Rainbow flew east... or else the east sailed towards her.
She blinked wearily against the wind. A full night of tossing and turning had worn her muscles to stiff rubber bands. She didn't wear her goggles, in hope that the bare elements would wake her.
She was wrong.
More than once, she nearly plummeted, falling asleep in mid-air. She hissed through her teeth, flapping her wings harder and harder in order to remain aloft. She felt as though it was taking four times as much strength to ascend than the last few days previous. She chalked it to her weak strength, or at least she wanted to.
Her stomach growled. She was hungry, famished. But there were so few bits of Heaven's Slices left, and she wasn't about to consume them all too quickly.
So, with a wheezing breath, she pressed eastward, piercing the heights above the craggy canyons and their valleys.
Rainbow lay on her back, staring up at the night's sky.
She brought a hoof up to her neck for the umpteenth time, rubbing it across her Loyalty pendant.
The ruby lightning bolt glowed, shimmered, and went dead.
Nothing else happened.
The pegasus' bleary eyes remained locked on the moon shimmering overhead.
Her nostrils flared.
Again, she raised her hoof to her pendant and gave it a stroke.
Light glowed, dimmed, and all was dark again.
The moon lingered, silent, waning.
Rainbow shuddered in a cold breeze.
She refused to think, refused to move.
Without wasting a second, she reached her hoof back up and stroked her pendant, eyes on the moon.
Rainbow Dash veered north and south in her flight. She wasn't doing it for the thrill, or to get a better view of the landscape. The winds were getting stronger—that, or Rainbow's wing muscles were getting weaker.
But nothing made sense. She had eaten a Heaven's Slice that morning. She should have had the strength to keep aloft, but the effort was making her sweat profusely. So, more often than not, she simply glided through the air, which left her aerial movements highly susceptible to the wind.
The mare winced, flicking her tail left and right in order to steady herself. She knew that she was losing her eastward velocity, but anything beat trotting across the Choke by hoof.
Rainbow clenched her teeth. Taking a deep breath, she flapped her wings for the first time in hours, ascending herself into the upper atmosphere—straining the entire time. At last, once she felt that she was high enough, she relaxed her wings, gliding into the wind currents in anticipation of descending slowly over the course of the rest of the day.
That night, Rainbow Dash refused to look at the moon.
Instead, she curled over on her side, hugging herself under several blankets.
Her eyes hurt from tearing up, and the salt formed a layer of dry grit against her muzzle.
She gave up on trying to stop crying ages ago.
Besides, it didn't hurt until she started imagining their smiling faces.
Clenching her eyes shut, Rainbow Dash pulled the blankets over her, desperate to shut out the cold, howling world.
She failed.