At first glance, the sky seemed to roll on forever, stretching its long blanket of light blue over the horizon. Just as the ocean stretched beyond the horizon, so long as there was no land on the other end, the sky was the same. Indeed, the sky was far more vast, never being spotted by specks of land as the bodies of water. The only exception to that would be the clouds, but most ponies in Equestria, at least most of the pegasi, would not count the clouds, as they could move them out of the way, unlike land.
Rainbow Dash was one of those pegasi that enjoyed a clear sky. There were several advantages to clouds, of course; they could be molded into a variety of shapes she wanted, were easy to hide in, and of course could be used to sleep on, her favorite being a combination of the three. Not to mention being used to control weather, which was a necessity for farmers to grow their crops.
But there was still something mystifying and romanticizing about a wide open sky. It gave her the urge to fly every time she saw it; to go as high and far as she could, to try and see what was on the other side, like a filly chasing the sunset to try and catch its beauty as if it were a colorful butterfly. In fact, when she had been younger, she had tried to do that, only to realize she had gotten herself lost and had to find her way back again.
She never regretted doing that, not once. Even on the rare occasions her parents had become angry or told her to stop, she would always try it again, eventually getting better and better at finding her way. But of course, aside from some new ground below her, the sky stayed the same; big, blue, and open. In fact, to this day, she still every now and then, she would chase the sun, usually just to get the satisfaction of it. But the sky was still the same, with nothing new to explore.
Though she did miss the sense of exploration, it was not a world-ending loss for her. It was still her sky, her home; the same wonderful home she had always soared through. Even if it was always the same, she preferred it that way. Celestia’s Dome was her playground, and she would not trade it for any other place.
Indeed, she had the urge to fly as far as she could at that very moment. The sky was clear, and the sun was dipping below the horizon, giving off it's glow that painted the space above with and orange hue. The filly in the back of her head told her to see if she could go catch it, and she chuckled a bit to herself.
‘I guess I could if I went to Celestia and asked her to hold it there for a few minutes,’ she jokingly thought to herself as she floated in the air.
Even though she knew the answer, she secretly wondered if there really was anything new over the edge of that horizon.
“Nah,” she said to herself, shaking her head as if to shake the thought out too.
She kicked the idea out of her head and turned to another one, feeling satisfied with her work. So what if she was lazy sometimes? What she could do more than made up for it, at least she thought so. It was no secret that did not like doing work, but when she did it, she was the best at it. Everything would be done quickly and directly, something she took a good deal of pride in.
Hovering there in the sky, it looked like there was a lot to be proud of. Well, maybe not all that much; simply moving the clouds out of the way was not that difficult. But to clear the vast area over Ponyville and the surrounding area entirely of clouds, and at the speed she did it, was not a simple task. That, to her, was something to be proud of.
Watching the sun finally dip below the horizon, she stretched and let out a long, satisfied yawn, realizing then just how tired she was from the job. But sleep was out of the question, at least for tonight. Normally she would be heading home to catch some shut-eye, but not on New Year’s Eve. The celebrations tonight were one of those things she would not miss. Between the fireworks and the parties going on into the early morning hours of the first day of the 1013th year of Celestial Peace, she would be getting zero shut-eye.
"Yeah, this is gonna be great!” she lazily said to herself, followed by another long yawn that contradicted the statement.
She had to admit that her body was moving bit more sluggish than she would like. Maybe heading home to sleep would not be a terrible idea. But at the same time, she did not want to sleep through the celebration. She had slept through alarms before when she was exhausted.
Doing a quick circle over the empty skies to make sure none of the smaller clouds had been missed, a clever little idea entered her head. The skies had to be clear over the town so the fireworks would not be obscured, so maybe she could take just one and nap on a cloud. If it was not too high up, somepony would be bound to notice before it started, and then maybe they would yell to wake her up; especially if that pony was a pegasus. And then that would be that; she would wake up, kick the cloud into nothing, and enjoy the show. She really hoped somepony would wake her; she did not want to be awoken by colorful, and dangerous, explosions all around her. However, she was willing to take her chances.
She did a quick turn to the right and started flying south, towards where she last remembered moving any clouds. Going at a comfortable speed, it took about five minutes to find one, floating by its lonesome a short distance from town. She grabbed it with both of her hooves and started moving back towards Ponyville at a much more sluggish pace than before.
As she glided along, her lack of sleep began to catch up with her. Her head hung low a bit, her eyes fluttering every now and then before shooting open again. At one of those moments, with her head staring towards the ground, she spotted something moving slowly up a hill below her.
She opened her eyes up and looked closer. It was a pony, and a pegasus just like her. It’s coat was a very light blue, far lighter than hers; almost pale. The mane stood out a bit, being a full sapphire shade. It was very odd for this pony to be out here on their own; the closest civilization was Ponyville. Odds were that he or she was just off on personal business, but something told Rainbow to check to make sure; nothing lost if the other pegasus was fine.
Rainbow let go of the cloud and slowly hovered towards the ground. The pony on the ground noticed her as she descended, and stopped to watch her. From what Dash could tell, the Pegasus was a mare, and seemed rather indifferent to her arrival. To go with that, at least from what Dash could see, she was not injured either; that took out the possibility of being hurt and unable to fly.
“Hey, you ok?” she asked, landing a few feet in front of the pegasus.
The pegasus opened her mouth to respond, but shut it quickly, as if to stop herself. Rainbow Dash noticed her face and tone changed dramatically, and oddly, in the span of a few seconds. The first look was one of surprise, as if she had met Rainbow somewhere before a long time ago, the next was one of suppressed anger, and the last led back to the way she had been before: disinterested and rather uncaring of Dash’s appearance.
“I’m fine, thank you,” she replied simply.
“Are you lost?” Dash persisted. “How come you’re out here on your own?”
“I’m not lost, nor am I alone,” she said, trotting past Dash uphill. “I’m just here with a couple of friends, that’s all.”
As Dash’s eyes followed her past and towards the direction of the hill, she noticed two other ponies standing at the top, both of whom were also pegasi. How in the name of Celestia could she have missed them? Though she was droopy-eyed most of the time she was flying over; so it was possible once she thought more on it.
“Oh, alright,” Dash replied, following her a bit. “What are you guys doing out here on your own? Having a private celebration or something?”
“Well… you could say that,” the pegasus replied.
“Cool. You expecting anypony else?”
“Would you stop already!?” she yelled, swinging around with an annoyed look. “Why are you even here? Don’t you have something better to do?”
“Hey, chill! I’m just trying to have a conversation!” she replied with her own irritated look spreading across her face. “Is there something wrong with trying to meet new ponies?”
The pegasus shook her head a bit and came back to her bland look.
“I guess not, sorry,” she said, turning back to going uphill as if she wanted to cut the talk short there.
“Hey, it’s no problem!” Rainbow said, jumping slightly into the air and flying alongside her. “So what’s your name?”
“It’s… it’s not really important.”
“What? Of course your name’s important,” Rainbow said with a smile. “Who would you be without it?”
“Well, I suppose you have a point,” the pegasus responded, remaining silent a bit afterwards, not giving any more information.
“Heh, shy; I get it,” Rainbow said. “How’s about I give you mine first.”
“I know who you are. You’re Rainbow Dash, the Element of Loyalty,” the pegasus remarked as if she were answering a question in school.
Rainbow was surprised; maybe all that bragging she did had paid off in a small way.
“That’s… not the first thing ponies usually say about me… But yea, that’s me!” she replied. “So what’s your name?”
“Nightingale.”
“See? That wasn’t so bad,” Dash said, still floating next to her as she went upwards. “It sounds cool; I don’t know many pegasi that are named after birds.”
“Right. Thanks, Dash,” Nightingale replied, stopping and turning to her. “Sorry, but I’m going to have to send you off now; this is a private event.”
Rainbow raised an eyebrow; something in the way she said that made her curious, though she felt she had intruded enough.
“Uh, ok. Well… look me up later tonight if you’re in Ponyville; maybe I could introduce you to my friends.”
“Hmh, I doubt I’ll be anywhere else tonight, Dash; this ceremony is going to last a long time,” Nightingale replied, talking more to herself than Rainbow. “This year’s important to us. We’ve been looking forward to it for a while now.”
Rainbow watched Nightingale say this as she started off into space in the direction of the top of the hill. Her two companions at the top seemed to be rather impatient about her interruption. Rainbow also noticed that there was no other kind of supplies on the hill; no picnic or fireworks or anything that could show some kind of celebration was about to take place.
“Uh, alright! That sounds… cool!”
“Goodbye, Dash,” Nightingale replied, starting back up the hill in a much quicker pace.
“Um… ok. Bye, Nightingale; and try to work on that anger problem!” Rainbow waved to her, receiving no response from the mare.
She took off into the sky again, the unexpected stop and events causing her to forget the cloud, leaving it to float on its own once again. She was not tired any longer; the peculiar chat had knocked that feeling out of her. But there was something in the way Nightingale acted that confused her, especially when it came to her choice of words.
Rainbow knew ‘ceremony’ and ‘celebration’ did not inherently mean the same thing, and the tone she added to it made it sound far more serious than any celebration. And the way she talked about the year; she said it like the year itself held some kind of specific meaning. The more she analyzed it, the more worried she got.
“Maybe I should do something about this,” she said to herself as she flew along. “But what?”
‘You’re just being paranoid, Dash! It’s nothing!’ a voice in the back of her head told her.
“What if it is something?”
‘It won’t be! Just head back to town and enjoy yourself,’ the voice answered. “Are you really going to ruin New Year’s by getting everypony worked up over a hunch?”
“No, of course not!” she told herself.
She stopped with that, resolving to let the matter go. But every now and then, the idea crept back into her head that those ponies were up to something. To her it felt less like paranoia and more like responsibility; crazy things were known to happen around Equestria. She did not want to be responsible for some tragedy.
“Maybe I’ll just go talk to Twilight real quick,” she persisted. “No harm in doing that, right?”
With that decided, she flew back to town at a fast pace. By then the sun had long disappeared, allowing the dark to wash over the land. It was not pitch black though; the town’s lights showed which way to fly towards and she arrive in no time.
She landed rather roughly, and took a minute to find her balance before continuing on towards the library. The ponies in the streets were rather carefree, the only thing on their minds being to finish their specific chores for the celebration in time. And from the looks of the town, decorated in streamers, flags, and other fares, they seemed to be keeping schedule.
She trotted up to the library and started knocking on the hard wooden door. It was answered only a few seconds by Twilight’s assistant dragon. She had to respect Spike’s reaction time for answering, though she expected no less from the hard working Drake.
“Hey Rainbow! You wanted to see Twilight?” he asked.
Spike also seemed to have gotten used to what every visitor came here for.
“Yea, is she here?” the pegasus asked.
“Of course she’s here, you know how Twilight is,” Spike replied. “Come on in, I’ll go get her for you.”
Rainbow walked in and had a seat on the couch while Spike went upstairs. It was not until she sat down that she realized how tired she was again, this time with much more force. She immediately began to fall asleep, not trying to stay awake this time, only to jump back awake from a familiar voice.
“Hey Rainbow! Good work clearing out the clouds,” Twilight said, coming down the stairs.
“Thanks. Can you help me with something, Twilight?” she replied.
“Sure, what is it?” the unicorn asked.
“Do you know if there's anything important about the New Year?”
Twilight gave her a confused glance.
“Important?” she asked.
“Like… does it mean anything?” Dash clarified.
“Well, not off the top of my head,” Twilight said. “Maybe it’s in one of my books.”
Twilight’s horn glowed and a few select books floated over to her, organized into a neat floating line. Each had similar titles such as Great Equestrian Myths and The Years That Pass By and so forth. She quickly flipped through the pages of each, but none seemed to have the information necessary. Finally she reached the last one in line, titled The Meanings of the Years, which was old and tattered. Quickly scrolling to 1013, she found the page’s words were smudged and the paper torn, making it barely readable.
“Let’s see… ugh, it’s impossible to read this,” she sighed. “Hmm… I think this might be ‘Great’… wait no, never mind. This one over here is ‘world’. This looks like ‘move’. This one’s missing its last letter… so it’s either ‘war’ or ‘was’; I think it’s the first one. There’s a trio of smeared pictures at the top; I think two are a Griffon and Changeling, and… I can’t make out the other one, but it’s taller than all the others. Wait, this word looks like… Sombra?”
Rainbow Dash was trying to calm down by flying slowly in a line back and forth in the air when Twilight found the tyrant’s name.
“Sombra!?” she yelled.
“Rainbow, relax. Why are you so worked up?” Twilight asked, setting the book aside, being careful to levitate a marker to keep the page. “Why are you asking about this anyways?”
Dash landed on the floor, only to go into a fit of regular pacing on her hooves.
“I was a little ways away from Ponyville, and I met this group of ponies, well I just talked to one actually, but they were out here all on their own, and the one I was talking to was acting kinda fishy,” she said, stopping and putting a hoof to her chin, trying to remember the details. “I remember she talked about a ceremony, and she said they’d been looking forward to this, or… something. What did it say about Sombra?”
Twilight gave her friend a worried look; it was not like Rainbow to act like this. For a moment she wanted to call Rainbow on playing a prank, but she did not think her friend would go this far or serious with it. Maybe she was hurt or sick? Not from what Twilight could tell; it just seemed like regular paranoia. Regardless, she floated the book back and opened to the previous page, trying to decipher more, but not getting much.
“I don’t think you need to worry, it’s just some old story,” Twilight responded, trying to comfort her friend. “I can’t get much more out of it anyways.”
This surprised Rainbow greatly. She figured that Twilight would react with a bit more care; she was not lying about her encounter. In fact, Twilight was the one that was usually paranoid over seemingly trivial things.
That also made Rainbow ask herself why she was so worried; usually she would think nothing of this. There was just something about that other pegasus, Nightingale, that gave her a bad feeling. She had a bad feelings before, but this one was different. This felt like some massive event that she could not even stop.
“Aren’t you worried even a little, Twilight!?” Rainbow asked. “The book even says it has something to do with Sombra! What if he comes back without us knowing and takes over Equestria? Isn’t that a little scary?”
If Twilight was not sure before, she was now convinced that her friend was paranoid, so she tried to be easy about it.
“Yes, it’s very scary, but I really don’t think you have to worry about it,” she said. “There’s hardly anything to base this off of. And besides, if this year held some kind of event or spell over it, I’m sure Princess Celestia would let us know so we could be sure.”
“I… I-I guess that’s true,” Rainbow replied, finally sitting down shakily. “But still… What about…”
Twilight sat down next to her friend and rested a hoof on her shoulder.
“Rainbow, I think you might be going a bit overboard with this,” Twilight said.
“Well, shouldn’t I be going overboard?” Rainbow asked.
Before the final words even left her mouth, Dash realized just how ridiculous that sounded, and finally admitted defeat.
“Ugh, I’m sorry, Twilight. I just… I just don’t get it! I never get this worried about little things like this!”
“Well, you were afraid before the Best Young Flyer competition, weren’t you?” Twilight asked.
Rainbow had to admit that she had forgotten that little case of jitters, or at least how bad it had been.
“Yea, I kinda remember that now,” she sighed, a bit embarrassed by it. “Thanks for bringing it up again.”
“You’re welcome,” Twilight smiled, oblivious to the pegasus’ sarcasm.
“Uh, Twilight, I didn’t-”
“And remember how I first moved to Ponyville and got scared about Nightmare Moon’s return?” she continued. “The point is that it happens to everypony a little bit.”
Rainbow did not like the second example very much. While it was true Twilight had been paranoid about Nightmare’s return, it turned out that she was right about it. The similarity between the two situations did not help much either. But the overall message got through to her.
“Yea, I think I understand,” Rainbow said.
“I’m sure those ponies were just doing something personal, like a family tradition or something,” Twilight continued, trying to make sure her friend would be alright.
Rainbow looked up and smiled, feeling much better.
“Yea, that makes sense,” she said. “Thanks, Twi.”
Twilight pulled her friend into a quick hug before hopping off the couch.
“Now, why don’t we head outside and join the party before it’s too late?” the unicorn suggested. “It’s only… jeez, one minute to midnight? The fireworks are about to start! Hurry up!”
Twilight ran through the door, followed closely by Rainbow. In in their haste, the two collided head on with Applejack, who was at the door to see if they were going to join them. The three tumbled a short ways until they came to a rest a few feet from the rest of their friends.
“Ow, my head,” Rainbow groaned. “Heh, sorry Applejack.”
“No trouble, sugarcube,” the farmer replied, picking her hat up from the ground. “Just so long as we’re all here, I suppose.”
As the three got to their feet, other ponies began to come out of their homes and into the streets of the small town. They were not worried about the ruckus; their eyes were all directed upward towards the night. The entire populace seemed to be looking forward to the show more than anything else.
“Just ten seconds left!” Pinkie announced to the group, jumping up and down as she said it.
As if the other ponies heard her, they started to count down from ten.
“Ten!”
“Nine!”
"Eight!”
Rarity, leaned over to talk to Twilight over the noise.
“Dear, where is Spike? Didn’t he want to watch the fireworks?” she asked. “I know he was quite excited to see them.”
“Oh, that’s right!” Twilight gasped.
Her horn flashed again and the slightly confused dragon appeared on her back, though he quickly understood what happened.
“Oh, thanks, Twilight! I guess I lost track of the time,” he said.
They quickly went back to the countdown.
“Three!”
“Two!”
“One!”
Almost immediately the sky exploded with colors and shapes. The heavy noise of the combined explosions and other noisemakers all but silenced the many exclaims of ‘Happy New Year!’ from the crowd. Many turned down from the sky show to congratulate their friends and family near them.
Rainbow was a bit surprised by the intensity of the display, having to turn away from a second. But Pinkie reached out and pulled all of them into a tight hug, and her face got stuck facing the sky slightly. Still, after a moment, her eyes adjusted, and she was able to enjoy the display.
“You did an absolutely wonderful job with the sky,” Rarity complemented her.
That thought actually had not occurred to Rainbow yet. She was not responsible for the actual display, but she had made it clear enough for said display to be possible. It had been her job to clear out the sky as much as possible, and she had cleared it completely. That previous sense of pride she had after just finishing returned to her, now with a bit more force after seeing the actual payoff.
“You guys know you can count on me,” she replied to the unicorn with a wide, slightly cheeky smile. “Thanks.”
Rainbow continued to watch the fireworks as Pinkie released them. The massing of so many explosives into such a relatively small area astounded her; this was by far the largest New Year’s fireworks show yet.
It was so intense that she swore she could feel the power coming off of them. In fact, she was sure of it, as the vibrations were starting to be felt. Shortly after that, she realized just how heavy those vibrations were, and that they seemed to be coming from below her, from the ground, rather than the sky.
“Holy cow! What kind of fireworks are they using?” she asked.
Before any other responses could come, there was a strange rattle followed by a deep, far-off crack. There was a rumbling that sounded like a massive avalanche, and the vibrations intensified. Rainbow all of a sudden felt lightweight, as if she were floating without using her wings.
Then, everything started shaking violently, as if the town were being thrown about by some giant. Rainbow fell hard onto her stomach, as did all the others around her. What was odder was that the wind was flying over her ears and body at a fast pace, similar to when she was flying fast through the air or into a heavy gust, and she tried to understand what was happening.
The world felt like it was falling all at once. It was not like a part of the world had broken away and was falling, but as if the entire world as a whole was falling. Just where it was falling, she did not know. All she could do was lay flat down and ride it out.
Looking up above her, even the sky looked like it was moving away from her. Rainbow rolled from her belly to her back, and watched the stars become dimmer and dimmer. For a minute, she wondered if she should follow, that she should try and fly back to her sky. But then that would mean abandoning her friends; something she could not do. She turned back onto her belly, shut her eyes tight, and prayed to Celestia she had made the right choice.