She was born from the clouds themselves, the story goes. The legend, she grins, remembering the way her father would tell it to her on rainy nights - voice as loud as the storm beneath them, hooves gesturing so dramatically he quite often flung himself off his chair. He fancied himself as quite the bard, inventing countless stories of adventure and deadly danger faced head-on and conquered by the fearless Rainbow Dash - and in her awe-rapt youth, she had easily believed that the tales he spun were something more than bedtime stories. They were the lore of a future hero; they were little pieces of destiny, revealed early to her to encourage her and guide her path. One day, she really would fight off vicious sky-pirates in pursuit of precious artefacts; one day, she alone would vanquish the dark army of an ancient evil. One fine day, she'd save Equestria.
Look at me now, Dad.
"The night you came into this world," he'd begun so many years ago, "a most peculiar storm was brewing over Cloudsdale… Now, it's not uncommon for wild rainclouds to drift away from the Everfree. Most often they only cause a little grievance to an earth pony farmer before being promptly tidied away by the weather patrol. It's not even unheard of for one of them to wander all the way up and over to a pegasus city like our own. But it's definitely not normal for such a cloud to park itself right over one particular house and refuse to budge!
"Of course, we hadn't noticed its arrival - it must've sneaked in at some point in the late evening - but, just as I lie my weary head down to sleep, and your mother looks over at me with those big bright eyes of hers and whispers to me, darling, I think the baby's coming - just as she says it! Pit… pit… pit… we hear on the window pane. Now I don't pay it too much mind in the moment, because heavens above, our little girl is on the way!" (He ruffled her already unruly mane, and she grinned sheepishly.)
"But as I'm bounding out the door and down to the hospital, I can't help but notice it's gotten even louder. I look up…" (he pauses for dramatic effect) "… and there I see it. A massive storm cloud as big as our whole house, and no bigger! It was like the thing was moulded into the very shape of our little home, so that it rained down on us alone - and it had turned from a drizzle into a proper rain now. And oh, this thing was darker than dark. Blacker than black. It was like looking at nothing at all. It almost hurt your eyes, staring up there too long… Lucky me, then, being in a hurry and all!
"So, off I go, galloping down the streets, so flustered I can't even remember I've got perfectly good wings I could use - barge in through the hospital doors, shouting like a madman… I'm lucky I wasn't arrested. No, I find our good doctor, Helping Hooves, and he chases after me all the way back home, all his fancy medical equipment clutched tightly to his sides. And that cloud is still there to greet us! It's bucketing down now, and I can see tiny little flickers of electricity inside it, dotting that great darkness. I say, our doctor remarks, what in Equestria have we here?, he's just as mystified by the darn thing as I am. Thinking about it, I remember that it's been dead calm all day, so I start to wonder how in the world it got all the way up here... Now that Mr Hooves is around, I feel a little less frantic, so I fly on up to the big ol' thing, and I give it the biggest push I can muster. Look here, I'm not a little pony, I take care of myself; but this thing just will not move an inch! And the way that lightning keeps crackling about inside, it sounds like… well, it almost sounds like the cloud is laughing at me.
"I reckon that can't be helped then, and anyway, our house is a sturdy old thing and I know it can take a spot of bad weather, so I duck back inside to check on how you were coming along. The good doctor asks us, while there's still time left - you're sure you wouldn't rather carry this out in the hospital? I know home birthing has a certain quaint charm to it all, but as your doctor…
"No, your mother interrupts him. Here. There's something kind of… off about the way she says it. It must be here. It doesn't feel like the words are coming from within her, more like-- like they're coming from all around her. It's hard to describe, and well, maybe I just imagined it, because then she cries out in pain and tells me to shut the front door already for Celestia's sake, and it seems all normal again. It's been a very odd night so far, but I know I'm flustered and panicking, and that things will probably make more sense once I get a good night's sleep. Not that I ever managed to get one after you joined us, you little trouble-maker," he remarked, arching an eyebrow at her.
"The night goes on, the rain keeps coming down, harder and harder now, it's so loud we have to raise our voices to be heard over it - not to mention your mother's not in the happiest place, and she's making a fair bit of noise herself! Of course, the whole ordeal's attracted some attention from our neighbours, and most of them have come knocking wondering just what in Equestria is going on. So now your mother's in the bedroom getting ready to bring you into the world, Mr Cirrus and his wife and the Whitewing family and Daydream from the cottage across the way are gathered and gossiping in the kitchen, Helping Hooves is yelling that he can't keep working without a cup of tea, I'm flitting between rooms trying to tell everyone what's what, and still this bloody great cloud is trying its very hardest to drown us all! Let it never be said that we don't make a fuss over you, little one.
"I'm lucky I was there when the moment came, busy bee that I was. I'd staggered into the bedroom at the stroke of midnight, just about dead on my feet, a cup of tea balanced on each wing, and your mother gives out one almighty cry - then, BOOOOOM!" (Here's where he mimes an explosion of such magnitude that he almost always topples his chair over, but it does nothing to halt his speech.) "All that lightning that must've been building up inside that great storm all night comes down in one enormous bolt that shakes the whole house and evaporates the tea into a puff of steam and blinds me for a second with a searing whiteness. I feel all the hairs on my body stand up on end! And then… when I can see again, before my very eyes, I see you, little Dashie. Just you, curled up at the foot of that bed, wailing softly at nothing in particular. I didn't realise it until after the good doctor had cleaned you up, and I'd sent him and the neighbours packing for the night, but that was when the rain stopped, too; and sure enough, when I walked our Dr Hooves to the door, I looked up and I could see the sky again, clear as crystal. The stars have never been as beautiful as they were in that moment."
Maybe it's childish - maybe it's a bit crazy - but she can't quite bring herself to dismiss it all as a fable. What would she know? After all, she wasn't there for most of it. Many years after its first telling, when she finally worked up the guts to ask him if any of it was true, he only gave her a sly little smile, and coolly replied, "I don't see why not."
Why not? Rainbow Dash wonders as she swoops through the sky, ducking and weaving through the very stuff she may have come from. There's all kinds of magic in this land. Is it really so crazy to think there's a bit of it in me?