Chapter 18: Bubbles and Balloons
Chapter 18: Bubbles and Balloons
The sun had barely passed its zenith when Rainbow and Hawk Tail strolled across the bridge to Cyr Island. They’d left the post office to stop by Hawk’s house for some lunch before deciding to head downtown. The fluttering, twirling, twisting form of Lanner accompanied them, her wings taking her in excited circles around the other two pegasi. The gray filly’s happy larking hadn’t stopped the entire walk down, and it showed no signs of stopping now.
“…but I mean, why wouldn’t you? You know what I mean?” Lanner asked to the two ponies below her, but before either could answer, she gave another flap of her wings and spun a few feet out ahead of them. Leaving the topic of questionable dinner ideas behind, she quickly launched into the next item on her never-ending list of ideas. “Oh, did you guys say hi to any of the birdies for me when you were at the post office? I swear, I really need to get up there more, but between the fledglings and all the planning, I just haven’t had the time!”
Hawk Tail chuckled at his sister’s enthusiasm. “Don’t worry, Lan, I let all the raptors know you said hi.” He shot a coy wink at Rainbow. “Dash even got to hold Isabella while we were up there. They seemed to get along just great.”
Lanner inhaled so deeply Rainbow was afraid she was going to pop. “Really? Oh, that’s awesome! I remember when Isabella was just a fuzzy little chick like, two years ago!” As soon as the trio stepped off of the bridge and onto the island proper, Lanner’s hovering body pivoted on a dime so that she nearly bumped her nose into Rainbow’s. “Did ya like her? She’s a really sweet girl! You two should hang out more. Really get to know each other.”
Rainbow took a step back to try and regain some of the personal space she lost to Lanner’s sudden invasion. “She was, uh, she was pretty nice,” Rainbow said. “Once she wasn’t trying to bite me and all.”
The young blue-gray mare nodded vigorously. “That’s how she plays. It means she likes you!” Lanner whirled around to face her brother. “I think Rainbow should keep her! Isabella’d make a great little pet birdy!”
The brown stallion gave a slight shrug of his wing. “I wouldn’t really call her little, Lanner. A falcon’s still pretty big, no matter how you look at them.”
“Pssh. A merlin’s smaller than most other raptors,” Lanner insisted. At the thickening crowds around them, Lanner checked over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t going to bump into anypony and dropped to the ground. She quickly took up a spot by Hawk’s side opposite Rainbow and continued without missing a beat. “Besides, it’s not like you’re really gonna miss out on the mail routes, anyway. Aren’t you going to have Matteo fly the route to the Golden Glade soon?”
“Yes, but I still have to train him before he can start flying his routes. Until then, I need Isabella to keep running hers.”
“Meh,” was Lanner’s response. She only lasted two steps before she suddenly inhaled and squeaked. “Ooooooooooh! You should take Rainbow with you when you train Matteo! That’d be so much funnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!”
“If she wants to,” he said, turning to Rainbow. “There’s not a whole lot to do. We have to take Matteo to the Golden Glade and let him fly back to the office they have there. Then we move him another few hundred yards out and do it again, until he can fly back to the Golden Glade all on his own.”
“But how do you get him to fly home?” Rainbow asked. “Seems pretty one-way to me.”
“We only feed him at the post office. We teach him that home is in the Golden Glade and food’s in River’s Reach. That way we can get him to fly back and forth.”
“Ah.”
“So, still interested?” Hawk asked.
“Hmm…” Rainbow tapped a hoof to her chin. “Wandering the woods alone for the better part of a day with a handsome stallion? I could think of worse ways to spend an afternoon.” She punctuated her thoughts with a wink.
“Eeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww.” Lanner stuck her tongue out. “Get a room, you two!”
Hawk chuckled and Rainbow blushed furiously. After a few moments of silence and a few strides deeper into the island, Rainbow piped up. “So what are we doing out here, anyway?”
“What?” Lanner asked, spinning on her hooves and nearly bumping noses with Rainbow… again. “You don’t know? I thought you knew!”
“Of course she doesn’t,” Hawk said, a teasing smile on his face. “You got so distracted on the way here that you forgot to tell her.”
Rainbow patiently raised an eyebrow and shifted her weight, waiting for the inevitable explosion that would answer her.
It arrived in the form of hooves grabbing her shoulders and violently shaking her. “It’s Dawn’s birthday oh my gods!! This is going to be the greatest party everrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!”
Lanner let go after one last violent shake, which nearly sent Rainbow toppling, and launched herself into the air. “And I’ve gotta get the stuff together so that we can throw it for her! Hopefully Wrangler’s doing her job…” She tapped her hoof against her chin in deep thought. Her eyes locked on something at the far end of the island, and with a gasp, she pointed in that direction. “Balloons!! I’ll be right back! Get the cake in the meantime!” And with one last flap of her wings, she was gone.
Rainbow watched one tiny gray feather twirl around and around until it hit the ground. After staring at it for a few seconds, she tilted her head towards Hawk Tail. “So… cake?”
Hawk gestured forward with a wing. “Straight ahead.”
Rainbow chuckled and started walking forward. Hawk Tail matched her step for step, and nonchalantly draped his left wing over Rainbow’s shoulders. The smaller mare shook her head and flicked her tail, but didn’t step away until they’d entered the bakery together, where the sights and smells consumed them in each other’s company.
-----
“No, no, no! That goes there, that goes there!”
Rainbow Dash grumbled and spat out the roll of streamers she held in her mouth. “Then why don’t you do it yourself, Flurry? I thought home décor was your thing, not mine!”
“It’s hardly ‘home décor’, Rainbow,” Flurry retorted. She sighed and pressed the bridge of her nose with a hoof. “We’re trying to set up streamers above the doorway, not make a spider web to ensnare Dawn in!”
“Look, I was never big on the whole decoration thing,” Rainbow said. Sighing, she hopped off the step ladder and stuck her good wingtip through the center of the roll of streamers. “And I don’t see you doing much over there.”
“I’m supervising, Rainbow,” Flurry said, frowning at the blue mare. “Somepony’s gotta do it.”
Rainbow rolled her eyes and climbed back up the ladder. She took the end of the streamers in her teeth and unwound a good length before holding it up to the ceiling and fastening it with a pushpin. Somepony’s gotta do it she mouthed, still facing away from Flurry, and she stuck her tongue out for emphasis. She wasn’t expecting the feathered slap to the back of her head that made her bite her tongue.
“Grrrrrr… what the hay, Flurry?” Rainbow spat, turning around to see the bemused and mildly irritated face of Flurry standing behind her. “When did you become miss Prissy Pants all of a sudden?”
“Girls…” Hawk called from the other end of the room in warning tones. “Do I need to put you two in the corner?”
Rainbow Dash crossed her forelimbs. “She started it.”
Flurry gasped and looked at Rainbow, incredulous. “Did not!”
“Did too.”
“Did not!”
“Did too!”
“Did—!”
“Hey!” Hawk shouted, interrupting the both of them. “If you can’t fight nice, fight in a larger space. . Can it.”
Rainbow and Flurry shot each other irritated glances before both went back to what they were doing. Rainbow moved the stepladder to the opposite side of the doorway and started attaching the other end of the streamer; Flurry strolled back to the center of the room and made some fine adjustments to the positioning of the six sets of silverware on the table. Exasperated, Hawk Tail held a wingtip to his brow, shook his head, and grabbed a few plates laden with uncooked food between his teeth. Moving to the door, stopping to survey their progress on the way out.
Dawn’s ‘arboreal residence’ (she hated calling it a treehouse) had slowly been overtaken by colorful party favors and decorations. Balloons, streamers, and a birthday cake with twenty-two candles had completely transformed the messy and unorganized living space into a bright and airy party center. Six plates and accompanying silverware had been arranged around the large table in the center of the room, ready for the meal that Hawk Tail was going to start preparing out back.
“You’re already starting on the food?” Rainbow asked, eyeing Hawk Tail as he reached for the door handle. “I thought this was going to be a surprise party.”
“Mmmf… Ih ishhnt,” Hawk managed around the large plate between his teeth. At Rainbow’s quirked eyebrow, he rolled his eyes and set the plate down on a nearby windowsill. “It isn’t. Dawn knows we’re setting up for a party in her house. Lanner and Wrangler just took her to Wrangler’s ranch so we could get set up.” He raised an eyebrow in return to Rainbow. “Do you really think jumping out and shouting ‘surprise!’ as soon as Dawn enters the house is going to do anything other than give the poor mare a heart attack?”
“Well when you put it that way…” she admitted with a shrug. Nodding, Hawk flashed her a small smile and picked up the plate. He shouldered open the door and started around the side of the house.
“Let me know if you need any help!” Rainbow called after him. Hawk flicked his tail in acknowledgement, and then he disappeared.
All was silent for several minutes. Rainbow Dash dropped the roll of streamers on the table and stepped back to admire her work. In so doing, she accidentally bumped into Flurry, earning an irritated grunt from the white mare. She raised an eyebrow and looked over her shoulder, but Flurry didn’t happen to look in her direction—perhaps pointedly. Shrugging, Rainbow turned away. “Sorry.”
Flurry didn’t immediately respond. She shuffled and reshuffled the silverware around the table before ultimately setting it right back where it began. Without turning to Rainbow, she smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and shook her mane out of her eyes. “So… Hawk Tail’s been taking good care of you?”
Rainbow blinked at the unexpected question. “Uh… yeah? He’s really thoughtful and stuff. Makes sure I have whatever I need.”
Flurry hummed. “That’s good, that’s good. Wouldn’t want to feel abandoned or anything, I suppose.”
“Yeah, Hawk’s good at keeping me entertained. He’s really caring and that sort of thing.” She looked out one of the windows to where she could see Hawk setting up the stone grill Dawn had behind her house, and in so doing, missed the stiffening of Flurry’s limbs. “He’s a lot of fun to be around with, you know? And really sweet.” A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
“Yes, well, I have known him for almost fifteen years now,” Flurry grumbled. Rainbow noticed the odd edge in the mare’s voice and cocked her head slightly, but Flurry was already moving towards the door. “I’m going to go look out for the birthday mare. She should be here in a few minutes.”
The door opened and shut in a second, leaving Rainbow all alone within the house, and more than a little confused.
Sighing, Rainbow slowly paced the perimeter of the single round room, bored. With all of her friends gone except for Hawk, she had no real way of entertaining herself. Usually she’d just find somewhere to take a nap, but now wasn’t a good time for that. Eventually, her eye caught the pile of papers on Dawn’s bed and, curious, she wandered over and began flipping through them with her wingtip.
The pages and pages and pages of scrawling, illegible writing, strange diagrams, and complicated equations made absolutely zero sense to her. The more she looked through Dawn’s notes, the more hopeless she realized the endeavor was. For some reason, Twilight made her way to the forefront of Rainbow’s mind, and Rainbow assumed that Twilight also had a habit for leaving her mind-boggling notes and studies scattered everywhere. The uncovering of another small tidbit of information about her past life made Rainbow smile, then shudder. Swallowing hard, she moved to put the papers back on the bed, but her shaking wing accidentally dropped them all on the floor.
Rainbow muttered a quick obscenity to herself and bent over to gather the scattered pages together. Realizing the pages had no number, rhyme, nor reason to them, she only hoped that Dawn would be able to get them back in order when she needed them again. Finally making a neat little pile, she dropped the stack back on the bed, and was about to step away before she noticed the sketch in the corner of one of the pages.
It looked like a serpent of some sort, only… demented. A long, ‘S’ like body made up the bulk of the sketch, but different limbs were affixed to it seemingly at random. A lion’s paw and an eagle’s talons, a crocodile’s leg and a cleft hoof. Add to that a serpentine tail and a goat-like head, complete with an antler, a long horn, a dragon’s wing and a bird’s wing, and Rainbow wasn’t sure what she was looking at.
Actually… no, that wasn’t true. For some reason, Rainbow felt like the sketch was familiar. It was completely absurd; there was no way something like that could be familiar to her, but all the same—did the sketch just wink at her?
The door suddenly opening dashed away Rainbow’s thoughts, and she quickly trotted away from Dawn’s notes just as the mare in question entered the house. Lanner, Wrangler, and Flurry arrayed themselves behind her, and Rainbow flashed them all a surprised smile. “Eh heh… surprise! Happy birthday, Dawn!”
The thin line of Dawn’s mouth managed a warm smile. “Thank you, Rainbow. Thank you, everypony,” she added, turning to her friends standing beside her. Rainbow noticed her hooves fidgeting lightly at the number of ponies around her, but Dawn managed to keep herself relatively calm. Her orange eyes looked over the decorations, and she nodded approvingly. “Very nice. Didn’t have to, though. Appreciated regardless.”
“Well it’s not every day you turn twenty-two!” Lanner shouted from behind Dawn. She took wing and flew over the mare’s head and spun around the inside of the room. “I mean, it happens only once in a lifetime!”
“By the laws of general relativity. Yes.”
“Exactly!” Lanner chirped, although Rainbow figured nopony besides Dawn knew what the unicorn meant. The gray pegasus dropped her hooves back to the floor and beamed widely. “Great job with the decorations, guys! I knew I could count on you!”
“I’ll say,” Wrangler agreed, walking into the room. “Glad I had the easy job in all this. It’s easy to keep a pony entertained for the afternoon when you’ve got a hundred acres and then some.”
Dawn shrugged. “The open space was enjoyable.” She blinked and inhaled deeply. “Grilled corn, zucchini, peppers?”
“And portabella mushrooms!” Hawk exclaimed, appearing in the doorway behind them with a large platter of food spread across his outstretched wings. His friends parted for him to pass, and he smiled at Dawn as he walked towards the set table. “Happy birthday, Dawn! I thought I heard your voice.”
“Yes, well, sound carries well in the forest. Quiet. Echoes.” She looked around her house and realized everypony was staring at her with mild amusement. Taking a sharp breath, she smiled and stepped forward. “Nourishment sounds excellent.”
Rainbow Dash chuckled and shook her head. “I couldn’t agree more.”
-----
“Jeez Hawk, I knew you were good at a lot of things, but I didn’t think cooking was one of them.”
Hawk Tail looked up from his meal and smiled somewhat sheepishly at Rainbow Dash. “You really think so?”
Rainbow violently engorged herself with another helping of peppers and mushrooms. “Mmhmm! This is some of the best food I’ve had down here! You should cook more often.”
“Hey!” Lanner exclaimed from the other end of the table. “What about me? I’m the one who cooks food for us all the time!”
“Oh, don’t worry, Lanner,” Flurry said, resting a snow white hoof on the smaller mare’s shoulder. “You cook great too.”
Wrangler snickered across from them. “Even if you have an odd taste in spices and such.” She licked her lips and went back to mauling the corn she held between her hooves while Lanner frowned at her.
“I’m telling you, cinnamon goes with everything,” Lanner hissed, squinting at Wrangler. In the same breath, her wingtip wrapped around a shaker of cinnamon sitting by her side and she began to sprinkle it on her food, all without taking her eyes off of the earth pony.
“Scientifically proven,” Dawn added, coyly smiling. Rainbow noticed the mare’s plate was neatly subdivided by food, so that the corn, peppers, and mushrooms never touched anything but their own kind.
“Wait, really?” Rainbow asked, cocking her head.
“Of course, just like the geocentric model, or Aristrotelian physics.”
Rainbow Dash blinked at Dawn. Dawn stared back.
“…Really?”
“No,” Dawn flatly answered, earning a chuckle from the rest of the ponies gathered. Rainbow’s cheeks flushed, and she took a large bite out of her mushroom to cover it.
The meal went on, and with it, the merriment and laughter. Most of it was spent listening to Lanner tell exciting stories of her various misadventures around town or with the fledgling raptors at the rookery. Wrangler told a few ranch hoof jokes that nopony really understood (though she thought were hysterical), and they managed to convince Flurry to showcase her singing voice after a lot of heckling and a few drinks. Rainbow had to admit, the mare had quite the voice. It sounded smooth as glass and as fluid as running water. The song itself was only a short little tune, but it left Rainbow hungering for more.
Instead, her hunger was satiated by cake, and she couldn’t really complain. The chocolate-vanilla-chocolate layered cake she and Hawk had picked up that afternoon was delicious. Like always, Lanner was the first one done, and as soon as she’d licked her plate clean, her buzzing wings took her to the other end of the room, where she dragged out an old gramophone from… somewhere. Rainbow had no idea where it came from. After fiddling with the device for a few seconds, she pulled a record out of thin air, slapped it down on turntable, and let the music play.
It hit Rainbow harder than the tree she ran into.
The room looked like the inside of a gingerbread house. Considering what the building looked like on the outside, Rainbow figured it was appropriate. Everything from the pink glass windows to the teddy bear etchings where the walls met the ceiling matched perfectly with the style of a gingerbread house, and the pony who lived in it.
A splash of water drew her back to the pony next to her. Applejack emerged from the wooden tub before her with an apple clutched in her teeth. She smiled at Rainbow victoriously.
“Nice one!” Rainbow exclaimed. “Now let me show you how it’s really done!” She opened her mouth and leaned back, ready to plunge her face into the cold water, but a pink blur interrupted her before she could even get that far.
“Hey girls!” the pink mare greeted in an extremely high pitched and bubbly voice.
Rainbow felt herself smiling. “Hey, Pinkie Pie!”
“Howdy!” Applejack added.
Pinkie Pie squealed and stomped her front hooves against the ground. “Just wanted to tell you how happy I am that you could make it to Gummy’s birthday party.”
“Are you kiddin’?” Applejack said with a little scoff. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!”
“Me neither,” Rainbow said. “When Pinkie Pie throws a party, I am there!” She took the moment to plunge her face into the cold water, grab the nearest apple she could find, and pull it back out with her teeth. “Ta-da!”
Pinkie Pie giggled. “Aww, it’s just a boring old apple. Don’t worry, there are plenty of other surprises in there!”
Rainbow spit the apple out, letting it plop back into the tub. “Surprises? What kind of surprises?”
“I can’t tell you that, silly,” Pinkie Pie said, beginning to walk away. “Then it wouldn’t be a surprise!”
And she put the happiest smile she could manifest on her pink muzzle as the flashback faded away, leaving Rainbow to stare at an almost identical smile on Lanner’s face as she gaily danced to the music.
A cold sweat broke out on Rainbow’s brow, and she shakily pushed herself away from the table. Stumbling out of her chair, she made a beeline for the door and fell into it more than she opened it. The door flew open under the weight of her shoulder, and she nearly tripped over her hooves before her forelegs found the railing of the porch. Gasping, and with her wings hanging loose at her sides, she shuddered and trembled as she tried to cope with what she’d seen.
Almost immediately she felt strong hooves wrap around her midsection and hold her tight. Brown, downy wings covered her shoulders and drew her trembling body back into a comforting hug. As Rainbow Dash struggled with the tumult of emotions roiling within her, Hawk Tail held her close and tenderly shushed her.
“Deep breaths,” he whispered, gently nuzzling her neck. “It’s okay. I’m right here. Just let it out.”
Rainbow shut her eyes and leaned against Hawk, her tearstained cheeks meshing with the short hair on his face. “Pinkie Pie…”
“Who?” Hawk asked, rubbing Rainbow’s back. The mare trembled and inhaled a shuddering breath, but Hawk simply waited for her to collect herself.
“One of my f-friends… she used to throw parties all the time.” She smiled faintly around the damp fur of her muzzle. “Lanner reminds me of her.”
Hawk snorted. “That’s strange. I thought Lanner was one of a kind.”
“Yeah, well, so is Pinkie. The two of them should meet…” The smile on Rainbow’s muzzle vanished, slowly transitioning into a broken frown.
Hawk Tail caught it and drew Rainbow closer. “Hey, it’s okay, Rainbow. It’s not your fault. I know what you think, but you can’t help it that any of this is happening to you. Don’t be sad or scared that you’re remembering friends. Be happy that they’re all coming back to you.”
He tilted Rainbow’s chin up so that they were looking into each other’s eyes, and he smiled. “We all want to see you get better, Rainbow. And no matter what happens, you can’t replace friends. We didn’t replace your old ones, and your old friends certainly won’t replace us.”
Rainbow stared at him, wordless, breathless, but with a hunger to believe in her eyes.
Hawk Tail tilted Rainbow’s head down and kissed her forehead. Then, turning around, he wrapped his left wing across her shoulder and nodded to the open door. “Now come on. We’re missing all the fun standing out here.” A brief pause. “Well, not all the fun.”
That got a small smirk and a chuckle from Rainbow, and shaking her head she started towards the door. But after taking just a step, she turned back to Hawk. “Do that again.”
Hawk blinked. “Huh?”
Rainbow’s eyes locked with Hawk’s. “You know what.”
He raised an eyebrow, but kept his thoughts to himself. He leaned forward and kissed Rainbow’s forehead again, and the mare sighed happily. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Hawk said, rubbing Rainbow’s back with his wing.
“If you say so,” she teased, stepping back towards the party and music with Hawk Tail at her side. Her ruby eyes regarded Lanner waving her rump back and forth as she danced to the music, and she shook her head. “Sweet Celestia, somepony needs to teach your sister to dance. Hold my proverbial wine glass for me while I go over there and show her some moves.”
Hawk Tail chuckled, and watching Rainbow bump shoulders with Lanner in the center of the room, smiled and shut the door behind him.
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Yay, a new chapter!
Hahaha I love this! Flurry, such a tough spot. Rainbow oblivious. Cute moments. I'm happy.
Can't wait for the next chapter!
Lanner is so energetic it makes me feel just a little bit old and tired just reading about her. That said, I really love the use of 'larking' to describe her behavior.
Heh.
Oooooo, green is somepony's color.
A sketch of Discord by Dawn?
There we go, there's the Pinkie flashback I was expecting.
Gotta love the developing Dash x Hawk relationship. It's so going to end in tears, isn't it?
I'm kinda of trying to figure out whether the world got flipped inside out with everybody except Rainbow getting changed around... The similarities between someponies seem a bit too convenient.
Flurry really needs some bread with that jelly..
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Hey, this is not a Song of Storms, maybe he'll give us happiness here.
Ha! No way.
I really hope you update this more. One of the best romances I've ever read in a story and very interesting plot. For this you a like, favorite, and a Follow
How long till the next chapter!!!???!!!
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I apologize for the hold up, but I write chapters for this story in alteration with my other big story, Summer Lands. I'm nearing completion on a chapter of that story, which will then allow me to return to this one. Sorry for the disparity in wait times; chapters for this story are rarely larger than 5k, while chapters for Summer Lands are rarely shorter than 10k.
Doesn't seem anywhere as creepy as Pinkie. Lanner doesn't teleport.
Nice chapter, found some errors:
There is and extra space and an extra period of "fight in a larger space"
I don't think the "Moving to the door" sentence is really a sentence. Might I suggest that you either merge the two sentences, or change the last sentence to read something like:
PS:
Was that an Empire Strike Back reference?
Han (talking to Chewie, pointing to a section of the Mellinnium Falcon): No, no no! This one goes there, that one goes there! Right?
HI DISCORD! Now are you good or evil?
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DisQord: "Hi Admiral. And yes. I am!"
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Getting a Mr. Torgue moment here