Rainbow Dash touched down, landing at the canyon's edge. The ground crunched beneath her hooves. A layer of natural gravel covered the dirty cliff. Pebbles rattled, fell, and plummeted into the abyss—a space so large that no echo tickled Rainbow's ears.
Rainbow stood, staring into the blackness. It took some time, but her vision eventually adjusted to the starlight. She could make out the far edge of the canyon, and the pegasus knew that it would take well over thirty seconds of speedy flight to make it to the opposite ledge. As it was, she stood dead still. Coyotes howled in the distance. Crickets sang from nearby thorn bushes and anchored tumbleweeds.
An exhale, and Rainbow squatted on the canyon's edge. She sat on folded limbs, resting... gazing... contemplating.
She had read about this canyon before... seen it on post cards and been told about it by excited travelers passing through Ponyville. She had never witnessed it with her own eyes. And, thanks to the veil of night, she still wasn't getting a clear picture of the geological phenomenon.
She could tell that it stretched for miles—north and south of her. If she peered her head to the right, she could see the canyon forming a winding, serpentine trench towards the starline. If she looked left, she could see where the ravine split up amidst a mess of mesas and buttes. She shuddered to think of the poor creatures that fell into the base of the abyss and survived—only to be trapped within hundreds of miles of steep emptiness. But—then again—the canyon was so grand and voluminous that it must have had its own ecosystem.
Rainbow imagined a closed-in place that was open... an isolation that wasn't actually imprisoning. It was beautiful to look at, even if it was all lampshaded beneath Luna's immortal vigil. But she felt as though she had experienced it before... lived it before. Every day... every bleary-eyed gaze into the mirror... every serenade of sobs held in secret beneath the shower faucet.
All those liquid moments, drowning in despair, and she never once bothered to look up and notice the stars.
There were tears in Rainbow's eyes, but they were tiny—misty things. Her nostrils opened, and she felt herself breathing stronger... fuller. Her insides vibrated. She felt hungry... ravenous... like she could gobble up the whole world and fly on to the next galaxy, smiling.
She was smiling... for she couldn't remember a moment before when she felt so weightless... so free. And the ironic thing was that she had been free for so long... for so many months. It was almost funny how quick she was to deny the fact... to cloud it up with a brand new hopelessness that was about as paper thin as her sighs.
She stared up at the sky. Beyond the twinkle, the cosmos held color. Rainbow thought of all the pastel shades in her life... the happy faces and the batting eyes and the warm voices that welcomed her on sight simply for the act of being her. And in the center of that collage, a single color stood out. She held it close to herself, wings coiled, tail curled and tongue rolling. Instinctively, she thought of whispering the six words... but somehow it didn't seem to fit. They felt so needy... so desperate... and Rainbow was suddenly feeling very declarative, as if she was upon the cusp of placing down a monument. So she chose five different words instead.
"I love you so much."
The chasm swallowed it up, and there were no witnesses between the stars to take notice. No one but her.
And that was enough.
It always was.
She smiled. Her skin was warm, toasty—even in the absence of a sun. She could close her eyes and still she'd be blinded by a golden glow, as though it was inside her all the time. And suddenly it was no longer pathetic, but righteous. Even if she had chosen to adore nothing, Rainbow was a far better pony than she was before, and she knew she could only get more awesome with each passing day.
Such is what happens when one cuts the tether free.
Rainbow Dash sat there for longer than she bothered to measure. There was no time, no space—only smiles.
Eventually, muscles moved, and Rainbow ascended from the edge of yesterday. She flew away from the canyon, heading towards the silver splotch of light that was Las Pegasus.
She felt ready to live again.