twilight set her jaw then worked it soundlessly, an uncommon gesture as she fought back a wave of nausea and tears.
“Rainbow, what’s it like, being you?”
Rainbow blinked back, an eyebrow arching up for a moment before she spoke a single toneless “Uh.” Then, huffing, she answered, “It’s okay, I guess. I mean, sometimes it’s not the easiest thing. There’s not that much to think of. I move with the wind and would move on, but then there’s you guys. I can’t just leave my friends behind.”
She looked up, where the storm clouds were still marring the sky. “There are things I want. To become a Wonderbolt, to be with my friends, to have ponies know who I am. But there are lots of things that are more important than all that. I like fun, I like adventure, and I love it when things are new, refreshing and bright, like me.”
“I see, maybe.” Absentmindedly, she removed a piece of paper that had caught in her mane, like an insect in a web. “It sounds as if you’re life’s... interesting.”
“Well, yeah, it is sometimes.”
“I... see?” Twilight paused, an inkling of red clashing with the lavender of her coat. She looked bruised. “Dash, I-I can’t tell you the things you want to hear, because I’m not that mare. I’m not even the mare that I want to be, yet. I’ve never... I don’t.... Give me some time, okay?”
She turned and looked into the darkness of her home, pierced by light but swimming in shadow. Soon the sun would clear it all out.
The early beams touched the circle of torn books and a tear creeped up to her eye as she saw the devastation she had wrought.
All for naught.
Maybe.
“Lunch!” Twilight blurted out over her shoulder. “We’ll talk over lunch, later, today. Also, get a shower. You smell like a wet dog.”