Lightning Ride

by Bookish Delight

Lightning Ride

–––
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
"Lightning Ride"
by Bookish Delight, 2010–2011
All characters and referred properties belong to Hasbro.
–––

Twilight Sparkle sits on her balcony, watching the skies. Midnight strikes. A breeze signals a good friend's arrival.

Rainbow Dash smiles, allowing Twilight to hop on.

"So what did you want to show me?"

"Killer light shows. As promised."

"Wait. We're actually going to-"

"Yep! Set one up just for us. Get ready for sweetness!"

"W-why didn't you tell me ahead of time? I would've prepared!"

Dash winks. "Exactly."

They approach, and soon are in the midst, of darkened, rain-letting clouds. Deafening thunder booms from all sides. Lightning crackles in angles and arcs, branching and connecting in brilliant flashes of silver and blue.

Energy. Chaos. Adrenaline. Danger. A Rainbow Dash loves all of these things. Her senses heighten in response, becoming stronger than the storm.

"Yeah... yeah, yeah!"

She crisscrosses the murky skies, seemingly dodging bolts as they appeared on both sides.

Twilight, however, shivers and clings to her escort more tightly. "D-Dash, th-they're everywhere! We'll get fried!"

"Nah. Doesn't happen with me."

"I've researched storms, Dash! Lightning is very much supersonic! You've only just made it to the speed of sound-"

"I move at the speed of awesome, Sparkle!" Dash says, amidst an extra-long roll of thunder. "I make these storms, I break these storms, so if I say I can move through these storms while keeping somepony I care about safe, then guess what? You're in good hooves!"

Everything quiets. Twilight, Dash, the storm itself. In the silence, Twilight sees that Dash still isn't missing a single dodge. In fact, she makes this look easy.

Twilight then remembers: Dash has never let her down before. Why, logic asks, would she now?

"Rainbow... I apologize. Is it too late to start trusting you?"

Rainbow Dash's smile returns as they soar higher.

"It's never too late."

Comments

Short and sweet. Twi/Dash in any setting wins for me!

[ChemIisan]

And then they get hit by a lightning bolt.

[Meandering Road]

New speed scale: Fast, Way Too Fast, Hyperdrive, Plaid, Awesome.

[rushfloppit]

beutiful. just beutiful.

[Rainbow87dash]

I hate that 1000 word limit
You HAVE to write you first chapter more than 1000 words
I wrote one that had 990 I had to put Random gibberish at the end
GAH Sfax gadget gasbags ahxhshd ahxhshd ahxhshd suchDsch chech used

Wow spell check made those words from Random typing

[HalflingPony]

Finally, someone who knows how to use present tense effectively. I love the way the cadence of the writing mimics the storm.

One tense slip though:
"She crisscrosses the murky skies, seemingly dodging bolts as they appeared on both sides."

[Portmeirion]

Cute, fun little story. There isn't much to it, but it's got a certain minimalistic charm - just a snippet of interaction between two friends with a dash of excitement. Lovely!

[YoshiFawful64]

Awww.
It feels weird to read such a short story here on FIMFiction, but I think the minimalisticness works well with it.

[CapNTilfy]

This was too short. Just wanted to be honest with you. =) Now I understand why they put in a 1k word limit.

[CapNTilfy]

I hope you didn't take any offense to my comment about the length. Sometimes I say something only to realize after the fact that it might come off as insensitive.

[Bookish Delight]

9019329
Some like it, some think it's too short. It's not my place to care all that much.

I want to say there was an EQD contest back then to write 300-word fic. That's where this and the Trixie short came from.

[CapNTilfy]

9019376
Ah, I see.

[Nali]

Doing some lighter reading tonight.

I'll concur with a prior comment that this piece has the feel of a free verse poem. Part of it's the urgency of present tense, part of it's the use of just enough alliteration and inner rhyme and repetition to give the whole thing flow in a way that feels intentional.

Only so much room for substance in a story this short, but it sells the atmosphere, and someone getting dragged into midnight thunderstorm riding for the sake of sharing the thrill is one of the most Rainbow Dash things I've ever heard. gonna start counting how many times this happens