Rainbow’s bangs fluttered in the high wind. Morning sunlight glistened off her lashes. She was lying back, gazing perpetually upwards, her ruby eyes scraping the blue sky.
She stared and stared until she could almost discern dark shadows from the azure sphere looming high above her. All around her, a gigantic cloudbed spread in almost every direction. The vaporous particles tingled with warm energy, drifting upwards before fading into nothingness past her wings.
Slowly, she brought a hoof up and drew an invisible circle in the sky, as if crafting a ring out of thin air. She exhaled, and her breaths became visible in the cold, thin altitude.
“I would never have left you guys.” She gulped, trembling slightly. “Never.” Her head shook from side to side. “Not so long as you were around.”
The void beyond the blue sky answered with silence.
She sniffled. Her pendant wore heavily all of the sudden, threatening to plunge her blue body back through the bed of clouds. She leaned her head to the right, squinting at the rising sun. The world melted before its solar glory. All was one with the light; it was so inviting to get lost in it.
It was an invitation she could no longer afford.
With a breath, she dug her wings back into the clouds, breaking them. Her body sank through, flipped in mi-descent, and angled out into a calm glide. After half-a-minute, she broke through the overcast ceiling over Lerris, descending in a wide spiral towards the Noble Jury.
When she approached the parked vessel, she heard a stir of commotion, breaking the harmonic dissonance in the cool, northern air. Raising an eyebrow, she flapped her wings and shot like a blue bullet towards the airship. When she finally reached earshot of the ponies on board, she instantly heard Bellesmith’s distressed voice.
“...not in her bunkroom! Not in her cot! Not anywhere to be seen! I’ve check everywhere! Everywhere!” She choked on a sob, rubbing her hooves over her distraught muzzle. “Where’s she gone off to?! Why would she do something like this?!”
“And we’re going to find her, Belle!” Pilate exclaimed, grasping her shoulders in the middle of the top deck. “I promise you--”
“How could she have gotten past us to begin with?!” Belle cried as she stomped her hoof with a brief frown. “How could she have gotten past you?! I built O.A.S.I.S. to pick up the bouncing of a flea?! You’re telling me that neither of us can keep track of one l-little filly?!”
Eagle Eye scrambled up with Ebon in tow. “I just woke up Props and Josho! We’re gonna cover the east side of town and they’re gonna comb the west outskirts!”
“Good idea,” Pilate said with a nod as he leaned close to Belle’s shivering figure. “One unicorn and earth pony per team.”
“Guess that leaves us to the south fields!” Zaid sing-songed as he motioned to the metal mare. “Hop along, hot stuff! I may not be a unicorn, but I’ve still got a nose to find the little scamp with!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Roarke grumbled as she fit her forelimb into a pneumatic sleeve and activated her suit with a steamy hiss. “I’ll cover the lakeside first and then come join you. You’d better not slow me down.” As she hopped off the vessel, her lensed gaze blindly brushed past Rainbow Dash.
The pegasus gulped. She touched down onto the deck and stammered, “What happened?”
“It’s Kera, Rainbow,” Pilate said with a nervous shudder. “She’s… she’s…” He clenched his teeth and seethed. “She’s up and run off!”
“C-can you blame her, Pilate?!”
“Belle, please--”
“Well can you?!” Belle shrieked, frowning hideously. “We talk about her behind her back like she’s some sort of livestock and expect her to be okay with it?!”
“How else were we to discuss what’s at hoof?!”
“With her?! With the whole group?! I don’t know!” Belle wiped her cheek, shuddering. “All I wanted to do was protect the filly! Not drive her away! She doesn’t need this! She needs ponies who can trust her enough to level with her!”
“Look, we all do dumb things!” Rainbow Dash said, waving her forelimbs. “And Kera’s no exception! I knew a pony once who liked to be melodramatic when poop hit the fan, and boy were there days when I wanted to shove her sewing machine down her throat.”
“Rainbow… darling, I-I appreciate your g-good spirit…” Belle sniffled, her lips quivering. “But… but…”
Rainbow grasped the mare’s hooves with her own. “Say no more. I got this.”
“But Rainbow! She’s crafty, elusive, scared--”
“I said I’ve got this!” Rainbow Dash leaned forward and nuzzled the mare. “You’ve been in my head. You know when I’m telling you the truth! I’m gonna find her!”
Belle nodded, clenching her teeth. “I wish… I wish I was so lucky to relate to all ponies as I relate to you, Rainbow Dash…”
“Yeah, well…” Rainbow Dash flapped her wings and took off. “Where’d the fun be in that?” She shot in a prismatic blur, scouring the northeast countryside. “Hey elk!” she shouted back. “If you don’t hear back from me in an hour, lift off and start searching the hillsides!”
“Floydien hears the color wheel! Nancy Jane is ready and waiting!”
Belle bit her lip, leaning against Pilate as she stared at Rainbow’s rapid flight.
“Beloved? I’d better… uhm… go and assist Zaid. I suspect he and Roarke could use all the help we could get.” He gave her shoulder a nudge. “Maybe you’d like to come with me? Unless… you’d rather assist some of the others so that we spread the search around the most.”
“I would like to do that, Pilate.” She gulped. “But I’m afraid…”
“Of what, Belle? Tell me.”
She whimpered, “That she doesn’t want to see us…”