“So Spike’s not a dragon?” Rainbow Dash wrinkled her brow, not understanding any of what she’d been told.
“He’s a dragon,” Rarity tried again, explaining in different words in the hope it would get the idea into her friend’s skull, “He’s kind of a dragon and an Element of Harmony at the same time.”
“Like how we’re the Elements, but we’re still the same ponies as always,” Twilight Sparkle added, “I mean, AJ is the Element of Honesty, but that doesn’t mean she can’t bend the truth to spare somepony embarrassment.”
“Okay, I get that. But is he actually purified like the Elements were supposed to be? I mean, what we had when we turned into that huge dragon thing, that sounded more like how the Memory Users describe being a dopant. Maybe we’re lacking in harmony here.”
“I have to agree,” Rarity nodded sadly, “There’s something about the draconic nature…”
“We’ve tried every combination now,” Twilight looked down at the notes on her clipboard, “Two Elements together combine the body of the left side – Honesty, Loyalty, or Joker – with the heart or mind of the right – Kindness, Generosity, or Laughter – regardless of which pony has the Driver. And theoretically Spike, in the form of the Dragon Memory, can be used with any valid pair. But we haven’t been able to test it with anypony apart from Rarity yet.”
“Can she actually control him?”
“No,” Rarity bowed her head, “But it’s better than being attacked and having nothing to defend myself.”
“Weird to think, all these years and I never knew why Spike’s egg took so long to hatch.”
“You still can’t tell everypony,” Spike interrupted, “I mean… I can’t even tell you. But Celestia made me promise not to tell you. She doesn’t trust you all yet, and she said if Twilight knows you’d tell all your friends. Please, don’t tell the others? I only let you know because you were there.”
“Yeah. It’s just weird thinking, I got my cutie mark for awakening you, and –” Twilight suddenly cut off in the middle of her sentence. Their quiet table in the library had somehow become surrounded by small faces.
“And?” Rainbow Dash prompted, and then noticed the Cutie Mark Crusaders waiting eagerly for the next word.
“This could be awesome!” Scootaloo grinned, “I can’t believe we never thought to ask before. How did you get your cutie mark, Rainbow Dash?”
“Yes, we should ask the ponies who’ve already found theirs how they managed it!” Sweetie Belle added, “Maybe that way, we’ll see there’s some pattern, something we can do to find–”
“Calm down, Sweetie,” Rarity turned to smile at her little sister, “You should be grateful to Twilight for providing you and your friends a place to meet while AJ repairs the roof of that old clubhouse. You can’t go asking her to entertain you as well.”
“No, I’d be delighted!” Twilight stood up from the table, “I think the story of how I found my cutie mark might prove inspirational to these fillies, and I’m always happy to help if–”
“No, we’re fine,” Scootaloo shrugged, “We don’t need to hear a story about books and feelings and stuff, I’m sure the ponies I can learn from all have interesting stories. Come on girls, let’s go find somepony to ask.”
“Wait,” Twilight seemed almost irritated that they didn’t want to hear her story, “you shouldn’t go out in the rain, you might –”
“We’ll be fine. Right, girls? And we’ll come back to ask you later, okay?” Scootaloo gave one more nod to Rainbow Dash, her role model, before the three Crusaders dashed out of the library.
“They got plenty of energy, at least,” Dash grinned, “I’m sure they’ll get their cutie marks in no time at all.”
“They could have waited to hear my story. They seemed like they weren’t even interested, but they could have learned so much if they’d just asked.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll be back. You’ll find somepony who wants to hear your story.”
A mare peered at her prey. As long as they didn’t know she was there, they wouldn’t even think to run. A little caution could prevent a whole lot of chaos. She liked to think that was the best way to get everything where it should be, to keep everything well organised.
She thought of them as prey occasionally, that much was true. But really, she was more of a shepherd than a predator. They would be better off after she caught up with them, even if the primitive, animal part of their brain wouldn’t let them accept it. If she could get some benefit out of harvesting what they’d be more comfortable without, then that was perfect. A win-win situation, that provided the best for everypony until –
Her train of thought was interrupted as one of the dumb creatures started to move. She knew that if any of them moved, the others would follow suit soon enough, and then it would take a lot more work than she intended to put in if she wanted to get them all in one place again. She hurried after them, putting everything out of her mind except for the immediate concern of the chase.
“Wouldn’t it have been better to listen to Twilight Sparkle’s story?” Sweetie Belle asked as the three fillies dashed through town, “I mean, if we find out how the adults got their cutie marks, then maybe it’ll give us a clue how to find ours.”
“But it’ll be boring!” Scootaloo shrugged off her friend’s idea, “We got to find awesome ponies to ask their stories.”
“Who’s awesome, then?” Apple Bloom asked the obvious question.
“Well, Rainbow Dash, for sure.”
“But she’s in the library. We’re running the wrong way.”
“Well, we can–” she was interrupted by a half-dozen chickens running across their path in a blur of beaks and feathers. Most of the birds kept on flapping in the direction they’d been going, but one seemed to take an interest in Scootaloo, speeding around her in tight circles until it made everypony dizzy just to watch.
“Come back!” a muted cry from beyond a hedge could only be Fluttershy, in pursuit of her flock. A few moments later she emerged, squeezing between the branches, and shook her head to remove the leaves from her mane.
“Have any of you seen some chickens?” she asked, and then glanced at Scootaloo and needed a hoof over her mouth to stifle the laughter.
“What?” Scootaloo glared, not sure if she should be angry about the response. Then Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom turned to see what Fluttershy was laughing at, and weren’t so successful at hiding their amusement.
“You’ve got feathers stuck all over you, dearie,” a passer by pointed out. She helpfully held up a compact mirror, so that Scootaloo could pluck off the stray feathers that had become attached to her coat and wings.
“Thanks,” Scootaloo mumbled, passing the mirror back a few minutes later, “I looked ridiculous.”
“Everypony does, at some point in their life,” the old mare chuckled, “The best we can do about it is know when it’s time to clean yourself up, and hope you don’t end up with egg on your face. And let me tell you, there’s nothing worse in life than waiting for excitement to find you. Better to do the wrong thing than do nothing at all.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do,” Apple Bloom pouted, “We tried everything we can think of, and we still haven’t got our cutie marks. We were going to go and ask the most awesome pony we can find how they got theirs, and see if that gives us a clue.”
“I think maybe you should ask more than one pony,” the mare just kept smiling, letting the words drift out into the world at their own speed. She was in no rush. “Because everypony has an incredible moment when they first find out what they are capable of, the exciting and the mundane alike. Just because any other pony on the street doesn’t carry their ‘awesomeness’ like a flag, doesn’t mean the moment when they first excelled is any less exciting.”
“I guess so,” Apple Bloom nodded, “If we’re going to go asking older ponies for their stories, we should at least be fair. And when something awesome happens for a regular pony, it’s probably more exciting than when it happens to somepony that’s just awesome every day.”
“I don’t know,” Scootaloo shrugged, “I think most of them won’t have much exciting. Like, even Fluttershy, she’s a Champion of Harmony now, but I doubt she did anything specially awesome before that, there’s not much of a story in giving medicine to small animals, or whatever.”
“Hey!” Sweetie Belle threw a fallen apple from the ground at her friend, “That’s not fair. You should apologise right away, Fluttershy’s talent is as important as anyone’s.”
“It’s okay,” Fluttershy whispered, “I think my talent’s useful, but it doesn’t have such an important story. Just one day me and Rainbow Dash were racing, and then I fell, and I found out how loving and welcoming animals can be. That’s about it.”
“No, no,” Scootaloo answered before she had time to think the words through, “You should tell us the story, I’m sorry I was a bit rude. I never thought you were interested in racing.”
“Well, I don’t think I ever told the story before. So if you really want to know…”
A few years before. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash lived in Cloudsdale, and were close friends. Neither of them had their cutie marks yet, but Rainbow Dash was convinced hers would be something signifying speed. A lightning bolt, maybe, or just a few ‘whoosh’ lines to indicate a pony who was already long gone.
Fluttershy wasn’t sure what she wanted hers to be yet. Maybe something to do with the weather. It was the single biggest employer around here, and fully two thirds of the pegasi in Cloudsdale worked for the weather bureau in some capacity. Whether it was dragging clouds into place, or calibrating the mixing machines to ensure that every rainbow contained precisely the right amount of green, everypony knew that orchestrating the weather was what a pegasus did best.
Fluttershy wasn’t quite so confident she’d make a good job of it, though. Every team she’d seen when they were at work seemed to be a bunch of competitive egos, ponies who only cared about being the best. It seemed like half of them listened to their team leader’s orders because they knew that someday soon they were going to be the one in charge, and they’d expect everypony to listen then. Fluttershy was pretty sure she wouldn’t be well suited to dragging heavy chunks of meteorology around the sky; she was nervous enough on her wings without carrying a valuable cargo.
Then one day, a burst of colour had shot across the sky, visible for dozens if not hundreds of miles. Some of the colts spun wild stories, claiming some kind of media conspiracy to deny the truth of some accident in the Rainbow Factory. But Rainbow Dash had her own theory about the burst of light; something she would only share with her closest friend.
Fluttershy could barely believe her eyes when she saw the azure filly carrying a book almost as large as she was. She was even more astounded when she glimpsed the title; it was Dusk Palette’s grimoire ‘On the Theory and Practise of Aerial and Celestial Phenomena’.
“What have you got there?” Fluttershy felt compelled to ask, “It’s good if you’re starting to take your schoolwork seriously, but there are plenty of books in the library with more approachable versions of Dusk’s theories. Nopony expects us to actually understand the original.” But as she said it, an idea was forming in her mind that was quite hard to shift. Rainbow Dash was exactly the kind of pony who liked to take any idea and fly with it. Of course, if she was reading the books she was supposed to, she would have to go further. She’d go all the way back to the original texts and try to show up even the bookworms. Whatever Rainbow did, she had to show she was better than the rest.
“Oh, I wouldn’t look in this if I had the choice. You know, he wrote half of it backwards so you need a mirror to read it? There’s pages where the writing is backwards and upside down, so you need two mirrors. Everypony did their own version of this, right, but they all copied just the bits they were interested in. Books on clouds, books on rainbows, books of diffraction. But there’s bits that nopony picked on, so I had to go back to the greatest bookworm in history. And I was right.”
It took several minutes to find a place Dash was happy with. She didn’t want to be seen or overheard by Hoops and Shock, who would certainly say she wasn’t cool if they found her reading such a serious book. Rainbow Dash always said that she was so awesome she didn’t need to worry what anypony else thought, but Fluttershy often wondered if her friend was more vulnerable than she was willing to let the world see. Eventually, they found a spot on the edge of a cloud where they could both sit and open the book between them.
The page was filled by cramped hoofwriting, almost illegible after more than a thousand years of changing styles. The text filled every space between the diagrams and illustrations, not divided into neat columns and boxes like the schoolbooks that had been adapted from this ancient tome. However much genius Dusk Palette had shown in weather manipulation, and how she’d created everything the present day’s weather ponies relied on, she would probably have flunked out of school for her penmanship alone if she was around now. The title at the top of the page was not one Fluttershy had expected to see in such a distinguished text, especially accompanied by illustrations of a pegasus doing what they all knew was supposed to be impossible.
“The Sonic Rainboom,” she read aloud, “Ancient myths?”
“It’s not a myth,” Dash seemed entirely certain, “Just read it. Dusk was sure it was real, and he’s like the king of the eggheads a thousand years ago. Who are we to say it doesn’t exist, just because nopony’s fast enough to pull it off any more?”
“You think that’s what we saw yesterday?”
“I’m sure of it. The fastest pegasus in Equestria, maybe, might be able to do something that’s supposed to be impossible.”
“Right. So you’ve got a new hero, but you have no idea who they even are. I thought you said you wanted to race?”
“Yeah… I can’t read most of this. But the bits I can make out, the bits that are simple enough and make sense, they’re talking about a competitive instinct. See, if the fastest pegasus in Equestria can do it, then I have to do it before I can be the fastest. And this book says you can only learn something like that in a serious race, you can’t learn the Rainboom just by practising. It has to be a competition, a challenge, to push you ahead.”
“Oh…kay,” Fluttershy could see so many problems with that thought that she didn’t know where to start. But at the same time, it was the first time in a long while she’d seen Rainbow Dash so focused. If this theory got her to read a book and actually try to work out how to use what it said, that had to be a good thing regardless of the truth of the theory. “Okay, let’s race. But wouldn’t you be better off asking someone who’s… good at racing?”
“They’d always cheat. You know what Silver Lining’s like, and Hoops is no better. I can beat them, sure, but I can’t get my mind off how to work around their tricks when I’m racing them. I need to just think about flying fast, and winning, if I’m going to do the Rainboom.”
“Did you say ‘Rainboom’?” The voice had a high pitch that somehow made it sound like the speaker was sneering, though anyone who’d been around Thunder Shock for long knew that was just a normal quality of his voice. The undercurrent of giggles, however, wasn’t a permanent fixture of his larynx, but provided by two other colts. Fluttershy automatically started to back away on seeing them peer over the mound of cloud which had momentarily provided privacy. She was a little afraid, especially of Shock. He’d been popular when he was younger, riding on his father’s popularity. But now it was becoming clear that he wasn’t quite as smart, cunning, or cool as most of his friends, and sooner or later he’d be the one they were picking on. That kind of worry could make a pony vicious if he had any excuse.
“Yeah, you heard,” Rainbow Dash was probably just as nervous, but she was always one to face her worries head on. Rather than running away, she’d keep pushing back until the bully had to either back off or face her in some contest that Dash was sure she’d win. The possibility that she was wrong never entered her mind, or the possibility that she could lose. It was the same as always. “You think I can’t do it?”
“There’s no such thing,” Hoops was just as sure of himself, “It’s a story for foals, something left over from before we had proper factories, and every pony made his own weather. You still believe in nursery stories, Rainbow Crash?”
“The Sonic Rainboom is real,” Rainbow Dash only got more insistent when challenged, “And I’m going to prove it. If there’s somepony that can do it, then I will too. Fluttershy’s helping me train.”
“Now I heard everything. Does she even know how to fly?”
“Hey,” one of the eternal hangers-on whose name Fluttershy didn’t recall decided to chip in, “Between them these fillies might make a half-decent flyer. One can fly, the other don’t crash into everything she sees.”
“Shut your mouth,” Rainbow Dash spat back, her temper finally exhausted, “The two of us could beat you in any race you care to name.”
“You’re on!”
…
The race took nearly a week to set up. So that it could be taken seriously, it needed to be properly organised after all. It wasn’t supposed to be a team event; Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were just two out of a dozen competitors, because when their friends heard there was a race everypony wanted to join in. Still, in all the gossip around school, the point of this competition was to watch Hoops take Rainbow Dash down a peg or two. Fluttershy didn’t want to let her friend down, but it looked like Dash was just doing this to protect her from the scorn of their classmates, so she certainly couldn’t back down now.
It was a simple race, with one good, long straight section. That was where Dash would pull off the Sonic Rainboom, she was sure, and then the rest of the race wouldn’t matter at all. Before and after the straight were a dozen narrow passages, and a slalom made from spare chunks of cloud left over after the mid-spring cleanup. There were a dozen young ponies there, both her own age and a few from the year above, who already had speed or flight symbolised in their cutie marks. But they were almost an afterthought, because this match was to determine a personal squabble that had already been retold with so many exaggerations, and immortalised in school legend.
Fluttershy was disappointed that she failed. Not just her first real race, she had never cared about being fast, so losing thee first of many races wouldn’t be anything too special. But although there weren’t officially teams in this competition, she still felt she would be letting her friend down if she didn’t do her best. And, in a small way, she felt that it was the duty of every pegasus to be fast racing through the clouds. Fluttershy knew, on a deep level she couldn’t bring herself to admit, that she would be betraying her tribe if she didn’t at least try.
Then she failed. It was the second turn, or the third. She was panting hard, struggling to make any movement, but at least she tried. Somewhere ahead of her, a few others were racing. But Rainbow Dash and the colts were battling for the lead, so far ahead that they were already looping back and close to starting the second lap. They were really struggling, nopony willing to come second. As well as just trying to fly fast, they were fighting through the turbulence created by the current leader, and trying not to smooth out the air too much and make it easier for the rival currently trying to overtake. In a way it was beautiful, a frantic dance or a kind of non-contact wrestling mediated by the currents of the air.
Fluttershy didn’t have much time to admire the dance. The first few zigzags out from the starting line almost made a helix around the home straight, and as they passed Fluttershy felt the combined turbulence of the best four flyers hit her like a physical blow. She tripped and fell into a spin so fast and irregular that she couldn’t find any still air to beat her wings against. She tried to stop her body tumbling, but she was moving through the air so quickly that as soon as she opened a wing even slightly the wind stretched it out behind her. She didn’t have the flight muscles it would take to fight against such a high speed drop.
As she fell, she saw Rainbow Dash’s concerned expression for just a moment in the tumbling procession of images, diving down to rescue her. But Thunder Shock was right behind her, and saw an opportunity to seize the lead. As Dash dived, Shock was flying over the top of her. Maybe with a careless hoof catching the back of her head, or kicking through her feathers as she passed by too close for normal flight safety.
Fluttershy didn’t see any more. When the world stopped spinning around her, all she could see was the ground coming closer, in colours as varied as any sunset. Then there was a boom behind her, and everything was illuminated in swirling plumes of different colour. Whatever it was, it attracted the attention of butterflies and bees, who soared up into the sky. Many of them were beneath Fluttershy, and for an instant she worried that her weight would crush them, but they were experts in channeling and using fast air currents, even the tiny ones caused by a falling body. Several butterflies touched her coat, even riding in it for the smallest instant, but she didn’t hit a single one. And then she realised that their contact was having a tiny effect on her speed.
A single butterfly couldn’t slow a falling filly. Even a hundred would have little effect. But whatever had got their attention had brought out thousands of butterflies, millions even, and all those tiny touches started to add up. She slowed down just enough that with all her strength she could hold her wings out wide and catch the air, and slow herself enough to land.
On the ground, the cloud of butterflies was so thick that it was like being inside a rainbow. The different coloured wings fluttered everywhere, still excited by the burst of so many different colours they’d seen overhead. Other animals were less enthusiastic about the strange weather. Rabbits and voles were cowering under bushes, and one chicken was agitatedly squawking as it ran in circles, so panicked that Fluttershy wondered if it thought the sky was going to fall.
She said ‘thank you’ to the butterflies, and felt a little silly for doing so. They were like the birds that occasionally visited Cloudsdale, she thought, not able to understand common speech. But then as soon as she’d thought that, she realised that she could tell how scared the rabbits and the chicken were, even if the squawking didn’t have any meaning for her. Even without words that you could understand, the tone of any creature’s voice could tell enough. So Fluttershy lowered herself to her knees, hoping she didn’t tower over the creatures too much, and spoke in what she hoped was a soft and comforting voice. She told them not to worry, that the flash of light was just a pony showing off, and that they could get back to their lives.
And it worked.They probably didn’t understand the words, but they could respond to her tone. They felt safe, and they started to trust her. Before long, all the animals in the area would listen to her. And that was when she realised that she felt comfortable talking to them. She was more comfortable in these woods, talking to these animals, than she had ever felt in Cloudsdale. She decided in that moment that she wanted to stay here, and help the animals who had helped her.
Her cutie mark appeared as she was looking around for a town, so that she could send a message back to her friends in Cloudsdale. It showed butterflies, like the ones who had helped her reach the ground. She decided that meant her special talent was talking to animals, helping them and maybe letting them help her in return. She quickly found Ponyville, and learned that some of the land between the town and the Everfree Forest wasn’t owned by anypony. She claimed a plot, and some stronger ponies helped her to build a cottage there. She sent letters to her friends in Ponyville, though only Rainbow Dash came down to visit regularly, and she made new friends in a new town.
From that day on, she never once regretted her choice. An accident had given her exactly the life she needed. That was why, when bad things happened, she was often first to look for a silver lining as well.
“Wow,” Apple Bloom grinned as the story finished, “I never knew any of that. We never see you without your animal friends, it’s easy to think they’ve always been there.” By now, they were sitting around a table outside Sugarcube Corner, enjoying a selection of cakes. Fluttershy had decided that telling the Cutie Mark Crusaders a story that might help them was a priority over tracking down a couple of chickens who apparently didn’t want to take their medicine. They’d probably come back when they were hungry in any case.
“Oh, no,” Fluttershy grinned, “I was born in Cloudsdale. Did you know, they don’t even have animals there? Some ponies have pet birds, but it’s not really common. I was about your age before I even knew what animals were! But that’s all in the past now, and it’s much more sensible to think about how things are now. There’s no sense calling up bad memories unless you really need to.”
“Your stories are so descriptive, though,” Sweetie Belle voiced her amazement, though they were all impressed by the way Fluttershy had told her story, “It was like we were really there.” Fluttershy blushed, but didn’t get time to answer before Scootaloo came up with one more question to ask.
“So Rainbow Dash did her Sonic Rainboom then? You should have said more about that, it would have been so awesome to see.”
“I heard she managed to pull off a Sonic Rainboom when we were still fillies. It was incredible, nopony had managed to do it in hundreds of years, and most of them thought it was some old myth. But my friend did it, and I was facing the wrong direction so I never saw it. She told me she did it during a race, when she was being really competitive, and after that first time she only found the determination once, at the Young Flyers Competition last month. The speed it requires is incredible, so even the fastest pony in Equestria can’t do it whenever she wants. Not until we got the Elements of Harmony, anyway. Now she can do it so easily, but she still keeps on training so that one day she can do it on her own again.”
“That is so awesome,” Scootaloo was still staring off into space, trying to imagine how it would have looked if they’d been able to see Rainbow Dash do her trademark move for the first time, “We have to ask her what it was like.”
“Yeah,” Apple Bloom nodded, “But she’s busy talking to Twilight about important Elements of Harmony stuff, I bet. And I don’t want to be listening to how you get a cutie mark in magic for half an hour. We’re not going to some fancy special school for unicorns, so stories about how much the genius tutors can help a filly won’t be any use to us.”
“Let’s ask everypony else, while we wait for Rainbow Dash to be free.”
“Sure. But who do we ask first?”
“How about Pinkie Pie? She’ll be back with our cakes soon enough, and maybe it’s no Rainboom, but those party cannons are pretty awesome!”
“Did you say you want a party cannon?” Pinkie’s head appeared between Scootaloo and Apple Bloom, making all of the three fillies jump in surprise, “Because I’m not supposed to fire it around here while I’m working, it upsets Mrs Cake. But I’ve got a break in like… five minutes.”
“Oh, it’s not that,” Sweetie Belle explained, “We were just wondering if you can remember how you got your cutie mark. It seems like everything you do is about parties, but we don’t know if it was always like that. Or was there ever a time you threw your first party?”
“Oh, I still remember my first party. It was a get well party, for me really, but I was really trying to get my family to crack a smile. Want me to tell you about it?” she was answered by three eager nods. “Then let me begin…”
The filly who would one day be Pinkie Pie was excited and impatient. She wasn’t called Pinkie then, though. Her parents were down-to-earth, serious types, of course. But even they had enough poetry in their souls not to call a pink pony something so unimaginative. They gave her a solid, serious, long and unwieldy, down-to-earth name that she was already starting to get tired of. Just that morning she’d been trying to think of a name that was more exciting, and more fashionable. She’d considered “Ace”, and “Kapow”, but neither sounded like a real name. She was starting to realise just how hard it must be for the ponies who wrote comic books to pick names for their characters, having to come up with something that was both exciting and fitting for that one pony.
But it wasn’t her new name that had made her so excited. It was the party she had planned for the evening. Or rather, the Rainbow Flare. She didn’t call it a party, because she’d never even heard the word before. Surrounded by the oh-so-serious business of the family rock farm, there was no time or space for frivolity, and their parents had always hoped that the three fillies would grow up to be just as serious as their own parents. The family business was important, too important to suffer distractions like parties, or toys.
The pink filly had been ill for a week, and much of her body was still wrapped in bandages. When she was working on her family’s rock farm she could make a game of it, trying to beat her personal record for number of rocks in a basket, or guessing how many of today’s temporary workers would have a moustache. They were little games, barely enough to keep her amused on the best of days, but lying in bed she couldn’t even do that, and the tedium was starting to drive her insane. When her sisters came to check on her, they brought a little life to the room. But she felt they were hiding something from her, not saying what they wanted to share. She loved them; Marble and Limestone, even Maud when she wasn’t too busy with her rockology studies.
They had been as close as any family could be, since their parents’ age caught up with them. But now her sisters were quiet, a little withdrawn. They were the only excitement in her sickroom, but they weren’t as close as they would normally be. She could only hope it was because the bandages and bruises bothered them, and they would be close again once she was well. But then, she had soon got curious enough to listen at the door, to hear them talking about her as they walked away.
“…not ready for this…”
“…no idea how to make a plan…”
“…pure chaos…”
“…such a big change…”
“…maturing slowly, but soon…”
“…she’ll never grow up…”
She’d been scared to hear those things. She knew she was young, a filly still. And she knew that her family needed her to grow up and help them more. But she couldn’t see what she could do that wasn’t better done by somepony who really loved rocks, the way Maud and Marble did. She could almost feel herself growing, she knew that her body would be changing as well soon. The arrival of her cutie mark was supposed to be the first stage on that road. Half a year ago, she’d started every day by staring at her flanks, trying to will the first stage of adulthood into existence. Now she didn’t even bother to look, because she knew nothing had changed. Even under the bandages, she knew she was still the same child she’d always been.
Maybe her sisters could see her growing in some subtle way. Maybe her mane had changed style, or her voice was less excitable, or she was just growing larger. But whatever they’d seen, she couldn’t see it herself, and she wasn’t even sure she wanted to now. Being an adult was the time you couldn’t have fun any more.
The first time she’d been allowed out of her room, she knew, she should have visited her parents. They were old and sick now, and didn’t get out much. They must have missed her visits as much as she had missed them. But instead she went down to the village, desperate to speak to somepony whose mind wasn’t all business, and whose words weren’t all rocks. And they’d told her about the rainbow storm.
Like a rainbow they said, or a thousand rainbows at once. Not hanging in the sky in the distance, but close enough you felt like you could touch them. Right over the village, right over the farm. Rainbows that were a straight line rather than an arch, or a circle, or like an explosion. Everypony had a different description, but they all made it sound equally awesome. She couldn’t believe that her family hadn’t thought to tell her about this, when she’d been too sick to go out and see for herself.
She could think off two reasons they wouldn’t have told her. Maybe they thought she’d be sad to have missed it, and they were trying not to show their excitement because they didn’t want to upset her. Or maybe they hadn’t seen it properly, and hadn’t realised the amazing thing they were missing. From the village, everypony said, it had seemed to come from the south. That meant it had appeared directly over the Pie family farm. Maybe it really had been overhead, or so close that her sisters hadn’t looked up.Or maybe it had been farther south, over the mountains, and it was just possible that anypony working on the farm that evening had missed the show because the mountains had been in the way.
In either case, she had decided, she would show her family that they could have fun looking at the rainbow. Maybe she couldn’t replicate the rainbow storm that the villagers described, but she could do her best. She put together things of every colour she could imagine; streamers to mimic the shape of a rainbow as it arced through the sky, and balloons to symbolise the height, and cakes representing how sweet she’d always imagined a rainbow should be. She set it all up in one of the outbuildings, that didn’t seem to be used for anything else. And she invited the whole family to come in and see what she’d created.
She called it her rainbow flare, because clearly a rainbow storm was something that had already happened, and she needed a name that was exciting enough, but also marked this as something different.
“Is this a party?” Marble had been the first to arrive, and looked around in shock. “You can’t do this… Mother will be mad.”
“I don’t know, what’s a party? And what’s wrong? I just want to show everypony how much fun the rainbow can be! We don’t have to just do what we have to, we can do awesome things too.”
“No, you can’t,” Maud Pie’s voice came from the doorway, “This is wrong. You should forget you ever saw that rainbow. It’s a disgraceful thing, we should regret it, not celebrate it. That abomination isn’t what made our family great, and we need to remember that. No matter where they came from or what they do, rainbows are not welcome here.”
The little pink pony stared at Maud in shock. She’d never seen her so angry in all her life. It took all her willpower not to cry, but Maud wasn’t finished yet.
“This is a disgusting display, an example of everything we need to show that we are not. You are letting the family down. And if you think like the city ponies, who celebrate something as blasphemous as a rainbow… If you think those ponies are wiser than your own ancestors, then maybe it’s them you should be living with.”
She couldn’t hold back the tears any longer, and she didn’t want her own disappointment to spoil what should have been a good day. She didn’t want to be seen. So she darted out into the night, and ran and ran, until the light spilling out of the open door was the only sign of life in the nighttime farm. Then her parents walked up to the door, unsteady on their hooves, but trying as hard as they could. They’d trusted in her enough to leave the house, and look at what she’d created.
She sat sobbing by the gate, still hoping that they would have something good to say, that she’d somehow misunderstood what had caused Maud’s rage. But all she heard were voices raised in anger, the words inaudible at this distance. She had to understand that she’d done something wrong, so very wrong, and she didn’t even understand why.
She turned towards the road, and started walking. She didn’t want to hurt her family. But as she sat on her haunches, waiting for them to say they hated her, the moonlight had shown her what she’d been too excited to notice, perhaps for a whole day. Her cutie mark was there; three balloons tied together by their strings, just peeking out from the edge of her bandages. Her special talent was in making parties, there could be no doubt. But she didn’t even know what a party was, save that it was a terrible thing her parents would never allow on their farm.
She felt like a genius general, born in an era where there were no wars to be fought. Or a torturer born a century after that craft went out of fashion. She had a talent she would never be permitted to use… and with that, would she ever be treated as an adult? But then she remembered Maud’s heated words, and she wondered. Maybe there were ponies out there who loved to party, whose families were the exact opposite of the Pies. If there was a place she could fit in, and she could use her talents, then maybe they could be a new family. But she still wasn’t sure. Should she go back, and try to mend her bridges instead of burning them? As she thought back, her imagination conjured so many half-remembered images. Sad faces and happy faces; patient and sympathetic. She knew that whatever came between them, her family must want what was truly best for her. She was sure of it, and she wasn’t ready to doubt them now, at least not without asking just what was wrong with her Rainbow Flare.
And then she saw it, a second before she was ready to turn back. A rainbow, arcing across the sky. But not just any rainbow. This one moved like it was alive, and burst in a spray of colour where it hit the horizon. She could see a ring of bright colours spreading around the setting sun, and she knew right away that it was a sign. Maybe not intended as a sign, but when the sky lit up like that she needed to investigate. Just like she needed to find out if other ponies liked to party, and how she could make the next one even better. It was almost a part of who she was now.
“What’s the matter, Pinky?” one of the casual labourers called as she stood frozen with indecision. The stallion was big and muscular, but not too bright. The kind who wouldn’t remember a five-syllable name even if she told him, so relied on the most obvious detail of her appearance. “Looking at the rainbow? You know there was one of them here last week, so bright it filled the sky?”
“My name’s…” she started, then realised it seemed to fit. “Yeah, Pinkie. Good guess. And I missed the last rainbow storm, so I can’t let this one go.”
“The sun was already setting,” Pinkie explained, “so I had to run fast. I just kept ahead of the night, and when it got too dark to gallop farther, my dreams were filled with that riot of colours. I didn’t know where to go, so I just walked toward where I’d seen it, the best I could. It took two days, then I got to Ponyville. When somepony looks at my cutie mark here, they’re excited imagining what my parties must be like. I’ve not seen anypony stare at it in disgust since I came here. So I got it, and now I can be happy with it.”
She still sounded upset, though. Memories that she’d tried to bury had a way of rushing back, and thinking about her family almost always made her cry. She’d been talking quite loudly, and everypony around could have heard some part of the story, if they weren’t too focused on their own conversation. An older mare on the farthest table nodded in sympathy, twirling a pendant between her hooves and thinking back to her own childhood.
“Yes,” she mumbled to herself, “It’s a sad thing when your family can’t support you. We’d be best not remembering it at all, when the memories are so sad.”
Applejack wasn’t quite close enough to hear the story, but she came closer when she saw the Crusaders huddled around Pinkie Pie.
“Hey, Apple Bloom, everypony,” she smiled, “Wasn’t Twilight supposed to be keeping an eye on you today? I hope you ain’t been distracting Pinkie when she’s working.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Pinkie bounced right back to her normal exuberance, “I’ve been telling them the story of how Equestria was founded!” The three fillies looked up in surprise at that, but quickly realised that it was Pinkie Pie talking, and eccentricity was to be expected.
“We’re doing research,” Apple Bloom explained, “We’ve been asking different ponies how they got their cutie marks, so we can see if there’s anything in common.”
“Oh, that’s so neat!” Pinkie grinned, “I should tell you how I got mine some time, but I was so busy I didn’t notice it right away. And I should be busy now, I’ve got buns in the oven! Bye!” and she dashed back into the shop before anypony else could respond.
“Well, good on you,” Applejack took the recently vacated seat, “So would you like to hear my story too?”
“Well, we already got Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie. We were going to ask Rainbow Dash later, then we’ll have three stories.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t bother them,” Applejack let a note of disappointment enter her voice, “They’re having a special secret Champions of Harmony meeting, and we ain’t invited because Celestia said so or something. Must be something real important if they can’t even tell the Element of Honesty. Anyhow! You got time for another story if you want it, but it’s probably not so exciting as the others. Maybe teach you something, though.”
“Why not?” Sweetie Belle gave a half hearted shrug, “We finished the cake, though. Could you get us some more?”
It took a while to settle on the cakes, but Applejack was happy enough to buy them just once. As she’d said, her story wasn’t as long as the others.
“I think Pinkie already said something about some rainbow flashes in the sky,” she started, “Well, it was one of them that got me started to getting my cutie mark. See, everypony at school had got theirs already, so it seemed, and I thought I was missing out…
Applejack started the day by looking in the mirror, like she did every day. She wasn’t vain, that would have got her in no end of trouble from Granny Smith. But she wanted to have her cutie mark, like all her friends, and she didn’t want to miss its appearance. She’d be a grown mare soon enough, and able to help her brother with all the real jobs on the farm, not just picking up fallen apples.
But after a month, or two months, or three, of looking in the mirror every day, she was starting to worry that it might never come. She’d tried every job on the farm, all the ones they’d let her do, anyway, and hadn’t shown any talent. She could do everything well enough, but that was by hard work rather than a special talent showing itself off. She was starting to wonder if she wasn’t cut out for farming after all.
Then one day, as she was collecting the windfall apples for her very own batch of cider, she saw a flash in the sky. It was like a rainbow had hit the ground and burst, spraying colour in all directions. It was amazing and incredible, and as soon as Applejack saw it some instinct told her that it was going to be very important in her future.
At dinner that night, she had new questions to ask. Instead of asking everything she could think of about how Granny and Big Mac had spent the day, and every detail of running the farm, she asked what lay at the end of the roads out of Ponyville. She didn’t want to ask where the rainbow had been over, because that would be a silly dream of a filly who didn’t want to think properly. But she worked out as best she could the direction it had come from, and which roads might head in that direction.
“That’s Manehattan,” Big Mac answered, keeping his words to a minimum as always.
“Oh,” Applejack nodded, as if the exotic name meant something to her. She had heard of it before, but she had never paid too much attention to the world outside Sweet Apple Acres, so she didn’t know what kind of place it might be. “Have you been there?”
“Nope,” and that was all there was to say on the matter.
Over the next week, Granny Smith took care to feed Applejack’s interest in the rest of Equestria, filling in what details she could remember from the days she’d spent travelling in her long-ago youth. And then she said something that would change the course of young Applejack’s life.
“You know, there’s Oranges in Manehattan now.” And that led to a good few minutes of confusion, because she’d already said that there wasn’t much fruit grown in the big city. But she explained that she meant the family of Granny Smith’s cousin Billy, who had worked on an orange farm in the south before moving to the then-new city of Manehattan in an attempt to find a new direction for his life.
“Your Aunt Orange is there now, of course, and her husband. Or your second cousin thrice removed or somesuch, but I say it’s easier to just say aunt if there’s enough cousins in between you’d have to stop to count them. Maybe you could get in touch, you got so many questions about Manehattan that I don’t have the answers to.”
So of course Applejack had written to Aunt and Uncle Orange, and had got a letter back on the finest, smoothest writing paper she’d ever felt. She’d written back again, asking what the city was like, and what kind of work they did there, and waited impatiently when each letter was due to arrive. Some of the answers sounded wonderful, like something out of a fantasy when they wrote about the complex fashions, and the size of the buildings, and streets that were nearly always clean. But when they mentioned work, or friends, Applejack found she couldn’t understand at all. But her lucky rainbow had pointed her in that direction, so she knew she just had to learn more.
It seemed like the correspondence had taken forever, but maybe it was only a few weeks before Applejack was on the train to Manehattan. She was going to live with her aunt and uncle in the hope that the city would give her a new purpose, a new way of looking at the world, and maybe a new special talent, just like it had for them.
The world was opened out for her. The city did indeed contain spectacular buildings, gleaming spires stretching into the sky. But rather than awe, the ponies who lived there always seemed to be thinking about who who worked in a higher office than them, or who had a bigger home, or who lived in the largest building even though they only took up a tiny part of it.
Applejack woke up groggy in the mornings, without a cock crow to clear her head and let her know it was time to work. And there wasn’t any work for her to do, save going out to school. Aunt and Uncle Orange seemed to live their lives talking to their friends, and inviting ponies round for parties, and making subtle deals that took a week to agree. Every transaction was a big deal in whatever kind of business this was, and Applejack was still too young to know what was being bought and sold. It seemed to her like their jobs were just talking to friends and looking good, the same as half the ponies in this place.
She tried her hardest. She tried to use the right knives and forks for the right bite-sized fancy meals, she tried to give guests a good impression of the family, she tried to wake up in the morning without a rooster to remind her. But every day, it felt no easier, and she wasn’t sure if she should head off to some other town, and try to find her talent there. And then as she looked out of the window, watching the sun sink below the horizon with no sign of birdsong, she saw a rainbow in the distance again. The omen that had brought her here, pointing along a road she was sure led back to Ponyville.
This time she didn’t think about it for weeks, she didn’t doubt her choice. Applejack just packed up her bags, thanked her aunt and uncle, and caught the next train home. As soon as she came in sight of the gates, she knew she’d done the right thing. Sweet Apple Acres was the place that called to her, even if she didn’t have some specific task to excel in. She would keep working at that farm just as long as it was possible, and she would protect her family and her farm from anything that might threaten them.
And that realisation was all it took for her cutie mark to appear. Apples, representing not the fruit itself, but her home.
“Wow, that’s a long way to go to find your home.”
“I think sometimes it’s the journey that matters, sugarcube.”
“Maybe I should go to Manehattan,” Apple Bloom mused, “I mean, it works for some folks. Maybe I really do need to try something different.”
“If you think that’s what’d work best for you,” Applejack answered slowly, making it too easy to guess that she was wracking her brains in search of some reason to say that was a bad idea, “Maybe you can think about it again when you’ve grown a bit more. Home’s a big thing to the Apple family, you know. I think if I’d gone galloping off to try and find myself when I was your age, I might never have got back.”
“Maybe it’ll be the same for me,” Apple Bloom admitted, “I think this place will always be home, and all my friends–”
“So what did you think about the rainbow?” Scootaloo interrupted, unable to restrain herself any longer, “I mean, you and Fluttershy and Pinkie all saw a big rainbow. Do you really think somepony managed the Sonic Rainboom before Rainbow Dash did? I can’t believe that, she’s got to be the first, right?”
“What rainbow?” for a moment the three youngsters thought she was joking, but then Applejack continued, “I heard that Rainbow Dash did a Sonic Rainboom when she was younger, but I didn’t see it. I think she was still living in Cloudsdale then, and I was right here in Ponyville, so maybe she was too far away.”
“Maybe it’s brighter than you think,” Scootaloo said, “You saw it all the way from Manehattan, and that’s what convinced you to come back here. Just like Pinkie.”
“Manehattan?” Applejack wasn’t sure if she should take that as a joke or not, “What would I be doing in Manehattan? I’ve lived in Ponyville my whole life, even my cutie mark is about my bond with the family farm. I’d never even consider travelling that far. I think I got some cousins there, but distant enough that they don’t come help with the harvest.”
The silence was particularly uncomfortable. Applejack couldn’t see why the fillies were so surprised, she’d never been much for travelling. She’d been to Canterlot for a royal visit when they first got the Elements of Harmony, but she hadn’t been there longer than a day. And that was the most time she’d ever spent away from home. Yet even her own sister seemed shocked by the declaration, and not just shocked but somehow afraid.
“What’s wrong?” she said, when three stares simply demanded an answer.
“You just told us about your trip to Manehattan,” Apple Bloom spoke softly. If words were steps, she’d be tiptoeing across a field of broken glass now, testing every spot before she put her weight on it and ready to flee at the slightest provocation, “You went to stay with Uncle Orange for a week, to see if city life suited you, and then you got your cutie mark when you returned. Was that true, or just a story to show us we shouldn’t give up?”
“Well, I guess I might have visited them once, but I don’t remember now, and surely not for a week.”
“Then it’s a lie? The Element of Honesty says whatever it takes to get us to do what she wants? Can’t even tell the truth to your own sister?”
“No, I wouldn’t–”
“Wait,” Sweetie Belle banged a hoof on the table, and three heads twitched around to look at her. As did the head of nearly everypony else in the place.
“Wait,” she said again, “Applejack looks upset, and I don’t think she’s one to lie. Something weird is going on here. That story you just told us wasn’t a lie, I can’t imagine a lie being so vivid, seeming so real. So was that what really happened?”
“I…” Applejack hesitated. It wasn’t that she was nervous to admit lying. But she couldn’t quite remember what the conversation had been about a few moments before.
“You’re not lying, but you’re not sure, right?” she found it odd to take charge of a meeting like that, even though Rarity kept telling her it was a useful skill she’d have to master someday. Applejack just nodded, so Sweetie Belle continued: “So let me remind you. We came here to ask different ponies how they got their cutie marks. You told us how you found yours. So, how did you get your cutie mark?”
“It means family,” Applejack wasn’t at all uncertain now, “And Sweet Apple Acres, that’s what the apple stands for. It means my special talent is helping my family, whatever kind of trouble they’re in, and protecting my home against anything.”
“Yeah,” Apple Bloom thought she was beginning to see the shape of the problem now, as well, and she didn’t like it at all, “But when did you get your mark? Was there a special event that made you realise how important your home was, or some time you left for a while and regretted it?”
“No,” Applejack answered straight away, and then furrowed her brow deep in thought, “No, I don’t think so. Was there?”
“You just said there was. And everything we’ve been taught in school is that a cutie mark is your special talent, it defines who you are, and it’s going to be a big event when you get it. You should be able to remember.”
“Yeah. But, I’ve always cared about my family. Maybe I always knew who I was, so getting mine was easy.”
“But you were next to last in your class?” Apple Bloom wasn’t pulling any punches now, because if something was wrong with her sister she felt it was her duty to fix it.
“Well… maybe it’s just different sometimes,” Applejack muttered, but it didn’t sound convincing even to herself. “Why don’t we ask some other ponies? Like, see if it’s always a surprise. Hey, Pinkie!”
“You called?” A pink head popped up again, cheerful as always.
“We’re talking about cutie marks,” Applejack spoke nervously, hesitating as much as her sister had a moment before. She blinked, and realised she was waiting for some kind of metaphorical punch. “When you got yours, was it a sudden thing, or have you always been like, this crazy bouncy ball of fun?”
“Oh, I know when I got mine,” Pinkie seemed to have none of the stress from relating her story a half hour before, “My family were a bit strict, I think, I wanted to party all the time and they just wanted me to work and study. So I left home and decided to come to Ponyville. Pretty sure I got my cutie mark the first night on the road, but it’s so long ago now, it’s hard to remember.”
“You remember it, though. It’s still a big deal.”
“And that’s not the story you told us before,” Sweetie Belle fixed Pinkie with a stern glare, “Is this some kind of joke? Or are you going to tell us that you both told a story in so much detail you can practically see it, when you can’t remember it yourselves.”
“That would be pretty silly,” Pinkie shrugged, “I mean, there’s only one of me, so I can’t say anything for both.”
“I think she means me and you,” Applejack said, “Like there was something we forgot. Was there anything in particular that made you decide to leave?”
“Yeah, was it Maud getting angry, or the rainbow, or your parents, or were you just restless after being sick?” Sweetie tried to think if there were any other points that could have prompted the decision. She really wanted to hear any answer that wasn’t ‘I don’t know’.
“Oh, I don’t think it was anything like that. I just didn’t want to be there any more. My parents were kind of strict, you know. They ran some kind of business, there was a lot of work. I think maybe it was a rock farm, I’m not sure. And it doesn’t sound like fun at all. It wasn’t any of those things, anyway. There was dust in the air, so much dust you’ll never forget it, I don’t think I ever saw a rainbow until I came to Ponyville, and I’ve never been sick either, I’m always Pinkie keen.”
The Cutie Mark Crusaders met each other’s gazes, looking back and forth as time passed. Each of them wondered if they were thinking different versions of the same thoughts.
“There’s something really weird here,” Scootaloo was the one to finally say it.
“We need to tell Twilight,” Sweetie Belle had a solution, “She’s the best, if your problem is figuring out what’s wrong. Maybe she might not have the most interesting or exciting way of dealing with it,” and here she paused to look at Scootaloo, with what might just be the first signs of irritation at her friend, “But for working out things, and looking up, there’s nopony better.”
“I still say there’s nothing wrong with me,” Applejack grumbled just a little, “But then I said that when I was sleep-deprived and making so much trouble for my friends. So if you want us to go see Twilight, I guess she can tell us if we need to be worried or not.”