After leaving Zecora's hut, Rainbow Dash didn't immediately fly home. She took a leisurely path, cycling through the air in a large curve that encompassed the humble lengths of Ponyville below.
She didn't flap her wings so much as she simply glided, letting the wind carry her upwards and downwards as the currents pleased. Thusly, she relaxed... or at least she tried to relax, her mind wandering circles as indicated by the clockwise darting of her ruby eyes.
Eventually, she sighed, her gaze locking on the emerald expanse of Sweet Apple Acres in the distance. She imagined sweat clinging to a mare's freckled brow. Before her heart could skip a beat, she imagined Fluttershy and Big Mac walking leisurely across the orchards, collecting apples in a basket while engaged in a warm conversation. As soon as Rainbow imagined stripes entering that equation, she winced so hard that her wings twitched and dropped her a dozen feet from where she was currentl gliding.
Flapping her feathers, Rainbow lifted herself before she could run straight into a red tower. As she passed by, she heard the bell ringing. Throwing a glance behind her, she spotted schoolfoals emptying out of Cheerilee's classroom. Among them were Sweetie Belle, Applejack's sister, and a spritely orange shape hopping onto a scooter. I smiled, chuckling at something the other Crusaders said while strapping a helmet to my petite skull.
Rainbow blinked. With a clenched jaw, she wrenched her gaze from the scene and shot her way home like a blue bullet.
“If you knew that somepony thought the world of something... but could never get what they wanted...” Rainbow Dash sighed, rolling over so that her head draped upside down over the edge of her living room sofa. “...would you entertain their hopes and dreams, even if you knew it was in vain?” She gulped. “Or would it be best just... to sh-shoot down their aspirations and let them crash and burn before they hurt themselves any further?”
Lancie looked up from a newspaper he was holding upside down. He sat on an endtable made of cloudstone, giving Rainbow Dash a suspicious squint. “Is the spunky pegasus actually... talking to me?”
“Yes.” Rainbow frowned upside down. “She is.”
“You sure you...” He smirked with stone lips. “...don't want to just buck me hard, toss me across the room, or slamdunk me into a wastebasket?”
“Nnnnngh...” Rainbow face-hoofed, her ears drooping. “Just answer the question...”
“Because I've been working on angling my trajectory with each subsequent punt!” He tossed the paper behind him and slicked back his granite mane. “I think I've almost fully accommodated for my antlers causing air resistance—”
“Lancie!” Rainbow barked.
“Alright! Alright!” He waved his talon and paw. “Fine, ruin a perfectly squeaky running gag, why don'tcha? Ahem.” He leaned back on the endtable, folding his digits together like a little stone psychiatrist. “What I think we have here is a classic case of emotional projection, mostly negative.”
“Projection...?” Rainbow droned.
“Face it, Sparky.” Lancie smoked from an invisible pipe and gestured. “You've been alone in this epically long pursuit of apple-butt. Even when you're outside, it's almost as if you're surrounded by the invisible walls that you and you alone have erected around yourself. For some noble reason, you refuse to just seize what you want so badly. If you ask me, it's the rather unfortunate fact that you're the best friend to the pony whom you so desperately want to lock tonsils with.”
“Mmmmm...” Rainbow couldn't summon the courage to frown at those words. Her ears folded sadly on either side of her head as she gazed into the wall of the cloud home, exhaling out her nostrils.
Lancie went on: “So, you see others around you who also have hopes and aspirations, and—perhaps so you won't feel so blasted lonely—you project upon them your very own troubles. Suddenly your next door neighbor is incapable of achieving her life's dreams. Your boss at work is caught in an infinite financial loop. Your mailmare lusts for muffins she can never bite into...”
“You make it sound like everypony in Ponyville is just as bad off as me...”
“No.” Lancie squinted at her. “You are just as bad off as you are. For a pony whose world is constantly frozen, it's easy to think the same of the universe encompassing it. But, you know...” He leaned forward and poked a talon into the side of her neck. “You could solve it.”
She glanced at him with sparkling eyes. “I... c-can...?”
“Of course!” Her grinned with stone teeth. “By just tracking down the next bunch of my slabs!”
Rainbow blinked. She once again drew a hoof over her face. “Eeeeuuuuuunnnghhhh...”
“Come onnnnn!” He shrugged, smirking. “I've figured out where the next closest one is!” He picked the newspaper back up and pointed at a black-and-white photo of skyscrapers. “Deep in the posh nether regions of Manehattan, you'll be sure to find—”
“I'm going to find them. I will. It's just...” Rainbow flapped her wings and threw herself into an upright hover above the sofa. “I feel like I can't. Not just yet.”
“And why the fluff not?”
“I gotta know if all of this is worth it,” Rainbow Dash muttered. “Everything I keep dreaming and daydreaming about.” She sighed. “What if all I'm doing is punishing myself for no reason? I... I have friends. I have skills. I'm the supreme embodiment of awesomeness.” She shrugged and breathed, “Why bother hoping for more?”
“You're just one silly pony in a sea of many others less explosive than you, Sparky,” Lancie said. “If you ask me, it's only natural to think you're entitled to something that isn't lame.”
She glanced over at him. “I... I-I never thought that I could actually have somep—erm... something that I could talk to about all of this besides Fluttershy or my cider drinking buddies.”
“Is this your way of saying 'thank you, Lancie?'”
“Yeah...” She smiled faintly. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Good.” He smiled. “Then maybe you'll forgive me once you find out that I've used your toothbrush as a backscratcher!”
Rainbow glared daggers at him.
The statue smiled and spread his arms out like windsails.
Silence... and then...
THWACK!
“Woooooo-hoooooooooooo!” Lancie flew across the room and rattled into a wastebasket. THUNK! “Haaa! Three points!”