A dozen candles, all melted down to mere stubs in waxy pools, flickered and cast their feeble glow around the basement of the Golden Oak Library. The soft yellow candlelight mixed with the lavender horn glow and shone through several glass flasks, casting some interesting diffraction patterns on the walls and floor. But Twilight Sparkle noticed none of it.
Her attention was focused entirely on the pair of chalkboards in front of her. The soft squeak of chalk against the surface signified the addition of another line of almost incomprehensible writing. The chalkboards clearly contained a plethora of Venn diagrams, as well as several lists, each adorned with many checkmarks, crossings-out, and cross referencing arrows. But the actual text was incomprehensible to anypony who could not read and understand Griffonian.
Twilight Sparkle sat back on her haunches, staring at the chalkboards once again. Her eyes flicked from side to side, tracing along the many arrows from diagram to diagram and list to list. Her brow furrowed and her feathers bristled as she read, mumbling out the foreign words as they ticked over inside her head.
She stood up and began to pace. Several days had passed since Rainbow and Applejack’s second date and Twilight had spent a significant portion of her time since then pacing and thinking. Under the gaze of those beautiful green eyes, she’d finally admitted to herself that she’d fallen in love. But in reality it was not nearly that simple.
Twilight’s pacing stopped short, her vision of the outside world becoming blurred with tears while her inner vision showed her a clear memory of the tail end of the date. Once Applejack had broken off eye contact and turned her attention back to Dash, they’d both looked so happy together, hooves wrapped around each other’s back in a pose reminiscent of the party where everything had started.
Wiping her tears away with a hoof, Twilight sighed and tried hard to compose herself again. Her eyes darted back to the chalkboards and fixated on a particular instance of a pair of words, repeatedly scrawled a half dozen times over the black surface. In Griffonian, the words were complete nonsense; but transliterated into Equestrian, they spelled out a name: Pinkie Pie.
A different set of memories wound their way through her mind now. Her heart thumped harder against her ribs as she felt the ghost a feeling; Pinkie nuzzling the back of her head against Twilight’s chest as she hovered among the other onlookers in the town square. Her feathers splayed out as she remembered Pinkie giving them a flick with her poofy pink tail.
Things were definitely complicated.
“Geez, Twi. Are you still working on that translation thing?”
At the sudden interruption, Twilight jumped six feet and flailed all six limbs. In a calmer state, Twilight would have been forced to conclude that it was a pretty rational distance under the circumstances. But if she had been calm enough to work that out, she would not have been so jumpy in the first place.
A shaft of bright light broke over the tops of the chalkboards as the cellar door creaked open. Spike’s elongated shadow on the floor was all Twilight could see from her vantage point. “That’s practically all you’ve been doing for days now. I can’t even remember seeing you go to bed.”
“Spike! I thought I said no interruptions!” Twilight called from the floor as she lay like a sack of potatoes.
“You did. But I came to remind you that—”
“Rainbow Dash is here for your flying lesson!”
Twilight felt a sudden gust of air, followed by an intermittent soft breeze. She looked up to see the owner of that unmistakably confident voice hovering just above the chalkboards. Rainbow was grinning down at her and looking happier than if she’d just won tickets to a Wonderbolts show.
“Flying lesson?...” Twilight croaked out, staring up at Dash with wide eyes as she slowly stood up.
“Yeah, Twi. You know, that thing where we go outside and practice staying off the ground.” Rainbow hovered in place, gesturing out the cellar door with her forehooves. “About time too, you look like you’ve been cooped up in here for days. Totally uncool.”
“She has.” Spike said in a flat monotone. His foot tapped against the wooden stairs as he stared down at them with his arms folded. “I’ve been trying to get Twi to go out and get some fresh air, but she keeps insisting on finishing that project.”
“Well, I’m sorry Spike, but it’s just really important to me that I finish.” Her eyes darted toward Rainbow Dash and she willed herself not to blush as she stole a glance of her trim physique. “We should probably postpone—”
“Hey! Is that Griffonian?” Rainbow had hovered around to get a better look at the chalkboard. “You know, you mispelled—” Dash squawked as she was suddenly wrapped up in a field of lavender magic and dragged away in midair.
“You’re right, I should get some fresh air! Flying lesson it is!” Twilight blurted out and trotted up the stairs entirely too enthusiastically. A wide-eyed Rainbow Dash was towed along behind her while the chalkboard was unceremoniously shoved up against the wall.
Rainbow and Spike just shrugged at each other as they left the cellar.
Twilight sat on her haunches in the middle of the empty field beneath Rainbow’s cloud home. Her wings twitched as her gaze followed Dash around the sky. Her friend darted around above, arranging bits of cloud into an obstacle course. Despite the warm breeze and bright sun beating on her coat, Twilight shivered a little as she watched. Her overactive imagination kept turning the wisps of cloud into Griffonian words.
Scrunching up her muzzle, she tried hard to turn her thoughts toward analyzing the course Rainbow was setting up for her. Tearing her eyes away from a pair of cloud hurdles that suspiciously resembled the Griffonian word for ‘apple’, Twilight finally directed her gaze toward the ground instead.
She took a few deep breaths, taking in the relaxing fragrance of the colorful flowers dotting the meadow. Her eyes drifted lazily over the field, finally smiling just a little. The colors were too broken up to form any kind of meaningful pattern.
Turning around to take in more of the scenery, Twilight’s eye was caught by long, jagged lines of red, yellow and blue. In truth it was only a vague shape, but her brain was all too eager to connect the dots into a jagged lightning bolt pattern. Her feathers bristled and her heart rate climbed again as she wrenched her eyes away.
Everywhere she looked, she saw the colors of the rainbow: red, yellow, blue, violet, and worst of all, a smattering of orange flowers among some bright green clover. Twilight swung her head desperately and settled her gaze on the one color not in the usual spectrum: pink. She took in the sight of a soothing patch of bright pink flowers, partially darkened by the fluffy pink shadow of a cloud that looked suspiciously like—”Pinkie Pie!”
“Equestria to egghead! There’s no Pinkie Pies around here.” Rainbow chuckled as she landed with a soft thump. “Well, unless you spotted her sneaking around to prank us or something.” Dash swiveled her head from side to side, peering suspiciously around the empty meadow.
Twilight took a deep breath, doing her best to calm down and slow her heart rate while Rainbow darted around, poking a hoof into each patch of pink flowers.
“No, I didn’t see Pinkie anywhere. I was just thinking and her name came up. Sorry, I’ve been a bit distracted and jumpy lately.” Twilight stared at the ground, avoiding Dash’s eyes.
“No kidding. You really need to get out more, stretch your wings, ya know?” Rainbow landed in front of Twilight again and ruffled her mane a bit. “And that just happens to be step one, especially after you’ve been cooped up inside for a while.” She adopted her stern coach’s manner, plunking a baseball cap on her head as she stepped back a few paces. “Spread those wings, let’s see some stretches.”
Twilight did as she was told without argument, extending her still ruffled wings fully under Dash’s stern gaze. She winced as several of the misaligned feathers pulled painfully at each other.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop!” Dash mimed a timeout with her hooves. “Okay, stretching just got moved to step two. Step one is a thorough preening. Jeez, Twi, how’d ya let your wings get so bad in the first place?”
“Sorry, been distracted,” Twilight mumbled as she turned to spruce up her wings. The half truth brought to mind memories of several days worth of nervous and anxious feather bristling since she’d last preened.
Her imagination wandered as she clumsily straightened a few feathers. An unbidden image of Rainbow’s reaction if she let slip the real reason behind her ruffled wings caused her teeth to slip on a primary and she yelped in pain. Blinking back tears, Twilight felt a hoof on her shoulder.
“Here, let me help, Twi. You’re gonna hurt yourself like that.” Dash’s voice was surprisingly gentle compared to her coach’s manner, or even her everyday brash mode.
Before Twilight knew what was happening, Rainbow Dash had already moved in close, sitting down on her haunches in front of and just off to her left. In the back of her mind, Twilight could remember the feeling of four legs wrapping themselves gently around her barrel from the last time Dash had been this close to her. She gasped as Rainbow leant over and gently began to straighten the feathers of her portside wing.
Twilight squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating on keeping her breathing steady and even. She bit her lip; Dash’s warm presence coupled with the gentle tug on each feather as they were straightened and patted down was making her head spin.
After some time, both too long and too short in Twilight’s opinion, Rainbow pronounced her left wing done and switched sides, her muzzle passing close to Twilight’s own as she crossed over. Twilight’s eyes opened just in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of raspberry irises. A raspy squeak left her parched mouth.
“You say something, egghead?” Rainbow looked up, letting go of the primary feather she had been about to align.
For a moment, Twilight considered simply shaking her head, but catching the look in Rainbow’s eyes, made her realize just how odd her behavior must seem. If she didn’t make some sort of effort to seem normal very quickly, Dash would guess something was up, and she didn’t think she could stand up under her shrewd brand of questioning.
“Just thanks,” she croaked out, faking a cough to give her a moment to compose herself. “Thanks for fixing my wings. You’re a lot better at it than I am.”
“No sweat, Twi. Lots of practice, ya know.” Dash grinned at her, giving her blue wings a little flap. “Besides, if AJ can learn to preen like a pro, I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out eventually.”
“Applejack knows how to preen?” Twilight’s apprehension was momentarily stunned by the revelation.
Rainbow’s wings gave another twitch and her eyes had a slight glazed quality to them. “Like you wouldn’t believe. I could kiss the pony who taught her.” Rainbow dipped her head and went back to work, straightening and smoothing Twilight’s starboard wing, a hint of red shining across her blue muzzle.
Twilight closed her eyes again. She was acclimating to Dash’s presence, but the sensations rippling through her wing were still on the verge of overwhelming. Twilight cast her mind about for a distraction, and latched onto the first thing to stir in her memory. The brown, canvas cover of a book opened before her mind’s eye and the words inside began to recite themselves to her.
Although preening is necessary for efficient flight and is often performed in pairs for speed and ease solely for such purpose, among adult pegasi a variation of the act, more akin to a massage, is often used in intimate settings and is a skill usually learned by a pegasus’ partner in intertribal relationships.
Soon after gaining her wings, and shortly before a hooves-on lesson in preening from Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, Twilight had read several books on wing care. This particular paragraph had been a cause for much giggling from Rainbow and much blushing from herself and Fluttershy at the time.
Right now, Twilight couldn’t help seeing Dash’s slight blush after mentioning Applejack’s skill in preening. Her mind drifted back to the gentle tugging and smoothing of the feathers on her right, and she unconsciously extended her left wing from where it was furled by her side. Her imagination filled in a second warm presence, an orange and blonde one, mirroring Rainbow’s actions. Twilight bit her lip again, breathing hard and hoping Dash would hurry.
Twilight’s mane was ruffled slightly by the soft, warm breeze. Her hooves shuffled against the soft mass of the starting cloud as she looked over the course laid out in the sky before her. She followed the twisting track of clouds with her eyes, silently reviewing each mistake she’d made on her previous attempts. As the course looped back on itself to the finish line only a few pony lengths away from where she sat, she consciously averted her eyes from the landing platform, knowing who she would see waiting there with stopwatch and whistle at the ready.
Almost as soon as she’d finished preening, Rainbow Dash’s stern coaching manner had returned in full force. Twilight had hardly had any time in which to be flustered as Dash put her through a series of stretches, a warm-up flight, a few sets of wing-ups, and finally the cloud obstacle course. She’d done reasonably well so far; Rainbow had pointed out her faults, but she’d also had plenty of praise to give.
Twilight flexed her wings a bit, tracing her eyes over the course once more. Each time Dash had complimented her flying, she’d felt a pleasant flutter in her heart, in stark contrast to the nervous flutter in her stomach she’d tried hard to stave off earlier. She wanted to impress Rainbow with her flying, and this would be her last chance today as Dash had pointed out that she had plans for later.
Finally casting her eyes at Rainbow, Twilight swallowed a small lump in her throat and flared her wings, raising them high to signal she was ready. Dash lifted her whistle to her lips and readied her stopwatch. At the sound of that shrill blast, Twilight kicked off hard from the starting cloud and flapped her wings as fast and efficiently as she knew how.
Her mane and tail whipped behind in her slipstream as she navigated the slalom. She silently counted each cloud as it passed by her wingtips, immediately pulling up into a steep climb as she passed the last one. She heard a cheer from the finish line, but resisted the temptation to look as she had done last time.
Twilight flapped hard, gaining the momentum she would need to clear the series of cloud rings too small to pass through with wings spread. She stretched both forelegs out in front of her as she raked her wings back. Her speed dropped off quickly as she coasted up through the rings.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion for a moment as Twilight watched herself slowly pass the final ring. She felt herself stall and spread her wings, watching for that telltale trail of cloudstuff clinging to her pinions which meant she hadn’t quite cleared the obstacle. She saw none.
An even louder cheer reached her ears as Twilight beat her arch-nemesis of the course. She had just enough presence of mind to pitch hard, clearing the vertical rings and starting a diagonal dive to gain maneuvering speed and head for the next obstacle.
Twilight headed straight for the series of hurdles up next. She concentrated hard on the clouds in front of her, avoiding looking at her one mare cheering squad. She spread her wings and carefully pitched up and down, passing the hurdles in a near-perfect sine wave.
The shouts from the finish line were even louder now, both from excitement and proximity. Twilight finally allowed herself a grin, despite the slight ache building up in her wings; she’d flown almost perfectly so far and only had one obstacle left to go.
Her path into the final, spiraling cloud track gave her an unavoidable view of the finish line. Rainbow sat there expectantly, her stopwatch raised so she could see both it and Twilight together. Fighting down the butterflies in her stomach, she strengthened her resolve to impress the lovely mare watching her and dove for the clouds.
Instead of just skimming along the surface to trail a ribbon of cloudstuff as she followed the spiral track to the finish, Twilight raked her wings back and went into a corkscrew spin, fighting the temptation to light her horn and use unicorn magic to guide her path. She flexed her wings and legs, pulling her body along the track, even as she carved spiral grooves with her forehooves and wingtips.
More than once she felt herself going off course and overcorrected a little, creating a less than perfect pattern, but she managed to follow the spiraling track all the way to the end. Unfortunately her risky maneuver backfired slightly as she skidded onto the the finish cloud upside-down and slid to a stop in front of Rainbow Dash flat on her back, eyes wide. She heard the click of the stopwatch.
“Not bad at all, egghead.” Dash’s enthusiasm belied her words as grinned down at Twilight and turned the stopwatch around for her to see; the time was several seconds less than her previous best. “I should add a few seconds for your landing, but that spiral thing was totally radical!”
“Th-thanks,” Twilight replied, blood rising to her cheeks. Her chest rose and fell steadily as she caught her breath. Time seemed to slow down again as her eyes met Rainbow’s. She hadn’t gotten a good look at them except in her memory since Pinkie’s party, and she wished now that she could stare into those raspberry irises for all of eternity.
“Hey, Rainbow! You up there?”
In a flash of rainbow color and poof of cloud stuff, Dash disappeared.
Twilight slowly rolled over onto her hooves and peered over the edge of the cloud. As expected, she saw the source of the voice which had broken her daydream. Rainbow stood next to Applejack, a wing over her back and coats pressed firmly together. The two of them were chatting with Pinkie.
For a moment Twilight considered staying out of sight on the cloud after seeing all three of her crushes gathered together. Unfortunately, Rainbow knew where she was and she had been trying to make an effort to act less suspiciously.
Twilight pushed aside the memory of the chalkboards and the preening and focused instead on the two hours she’d just spent training when she’d had no time for obsessive pondering. Spreading her wings, she fluttered down in what she hoped was a casual way.
“Well, if AJ doesn’t want them, I’ll take them!” Rainbow was saying as Twilight landed nearby.
“Dash, yer as bad as Pinkie. She’s been following me around with that bag fer days now. Ain’t neither of us takin’ them bits.” Applejack pressed a hoof to her muzzle.
“It’s only fair,” Pinkie moaned, drawing out the last word. “I totally shouldn’t have taken all those bets in the first place, but I did and bets are like a promise and I couldn’t break a promise, so I had to follow you around to know what was going on, and I made a whole pile of bits, but you two were really the ones who did all the work, so you have to take them!”
Pinkie sat on her haunches behind a sack of bits nearly the size of her head, her pleading blue irises shimmering as she made doe eyes at Applejack.
Twilight approached slowly. Her ears folded back as she heard Pinkie confess to spying on Applejack and Rainbow Dash, but she fought against the temptation to run away. Nopony seemed to be angry, so there didn’t seem to be any reason for further worry.
“Hey there, Twi. Rainbow said y’all just finished a flyin’ lesson.” Applejack turned to Twilight, seeming grateful for the distraction.
“We almost didn’t get started,” Dash laughed before Twilight could speak up. “Her feathers were totally messed up from being all cooped up in her basement, worrying over some eggheady project.” Rainbow gave Twilight her best toothy grin to go along with the playful jab.
Twilight felt her cheeks warming up. She cast about for a subject to steer the conversation away from that incriminating chalkboard, but Applejack provided one first.
“Couldn’ta been worse’n yours after that stunt over the lake.” Applejack grinned and gave Rainbow a little poke in the ribs.
“Hey!” Rainbow cried. Her feathers bristled a bit, but her expression was far from angry. “I told you I was still working on that trick. Besides, I got it right on the second try.”
“Sure did, sugarcube. An’ it was nice ta have an excuse ta fix ya up in between.” Applejack grinned, reaching out to spread Rainbow’s free wing and pull the tip toward her muzzle. A bit of color rose to Dash’s cheeks as Applejack punctuated her remark by straightening a few feathers.
Pinkie leant forward, planting her forehooves on the sack of bits and giggling to herself as she watched them. Twilight found herself transfixed as well, her wings giving a twitch as she watched Applejack’s cursory preening.
As Applejack moved down a few hoof widths, her head hiding Rainbow’s face from view, Twilight was once again caught by the gaze of an emerald eye from beneath those golden bangs. A lump formed in her throat. The look in that bright green eye was no longer alluring and full of excitement, instead it was concerned.
Twilight had seen that look of concern before, right after the incident with the cragadiles, but a twinge in her gut made her suspect that Applejack was not concerned for her safety this time around. The last thing she wanted was for Applejack to be upset with her over her odd behavior. Twilight swallowed the lump in her throat and took a calming breath before speaking.
“I definitely needed the break, Rainbow. Thanks for the lesson.”
“Hey, no sweat!” Rainbow grinned, folding her wing away as Applejack let it go. “Just make sure you keep up on your preening. Those alicorn wings have so many feathers, I thought I was gonna get lockjaw.” Dash waggled her jaw to illustrate.
“I hope ya set her a good workout after a treat like that.” Applejack’s tone was almost casual, but her brow had a slight furrow and her voice carried a hint of the flat, deadpan quality she used when something was annoying her.
“Of course.” Rainbow polished a hoof against her chest. “Stretches, laps, wing-ups and the obstacle course.” She pointed at the carefully crafted formation of clouds in the sky. “You think I’d half-flank a training session.”
“Course not, sugarcube.” Applejack nodded. “Well, we’d best be gettin’ along fer our date. Pinkie, Twi, if you’ll excuse us.” Once again, Twilight caught a bit of a flat tone when Applejack said her name.
“See ya! Have fun!” Pinkie waved goodbye as the couple left.
Twilight waved as well, but her hoof sagged. The look in Applejack’s eye and the tone of her voice played back in her mind. It tore at her heart, almost exactly the way she had felt when Dash had called Applejack’s motivations into question at the restaurant.
“Aww, hay! Applejack did it again!” Pinkie cried, shaking Twilight out of her thought process. She frowned and poked a pink hoof at the bag of bits still sitting in front of her while the other cupped her chin. “Maybe I can just give it to Big Mac and ask him to buy stuff for the farm.”
Twilight frowned, her attention drawn to the bag. “I did tell you not to take bets, Pinkie.” Her voice came out sharper than she intended and a pang of guilt hit her in the stomach as Pinkie’s ears drooped.
“I know,” she said sadly. “I told Applejack I was sorry and I keep offering to give her the bits, but she just keeps saying that an apology is enough.” Pinkie hung her head, her curly mane drooping along with her ears as she feebly poked at the bag.
Twilight’s own ears drooped as Pinkie spoke. She chided herself for upsetting two ponies in the span of only a few minutes. She wasn’t exactly clear about what she had done to make Applejack upset, but that was a problem for later anyway. Pinkie was a much easier problem to solve, and she could take care of that right now.
“I’m sorry, Pinkie. I didn’t mean to upset you,” Twilight apologized as she pulled Pinkie into a hug. Pinkie sniffed back her tears and wrapped her forelegs around her friend in return.
Twilight’s heart began to race as she felt Pinkie’s soft, curly mane tickle her neck. As she once again felt the telltales of her lately erratic behavior, two opposing desires flared up inside her. Letting go and running away at top speed seemed like a perfectly reasonable course of action, but holding Pinkie tighter and basking in her warmth was equally appealing.
Before Twilight could decide on either course, or even find a happy medium, Pinkie lept out of her grip with a gasp.
“Oh my gosh! I almost forgot about the pony pet playdate tomorrow! I gotta go polish Gummy’s scales!” Pinkie stretched out her neck, grabbed the bag of bits in her teeth, turned and ran for town, all in one fluid motion. “Bye, Twilight! See ya tomorrow!” she called out around the canvas as she ran.
Twilight fell to her haunches, her wings splayed out in surprise at Pinkie’s explosive departure. Her mind drifted to the calendar she kept in her bedroom, a room which she hadn’t seen much of in the last few days. As she mentally crossed off the days since she’d last taken a good look at it, the words ‘pony pet playdate’ stood out on the next free square.
Her mind drifted back to her flustered behavior and Applejack’s frosty tone toward her right before she and Rainbow had left. Twilight gulped, carefully refolded her wings, and stood up to go home. Thankfully, all six of them would be together at once. At least she hoped that hanging out in a group would make things easier than they had been today.