//------------------------------//
// ==Part Twenty-Three:  Loyal to the End== 
// Story: Appledashery 
// by Just Essay 
//------------------------------//

	It was early morning.

Rainbow Dash's mane still smelled of train steam.  Her ears rang with the howl of an engine's whistle.

Nevertheless, with instinctive motions, she opened the front door to her cloud home and limped her way into the foyer.

She was greeted by shadows.  Every dark color was the same.  Every empty space mimicked the other.

She breathed in... and breathed out.

She made no move to place her luggage down because the mare hadn't brought any luggage with her on the "vacation" to begin with.  All in all, she found herself standing in the dead center of the foyer for nothing.

If not for just the familiarity of the dull lurch.

Rainbow sighed.  She closed her eyes and swayed on numb limbs.  She had been without her medicine for so long that she felt almost like a torso drifting in the breeze.

She needed to wake up... both inside and out.

The shower beckoned.  Her muzzle twitched.  Rainbow wasn't smiling, but it was the closest thing she could afford.

On thudding fetlocks, she stumbled forward...

...when the first morning light caught the glint of a varnished rectangle of wood directly outside her front house window.

"...?"  The mare spun about.  With strong wings, she threw herself at the door, opened it, and looked at the cloudbed extending from her front stoop.  Her muzzle dropped as she caught a better look at the sign that had been stamped into her levitating property.

It was a bright white sign, owned by a local pegasus realtor.

Two bold red words burned into Rainbow Dash's retinae:  "FOR SALE"

Rainbow's feathertips wilted as her ears drooped.

"Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Luna poop..."








Part Twenty-Three:  Loyal To the End
(When Even Her Last Leg Is Gone, All Rainbow Has Is Her Heart)