I like it up here. It isn't as complicated as it is down below.
Way down there, among those hills that look like dimples and the buildings that look like matchboxes, it's complicated. Noisy. Full of ponies that shout and whisper and nag and cry.
Up here, it's really simple. Just keep flapping your wings, and you keep going up. That's all there is.
I suppose the wind makes noise up here. You could even call it loud, since there's nothing up here to stop it from ripping by as fast as it wants to. It pulls and tugs on me hard; it's strong, and it's cold. But the wind doesn't really care if I go where it does. If I were to just glide and let it carry me, soon enough it would just change direction again.
It isn't really noise like the noise down on the ground is. It's not complicated. It isn't eggheads that don't know as much as they think they do. It isn't clingy pink bakers that think I'm leaving for good. It's simple, just the sky roaring at anypony that will listen. I'm up here, so I'll listen.
My chest hurts. That's okay, it's supposed to hurt when you're up this high. The air gets thin up here, you have to breathe more. My lungs ache for more oxygen. There's oxygen down lower, but that's where all the complication is, too, so I just keep flapping. Keep going up.
Equestria looks so small from here. I could cover up all of Ponyville with just a coin. Canterlot is just a dollhouse stuck to the side of a lump of rock. Even Cloudsdale, which is supposed to be pretty high itself, is just a clump of white fluff, not really all that different from all the other clouds I have between me and the ground. I can look over to the east, and I can swear I can almost see Fillydelphia peeking over the horizon. It's not that far. I can span the distance with just one hoof. The quiet voice with teary eyes was wrong, the distance is smaller than she says.
It needs to be smaller. I keep flapping. I keep going up.
My ears throb. They've already popped a couple times on the way up, and I guess they're going to do it again. I'm gonna have a major headache when I go back down. When I go back down. Yeah, I guess I am gonna have to go back eventually. Not now, though. Right now, I'm staying up here, above all the horsefeathers that goes on down below. Above unicorns and farmers that completely missed the point of what's going on. Above letters from the Wonderbolts about year-long training camps on the other side of Equestria.
Up here, the blue starts to drain away. I see the sun and the moon hanging in the sky, and it feels like I could just keep flying off to one of them instead of returning to the ground. I probably can't. Twilight says they're a lot further away than they look, that you can't get there without magic. But it sorta feels like if I just keep flapping, just keep going up, I could do it.
It's really cold up here. Moisture rolls off of my eyes and it's frozen into ice crystals before it manages to fall more than a few feet from me. My chest can't take much more of this thin, freezing air. I need to turn around soon, go back down where there's warmth and oxygen. Where there's all this complicated noise. I need to go back down and explain to them that a year isn't forever, that there'll be breaks when I can take the train back and hang out again.
But I think I'll stay up here just a little longer.
Rainbow Dash stirred as something pulled her out of her nap. She smacked her lips. Her jaw felt weird, like it was wider than it should be. Probably slept on it at a funny angle or something. She resolved to find a fluffier cloud next time as she rolled over to have a peek at what had disturbed her slumber.
Somepony on the ground was talking to her. She shook the last of her nap out of her head and took another look. Rarity stood below her cloud, an odd look on her face.
“Mmh. Hey, whatcha need?” Rainbow asked, rubbing her eyes.
Rarity reeled back in surprise. “Oh my goodness, I'm sorry!” she said, blinking in shock. “I thought you were somepony else! I beg your pardon, sir!”
Rainbow tilted her head. There was no way anypony in Ponyville, much less one of her friends, could ever mistake her for somepony else. Rainbow manes weren't exactly commonplace. “Who did you think I was?” she asked.
Rarity coughed into her hoof. “Well, see... are you, by any chance, related to a Rainbow Dash? You look like you could be her brother!”
“Ha, ha,” Rainbow huffed, rolling her eyes. “That's real funny, Rarity. Let's make fun of Rainbow Dash 'cause her voice is scratchy and she doesn't brush her mane as often as you want her to.” She turned back to her cloud and began fluffing it up. This time she wouldn't wake up with sore limbs.
“How do you know my name?” Rarity asked. She went silent for a moment before gasping aloud. “Rainbow Dash, is that you?”
Rainbow snorted. “Of course it's me, Rarity. Did you have anything you needed other than to wake me up and call me coltish?”
Rarity made a startled squeak that sounded more at home coming from Fluttershy than from her. “D-darling, whatever happened to you?”
Dash was getting tired of playing along with this unfunny joke. “What do you mean, 'what happened?'”
“Dear, you look...” Rarity's eyes shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I mean, I suppose I've needled you once or twice about looking masculine, but this...”
Rainbow's jaw tightened. She had had enough of this. With a flap of her wings, she kicked off of the cloud and swooped down to hover over the pestering mare. Somehow, it seemed to take a bit more effort than usual, like she was heavier than she used to be. “What is it, Rarity?”
“Great Celestia, would you look at the size of...” Rarity's face flushed bright red. She averted her eyes and cleared her throat. “Ahem! Darling, there's really no subtle way to break this to you... you're a stallion, Rainbow Dash.”
Rainbow snarled. “Yeah, I get it. My fur sometimes gets a bit scruffy around the chin, so obviously I look like a dude. It wasn't funny the first time, Rarity, so just knock it off.”
“Dear, I'm not saying you look like a stallion, I'm saying you are one,” Rarity replied. “With the complete... er, package, as it were.”
“That's real mature,” Rainbow growled.
“Oh for pony's sake,” cried Rarity. Her horn ignited and she dragged a full-length mirror from—where did she get it from, actually? “Look!”
Rainbow Dash took a look in the mirror. She saw a squarish, blocky muzzle, and a thick, muscular barrel. She saw a shorter, choppier mane and tail, and... um. Well.
“Huh,” she said, letting herself—or was it himself, now?—down to the ground. “What?”
“Those were approximately my thoughts on the matter, too, darling.” Rarity peered at her around the mirror. “Do you have any idea what might have caused this?”
Rainbow shut her eyes and tried to think. She remembered something about Twilight saying she had an experiment to run, something about one of Zecora's potions, and some kind of ancient artifact of untold power, but she hadn't really been paying much attention. She shrugged.
Rarity's brow creased. “Okay, well, I suppose I'll run and find Twilight. Will you be okay, darling?”
Rainbow nodded. “Yeah, sure, I'll be fine.”
Rarity took off at a trot, leaving her with the mirror. The transformed pegasus ran a hoof through her mane, examining her new jawline. “Yeah,” she muttered appraisingly, “I'd still do me.”
((Prompt: Three ups and three downs of three ponies being in love.))
Polyamorous relationship? Geez, Twi, what an egghead way to put it.
No, I know what the word means. It's just that it's such a big word, totally unnecessary for what it really is. I love Pinkie. I love Rarity. They love each other, and they love me. Love, Twi. It's as simple as that. You don't need to tack on all those extra syllables.
No, it's all right, Twilight. It's just fine. But since you asked, that's the first thing; a lot of ponies don't get it. They think we do it to be different, or because we're too weak to choose, or some kind of horsefeathers like that. They don't get that it really is just love, just like if it was just two of us.
You get used to shrugging it off pretty quick. Who cares if somepony doesn't get it? There's only three ponies that need to understand: me, and the two mares I'm in love with.
But yeah, enough about that. Let's see, what is there to say about what Rare, Pinkie and I have?
I suppose, other than other ponies, the thing you gotta watch out for is that you have twice as many ponies there to get mad at you if you screw up.
Oh yeah, Pinkie definitely gets mad. She's not as good at showing it as Rarity is, and sometimes I don't think she realizes it herself when she gets angry, but it's there. You gotta look for the signs, and when you spot them, you gotta be extra careful. Pinkie'll keep smiling right on up to the point she breaks into tears if you don't pay attention to her.
Fortunately, I got Rarity to back me up. She's got good eyes, and good instincts. She catches things I don't always spot. That's one of the awesome things about this whole deal. You got twice as many ponies looking out for you. When Rarity gets into one of her moods, Pinkie's there to help me bring her back up for air. We keep each other standing, we keep each other balanced. It's real cool.
And that brings up another thing, too. I get to see a side of each of them that I never would have gotten to see if the other wasn't there. You wouldn't believe how good Pinkie cleans up, Twi. Without anypony to tell her otherwise, she'd be just fine going along with her mane bouncing in the air and wearing nothing but a smile. And if it was just me with her, she'd never have a reason to be any different. But lemme tell you, Twi, when Rarity puts that pink hair up in braids and gets her to wear one of those nice dresses... oh wow, you've never seen anything like it.
And then Pinkie gets Rarity to let her mane down once in a while. I love that mare even when she is a little uptight, but when she lets herself start having a bit of fun, well, it's a whole new side of her, and I fall for her that much harder. There was this one time when Pinkie broke open a whole barrel of pickles. I thought Rare was gonna have a stroke, but...
Oh, hey, I think that's Rarity now. I did tell her I was gonna model a dress for one of her pegasus clients today. That's one for both sides of your list. There's never a moment's rest with those two, but there's never a dull moment, either! I better fly!
Oh, and Twilight?
Good luck with A.J. and Fluttershy. I really hope it works out for you.
That was a word Rainbow had picked up from her Daring Do books. It meant 'lame.' History was uncool. Totally not awesome. History didn't do loop-de-loops or fight off dragons or anything neat like that. It was just a bunch of boring, stuffy old ponies droning about what other boring, stuffy old ponies did a long, long time ago.
There was one exception, though.
Commander Hurricane was awesome. She was so completely un-bunk that Rainbow felt there had been some kind of mistake when she was put into history. There needed to be a separate subject just for Commander Hurricane, and it would be called Awesometasticness.
Rainbow Dash flapped her wings excitedly as she dug out the prop helmet from the box of costumes. “This is so awesome!” she cheered. “I can't believe I get to play Commander Hurricane for the Hearth's Warming Eve pageant! She's only the most wicked-cool pegasus in the history of ever!” —excluding herself, she silently added. She could hardly blame the Commander for not being quite up to Dash levels of coolness; nopony was, after all.
“I'm glad you're excited,” Twilight said, glancing up over the top of her copy of the script.
Dash inspected the wooden sword that came with her armor. It would've been sweet if they had real swords on stage, but whatever. “Did you know that I'm directly descended from her? I'm like her great, great, great times a zillion granddaughter!”
Applejack rolled her eyes. “Every pegasus in Equestria's descended from her, hon. Comes natural with bein' one of Equestria's founders.”
“Still counts for awesome points,” Rainbow said, her enthusiasm undimmed. “I wonder what kind of cutie mark she had. It must have been awesome.”
“Ooh,” interjected Pinkie, her face poking out one of the leg-holes of her costume. “What if it was something that didn't have anything to do with commanding, or hurricanes? I bet she had a poetry-reading cutie mark!”
“No way,” said Rainbow, shaking her head. “She must have had something really cool, like a gust of wind filled with lightning, or a spear flying through a torrent of rain, or—”
“She didn't have a cutie mark,” Twilight said.
Rainbow Dash blinked. “C'mon, Twi, you can't tell me a pony as awesome as the Commander Hurricane was a blank-flank!”
Twilight shook her head. “Commander Hurricane couldn't have had a cutie mark. Nopony did, back then.” She was met with confused looks from her friends. “Oh, come on, they taught us this in school, don't you remember?”
More blank stares. Twilight rolled her eyes. “The founding of Equestria was the end of the preclassical period. Nopony's sure exactly how long ago it was, but it was before the princesses, and it was before Discord.”
Fluttershy's eyes brightened. “Oh, I think I remember this, now!”
“Good,” said Twilight, smiling. “Do you want to tell them what it has to do with cutie marks?”
Fluttershy shrank behind her mane as five pairs of eyes turned on her. “Well, um... see, Discord...” She gulped. “I think you'd tell it much better than I can,” she squeaked.
Twilight sighed. “Okay. When Discord held power over Equestria, Celestia and Luna used the Elements of Harmony to freeze him in stone. But they couldn't contain all of his power. And with so much of Discord's magic still on the loose, it would only be a matter of time before he managed to use it to set himself free.”
“So the princesses came up with an idea,” she continued. “They would channel the leftover magic into a spell cast over all of Equestria. This spell would find ponies that have special skills and abilities, and subtly guide and assist them. That's what cutie marks are. So long as the magic of the spell was being used, Discord couldn't access it. And therefore, as long as ponies continue to learn and grow, Discord won't ever be able to take back control of Equestria, even if, like a few months ago, he escapes from the stone.”
“So you see,” Twilight said, nodding proudly, “None of the founders of Equestria could have had cutie marks. They were thousands of years too early for that.”
“Okay, fine,” said Rainbow, waving her hoof at her. “But if she did have a cutie mark, I bet it'd have been awesome. Maybe a cloud that was on fire! Yeah, and the flames would be all different colors, and...”
Rainbow Dash had had enough. Rarity needed to get it through her pretty little head that she didn't own her. If that fussy fashionista wanted somepony to do whatever she told her to, whenever she said, without ever talking back, then she could just hang a rainbow wig on one of her ponequins.
Rainbow Dash was her own pony. She had her own thoughts and feelings and desires, and Rarity just treated those things like hurdles; things to get over in order to get Dash to do what she wanted her to do.
Well, no more. Dash was born with the blessing of wings, and by Celestia, she was going to use them today. She was getting the hay out of this Boutique, out of this crummy one-sided relationship, and out of Rarity's disgustingly perfect mane.
For good, this time. Those other times before, sure, she had been mad, but it was never like this. This was the last straw. She wasn't coming back this time. Rarity could just keep her fancy mane-curlers and her dresses and her stuffy social events. Dash didn't need anything Rarity had to give her. All she needed was out there, waiting for her in the blue sky.
She shot out of the door without a word—or maybe she did shout a word or two, she was too angry to really be certain whether she had said some of those things out loud or just thought them really hard. She didn't look back.
*
It was over.
Rarity was through. She asked so little of that belligerent ball of feathers, only the barest of decency and courtesy, but Rainbow Dash reacted as though she were suggesting she chop her own wings off.
Rarity didn't need this headache. She had been just fine before all of this. There was no reason to keep giving her second chances, and third, and fourth. Clearly, Dash didn't want them. She seemed to think that she could have a relationship without any compromise, that ponies would just change to suit her lifestyle.
Well, good luck to her with that! Rarity was certain Rainbow would find all kinds of happiness for herself with that attitude.
Rarity huffed angrily and focused her attention back on her dress patterns, not even bothering to watch the pegasus leave. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her muzzle and stared at the papers, but shivered as a cold gust of wind brushed her shoulders.
Of all the things... That rotten featherbrain hadn't even bothered to shut the door behind her as she left! Rarity slammed her glasses onto her desk and stomped across the room to pull her door closed and keep the autumn chill at bay.
But she could not pull it shut. A blue hoof was wedged firmly in the door's way as Rainbow stood frozen in the doorway, staring at the welcome mat.
*
It was over.
Rainbow Dash really meant it, it really was over for good this time. It was just...
Well, there had been good times. They didn't make it okay that Rarity was always trying to manipulate her, but Rainbow still remembered all those times they had spent together not fighting. Seeing the Wonderbolts Derby together, and cheering as one for Fleetfoot as she pulled ahead in the final stretch. Sitting together, a wing draped over Rarity's withers on a hill overlooking a garden party to watch a sunset they could both agree was much more interesting than the party itself.
Those times didn't make it any less over, but maybe Rainbow owed those times something. She couldn't let all of that end on such a sour note.
One last kiss. That would do it. That was how Rainbow Dash ended her relationships. One last kiss to recognize the parts that weren't lame. Then it could be over.
*
It was over.
It surely was. Rarity was as certain of that as she was of anything.
And since she was so certain, what could one last kiss hurt? It was closure, good for the soul. Perhaps in time they could go back to being friends again, and put all this silliness behind them.
That would be nice, wouldn't it? One last kiss to seal the deal, like a contract signed on the dotted line. Put a capstone in it, and call it finished, and then the both of them could move on with their lives.
Rarity nodded her agreement, and two pairs of lips met. Old friends shaking hooves before going their separate ways.
*
It would be over, next time.
They had utter, sincere conviction in this fact. The next time would be the last, and then it would be over for good. Gone, and never looking back.
But for now, they both agreed, it was worth one more try. They could make it work this time. All they needed to do was try.
Despite the griffon of honor storming out early, the Welcome Gilda to Ponyville party lasted well into the night, as the ponies present decided it would be a waste to end a perfectly good party. Such was the way of ponies who lived in a town with Pinkie Pie.
Rainbow Dash had plenty of fun for herself regardless of the circumstances. She laughed and played jokes and pranks with the best of them, and by the time the party finally started to die down, she had worn herself out so much that she didn't really feel up to making the flight back up to her cloud-home.
Pinkie of course had no problem with her crashing on the couch for the night. Rainbow helped Pinkie clean up the last of the party, and then drifted into deep slumber nearly as soon as she shut her eyes.
The next morning, Rainbow Dash rose from the couch. She yawned loudly as the morning sun streamed in the window at her. Something felt off about her balance as she stood up, as though she were just slightly more top-heavy than usual. Also, she smelled faintly of coconuts and shea-butter.
Shrugging, Dash trotted up the stairs to the bathroom. A good splash of water to the face would get her ready to face the day. She twisted the tap and ran her forehooves under the stream of water, glancing up at the mirror as she did.
“What the...” The same blue face as always still stared back at her, but framing it was not her familliar, just-rolled-out-of-bed manestyle. Her rainbow locks were brushed and curled into long, fancy curls, the likes of which Rarity always went on about how much time and attention it took to get right. In fact, it looked just like Rarity's manestyle.
Rarity herself trotted by in the hallway, whistling and twirling a curler around her hoof. “Good morning, darling! My, but your mane looks fabulous today! And yours too, Pinkie dear!”
Pinkie appeared in the doorway to the bathroom, raising an eyebrow at Rarity's comment until she spotted the mirror. Her mane was styled the same way as well. All traces of sleepiness evaporated beneath a bright giggle “Ooh, it's all swirly!” She poked at her mane with a hoof.
Rainbow tried her best to scramble her mane back to its natural state. “Did you do this, Rarity?” she asked. The fanciful curls seemed surprisingly resilient to any attempts to change them. She must have used hairspray. “This is for the sneezing powder, isn't it?”
Rarity smirked. “I've no idea what you're talking about, darling. Oh, Applejack has breakfast downstairs for you.”
Rainbow and Pinkie found Applejack at a table on the main floor. She had a covered basket in front of her, and a big grin on her face. “Howdy, you two! I brought breakfast for ya!” She pulled the cloth off of the basket to reveal dozens of peaches. “Hope ya like it!”
Blinking in confusion, Rainbow inspected the offered meal. “Peaches?”
Applejack chuckled. “Yeah, I know, what self-respectin' Apple would serve ponies peaches? But lemme tell ya, these are the tastiest peaches I've ever had!”
“Mmm!” Pinkie did not wait to dig in. “They are tasty!”
Rainbow Dash shrugged, and took a bite. “Wait a minute...” She rubbed a hoof on the skin of the fruit, and the yellow orange came off to reveal bright red underneath. “These are just apples painted to look like peaches!”
“Is that so?” Applejack laughed. “That must be why I like 'em so much! I wonder who could've gotten the idea of paintin' fruit?”
“Can anypony see me?” Twilight's voice came from behind Rainbow, but when she turned to look, she didn't see anypony.
“Twilight?” Rainbow said. “Where are you?”
“I'm right here,” responded the disembodied voice. “I think I got invisible ink on me, and now nopony can see me. I almost got run over twice on the way here!”
Rainbow tilted her head. “Can you do that with invisible ink?”
Suddenly Twilight's head—and only her head—appeared right in front of her. “Boo!”
With a startled yelp, Rainbow reeled backwards, toppling the basket of peach-painted apples.
“Gotcha,” said Twilight. “Of course, invisible ink wouldn't really do that, this is just an invisibility spell.”
Pinkie Pie burst into sudden laughter. “Oh, I get it! 'Cause the ink is invisible! Good one, Twilight!”
Rainbow Dash rubbed her head, which still possessed a frustratingly pristine mane. “Right, I got it. Everypony that Pinkie and I pranked the day before yesterday is getting us back.” She picked up a peach-apple and chucked. “Not bad, you guys. Y'know, for beginners.”
There was a knock at the door. Pinkie bounced over to answer. “Hi, Fluttershy!”
Fluttershy smiled softly as she entered Sugarcube Corner. “Hello, Pinkie. Hello, everypony. How are you this morning?”
Rainbow Dash leered skeptically. “What's yours, then? Have you got a water balloon hidden under your wing? A hoof-buzzer? A bear? It's a bear, isn't it? You've got a bear waiting to jump out and scare us, don't you?”
Fluttershy looked puzzled. “Um, no. Harry is back at his den. Why, should he be here? I could go and get him.”
The air was charged with intense energy. Wind swirled around in circles, ripping leaves from trees and pulling blades of grass from the ground. At the center, it was almost like lightning, if lightning came from a point in the middle of the air instead of from a cloud. The park was filled with an intense light and a clap of thunder, and then all was silent.
Princess Twilight Sparkle stood at the top of a grassy, recently-charred hill in the middle of Ponyville Park, where seconds ago there had been nopony. She drew slow, deliberate breaths in through her nostrils as the excess energy of the spell dissipated from her body into the ground.
“Hey,” said a scratchy voice. “I thought you weren't gonna show.” A rainbow mane and blue wings poked over the edge of a small cloud overlooking the park. “You said you were too busy with princess stuff.”
Twilight stared up at Rainbow Dash for a few moments, her jaw working soundlessly. After blinking something away, she seemed to remember herself. “Oh that,” she croaked, her mouth left dry from all the magic she had just used. She swallowed and did her best to clear her throat. “Well, I got... I got all that stuff done, so I thought I'd come and see about that flying lesson after all.” She gave the pegasus a hopeful smile. “That is, if you're still willing.”
Rainbow smirked, and rolled off of her cloud, opening her wings into an easy swoop to the ground. “Of course I am!” She landed next to Twilight and gave her a playful bump in the shoulder. “No sense in having a flying buddy if she never learns how to fly, right?”
Twilight grinned weakly and nodded. “Yeah.”
“All right, so where did we leave off last time?” Dash rubbed her hooves together and circled around her friend, lifting up Twilight's wings to inspect them. “It looks like you got them preened properly, that's good.” She nodded in approval.
“Oh, yeah, somepony at the palace helped me with that,” Twilight explained. “All this time, and I'm still no good at doing them myself.”
Rainbow chuckled. “A month isn't that much time to learn something like preening, Twi. Give it time, you'll get used to it.”
Twilight's eyes drifted to the ground. “A month. That's right.”
Rainbow Dash clapped her forehooves. “Okay, I know I've been having you glide to start with, but I think you're ready to try a running launch. You remember the basic rules for takeoff, right?”
“Clear above, clear ahead, and clear to both sides,” Twilight recited, stretching her wings out to test the space on either side of her. Having anypony or anything within her wingspan on takeoff was a risk of injury.
Rainbow grinned wide, watching her friend's wingspan. “Awesome. All right, go ahead and go for it whenever you feel like.”
Their lesson was a short one. Rainbow Dash was continuously surprised at the progress Twilight had inexplicably made since her last lesson. She had remarked that it was as though she had had years of practice since last week. Twilight had simply chuckled nervously in response to this and said she merely had a good flight instructor, was all.
Before long, Twilight could sense that her time was drawing to a close. The magic was beginning to pull her back. She forced a smile on her face as she hugged Rainbow one last time and told her goodbye. “I'll miss you,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye.
Rainbow blinked in confusion. “Come on, Twi, you'll be back from Canterlot in a week. If nothing else, I'm gonna see you for your next flight lesson. You might be getting better, but you're not Wonderbolt material yet!”
Twilight sniffed. “That's right. You're going to see me next week. Just... take care, Rainbow Dash. Please?” The gathering wind and the building energy of her spell drowned out Rainbow's response, but her cocksure grin told Twilight everything she needed to know. I'll be just fine, Twilight.
Space and time folded in upon themselves, and Twilight Sparkle found herself in her chamber at the palace once again. Something stung her cheek as the arcing energy from her time spell found a conductive path in the streams of tears down the sides of her face.
There was a soft knock on her door. Twilight reached for a kerchief to dry her eyes before she answered. “Enter,” she said. Again, the spell had sapped the moisture from her mouth, leaving her voice to creak like old wood.
A small, timid maidservant pushed the door open and peeked inside. “Um, excuse me, Princess, but your appearance at the centennial celebration of the Five is in half an hour. I thought you should know.”
“Thank you.” Twilight smiled politely and nodded permission for the servant to leave.
As the door shut once again, Twilight turned her eyes to the dusty old framed photograph. It wasn't even the original; it was a restored copy after the first had been nearly lost to the endless march of time. But even so, it was more valuable than all of the jewels in Equestria.
Twilight looked at the faces of her old friends. “A half hour,” she whispered to herself. That was enough time to pay one more of her friends a visit. Perhaps Pinkie this time.
Her horn ignited, and she pictured in her head a likely time to go to. Some time she hadn't spent with Pinkie the first go around. Baking cupcakes would be nice...
I choked on a cloud of dust, nearly dropping my torch as I did. That would have been bad. I was hundreds of meters deep in a twisted labyrinth of ancient stone hallways, and that torch was the only source of light between here and the surface. If that went out, I was lost down here forever.
I straightened my hat, and took a good look at what had released the dust into the dead, still air. It seemed that, quite by accident, I had leaned against a false panel in the wall, setting it loose against its neighbors. I marveled at the stonework; it was completely identical to the panels on either side of it, and I had to wonder just how many explorers had walked past it without ever knowing.
My heartbeat quickened as I pulled the stone panel aside to reveal a secret tunnel. This could very well be it. The lost piece of evidence that would be the key to what had happened to the Lost Princess. According to most theories, this temple had been the last known location of the alicorn known in legends as Twilight before she had disappeared. The temple was called the Princess's Tomb by the locals, though I suspect they named it so primarily to draw tourists.
I kept my torch wedged carefully under my wing and climbed into the hidden passageway. It was very narrow for a few paces, but widened out into another finely-carved corridor. I took out my notepad and marked the location down so that I could show the others when I returned. Glyph would no doubt be thrilled to see the stone carvings down here.
Putting my notepad and pen back, I continued on, eager to see where this new passage led. That was my big mistake. Rookies get eager. Professionals know better. Professionals know that when a pony gets eager, they miss things.
At the end of the first section of hallway, the floor took a sudden slant downwards. If I had been paying attention, I might have noticed this fact before I was falling nose-first down a not-so-smooth stone slide. Scrapes and bruises added themselves to my collection as I tumbled head over hooves for who knows how long.
When I finally skidded to a stop at the bottom, my torch was good and broken. I could feel a jagged half of it poking me in the ribs. That was just great. Just great indeed. Brilliant work.
Pushing myself up, I checked myself for serious damage other than being lost for good in a passage nopony knows about. No broken bones, anyway. But I might have had a concussion, because I swore I saw light up ahead of me. Kicking aside the torch, which was now nothing more than a burnt, broken stick, I made my way toward the light, with careful steps this time, lest I have another fall.
There wasn't supposed to be anypony down here. But that didn't stop the blue pegasus in front of me from being there. She stared right at me, from her place standing next to an elaborately-carved stone door. The light in the area came from a lightning bolt-shaped pendant that hung from her neck.
Wait a minute... blue pegasus, rainbow mane, lightning bolt. I dug through my notes. There was no way. This mare exactly matched the description of one of the Elements of Harmony, who had accompanied the Lost Princess. But that was impossible! They were from a thousand years ago!
I don't consider myself a superstitious mare. I don't generally believe in ghosts or curses. But seeing something like that before my own eyes, well, it's hard to keep from panicking just a little. My hooves edged away, back toward the darkness.
“Wait!” the pegasus said. I froze. “Don't go. It's been...” She glanced up at the stone ceiling. “...It's been a long time since I had somepony to talk to.”
I blinked. Biting my lip nervously, I took a few steps forward. “If this is you in a wig and fake wings, Check Mark, I swear I'm going to beat your horseshoes right off.”
The mysterious pony chuckled. “Heh, that would be a good one. She sounds like my kinda pony. But,” she flapped her wings, sending motes of dust rising into the air, “No fake wings, sorry. No wig, either, but don't go pulling my tail to test it.”
I nodded. “Are you...”
“Rainbow Dash,” she said, nodding proudly. “The one and only.”
“B-but that's impossible!” I stammered. “You should be dead almost a thousand years ago!”
A sad glint found Rainbow's eye. “I'm supposed to stay by this door, and wait for Twilight,” she said. “That's what she told me to do.”
My mouth worked soundlessly.
She glanced down at her pendant, which glowed softly. “At first, it was hard,” she said. “I was hungry, and tired, and it hurt. But then this thing started glowing. Afterwards, all I needed to do was remember who I'm doing this for, and I'm not tired anymore.”
I stared at the lightning-shaped jewel. The Elements of Harmony were renowned as powerful artifacts. Perhaps one could sustain a pony for a thousand years? I licked my lips. “So... the Los—er, um the Princess is behind that door?” I pointed my hoof at the large door behind her.
Rainbow Dash nodded. “She'll be back soon. That's what she said.”
I frowned. Had she missed the part about a thousand years? “What's back there?”
She didn't answer. Instead, she looked at my hat and laughed quietly. “You look almost like Daring Do,” she said. “Coat color and cutie mark are wrong though.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. I shifted my hat on my head and stepped toward the door. “Well, maybe I could go through and see if I can find the Princess, tell her you're waiting for her.”
If I had any doubt that she was solid, those doubts were dispelled as a hoof pressed against my chest. Rainbow Dash shook her head. “I'm supposed to wait for her, and nopony else is supposed to go through this door,” she said firmly.
I stumbled backwards. With a broken torch, there was no way for me to get back up to camp. The door there was the only possibility I might find another way out of here. My lip curled in frustration.
A sympathetic smile spread across the ancient guardian's face. “I'm sorry,” she said. “But maybe you can wait for Twilight with me, for a little while. She shouldn't be too much longer.”
Rainbow Dash coughed as she flew through the roiling black pillar of smoke billowing into the atmosphere. Below her, red flames churned and flickered as they engulfed the rickety slipshod thing that those three fillies had called an airship when they had built it.
Dash pulled a heavy raincloud into place and bucked it for all the rain it would give. She wrung every drop of water out of the thing until it simply dissipated into a wisp of vapor, but the torrent scarcely seemed to even dim the flames below.
A rope somewhere snapped and the whole thing listed to the side. Rainbow heard fillies shrieking, and immediately abandoned her efforts to douse the flames. Instead she dove right into them, whirling around the conflagrated wreckage to get to the wooden basket. The 'cabin,' they had named it before they had launched the thing.
Inside the basket huddled three fearful fillies. Well, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were huddling. Apple Bloom lay on the floor, her chest rising only faintly with shallow breaths.
“R-Rainbow Dash!” shouted Scootaloo. “Apple Bloom hit her head, and now she isn't talking!”
“I got her.” Dash alighted on the edge of the basket and scooped the unconscious filly under one forehoof. She frowned. She could only carry so many in her hooves. “One of you needs to climb onto my back,” she said.
Just then, one of the timbers in the airship gave way, and the cabin lurched violently sideways. A high shriek pierced the air as Sweetie Belle lost her hold of the railing and tumbled out into the open air below.
Rainbow turned and dove, folding her wings inwards to shape herself like a bullet as she rocketed towards the screaming spot of white. The ground rushed at them, but Rainbow was a little bit faster, snatching Sweetie out of the air a mere dozen feet above the grass.
Rainbow set Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle on the ground, and took back off into the air without a second's pause. She spotted Scootaloo up there, still clinging to the wooden railing of the ruined dirigible. Rainbow beat her wings harder; there wasn't a second to lose.
A flaming chunk of debris, a burning wooden plank with the name 'Hoofdenberg' painted on it, fell into her path. There was no time to waste going around it, so Rainbow Dash dipped low, trying to shoot underneath it.
Too risky. Not quick enough. Rainbow grunted in pain as the flaming sign struck her in the back. She lost control of her wings and spiraled back towards the ground, leaving a furrow in the dirt as she skidded to a stop.
“Rainbow Dash!” shrieked Scootaloo.
Dash scrambled back to her hooves and tried to take off again, but her left wing would not open. Searing pain lanced through her side, making her double over. She looked up at the pegasus filly clinging desperately to the burning wreckage as it lost altitude more and more quickly.
Rainbow clutched at her side. “Scoots, you're gonna have to jump clear!”
Scootaloo's eyes widened and she shook her head. “I can't fly”
“You can!” Rainbow shouted. “You have to! Just flap your wings like I told you!” A low groan came from somewhere within the structure of the blazing airship. “You gotta go now, squirt!”
Scootaloo squeezed her eyes shut. With a moment's hesitation, she pushed herself as far from the basket as she could and began beating her wings furiously against the air. After a minute, she opened her eyes and seemed to realize she wasn't losing altitude. “I... I'm doing it! I'm flying!”
Rainbow Dash cheered. “That's it! Awesome, squirt! I knew you could—”
BOOM!
A wave of hot air blasted Rainbow to the ground as the flames reached a pocket of... something in the airship and exploded. A rain of little chunks of wood and iron pelted her.
Rainbow pushed herself back up and searched the sky frantically for the orange filly. There was no sign of her, but a little ways away on the top of a hill, she spotted a heap of purple mane and singed orange feathers.
She ignored the pain in her side as she sprinted over to Scootaloo. “C'mon, squirt, please be okay!” Her heart dropped to her stomach as she saw the filly's chest wasn't moving. Rainbow rolled her over. “No, no, no, no, no, come on, kid, you need to breathe!”
Scootaloo's eyes shot open and she took a sudden gasp. She followed it with a fit of coughing. “Did you see me flying?” she asked, grinning weakly.
Rainbow wrapped Scootaloo into a hug, relieved tears streaming down her face. “Yeah,” she said, “I saw.”
He had a name. It was a cool name, too. It was the kind of name that would make ponies go, 'wow, that's a cool name!' when they heard it. But that was the name that other ponies called him by. Rainbow Dash had a special name that only she got to call him, and it was even cooler than his other name. Rainbow Dash got to call him 'Dad.'
“Where are you going?” Dad asked as he helped Mom pull the straps on her saddlebags.
Mom made that sound she made when she was really tired and ponies were always bothering her. “Sea Breeze needs me again,” she said. “I'm not going to be back till late tonight.”
“Again?” Dad asked. “Honey, how many times is she—”
“Please don't start this,” Mom said. Her eyes looked at Dad pleadingly.
Dad sighed. “You're right. I'm sorry, I know it's not your fault. Say hello to your sister for me.”
Rainbow Dash looked away as the two of them shared a gross mushy moment. There was probably kissing or something!
The door shut, and Dad scooped Rainbow Dash up with his wing. She giggled as he set her on his back. “Looks like it's just you and me for supper tonight, kiddo.”
“Yay, pizza!” Rainbow Dash cheered, throwing her hooves in the air.
Dad gave an offended snort. “No, Dashie, we're going to cook dinner tonight.”
Dash laughed incredulously. “That's silly! Mom's not home, so she can't cook!”
“You know, your mother isn't the only pony in Equestria that knows how to cook,” Dad said, stopping to let Rainbow hop off his back once they were in the kitchen. He blew some dust off of a cookbook.
“Well duh,” Rainbow said. “The ponies at the pizza place have to know how to cook, too!”
Dad smirked at her as he flipped through the pages. “All right, miss smart-aleck, I guess I'm Mom for tonight, then. Can you get me some flour?”
Rainbow shook her head. “We're out of flour.”
“Oh.” Dad creased his brow. “Well, uh, get some rice, then. Starch is starch.”
“Okay!” Ever eager for a chance to use her wings, Rainbow buzzed up to the top shelf of the pantry and grabbed a sack.
Dad took out a knife from the drawer and set it next to a few stalks of celery. “All right. So then, while I dice these vegetables, why don't you crack open some eggs?”
“Yeah!” Rainbow opened the ice box and pulled out a carton of eggs.
A few minutes of slicing and smashing later, the kitchen was quite a mess. Dad frowned at the green mush in front of him. “That's... sort of diced, I guess. How are you coming with those eggs, Dashie?” He turned to look at the counter behind them. “Hmm. Maybe you should have used a bowl, sweetheart.”
Dash looked up from the gooey puddle of egg on the counter. She had a wide grin on her face.
“That's okay,” Dad said. “We'll just scrape it off the counter right into the pan, like so.” He used his wing to push the viscous stuff off of the edge. Most of it ended up in the pan. “Awright,” he said, holding the pan between his teeth. “Now we jus' gotta put it in the oven.”
While dinner—which Dad couldn't decide whether to call casserole or quiche—cooked, the two of them tried to clean the kitchen up a little bit. 'Tried' was the operative word. It didn't take long to devolve into an all-out water fight.
A truce was called once the timer dinged. Dad nearly burned his mouth before Rainbow reminded him to use a hot-pad to pull the pan out. Father and daughter stared at the finished product.
It was greasy, and mostly blackened. There were bits of eggshell scattered throughout the thing, and it smelled like a head of cabbage had been dragged through a forest fire.
Rainbow and Dad glanced at each other. Dad chuckled sheepishly. “So, kiddo, how do you feel about pizza?”
There was a trick to flying undetected. Moving your wings too much made noise and gave away your position. Hold too still, and you lose altitude and crash, leaving you on the ground and giving away your position. Stealth flight required planning and patience, taking as much advantage as possible from updrafts where they could be found, and gliding wherever possible.
It also helped if your mane wasn't full of bright colors, but Rainbow Dash made up for that by being extra good at the flying part.
She glanced to her side, catching glimpses of her wingmate as they swooped through the abandoned alleys and backways of Canterlot. The two of them darted like shadows through the darkened nightscape. The standard blue and yellow Wonderbolts uniforms would have drawn too much attention, so they wore black fatigues.
Despite herself, Rainbow grinned. It was her first field op, and they had her partnered with the Captain herself. They were already pairing her with the top aces. Spitfire's orange mane and tail flickered in the muted light of the street lamps as they sped silently through the city.
Some ponies thought that all the Wonderbolts did was flight shows, but that wasn't true. Sure, they performed now and then because ponies love a good airshow, but their real function was to go in and do their thing wherever the crown needed a squad of elite, highly-trained pegasi.
Spitfire's wings raised slightly, and Rainbow Dash slowed herself to a hover. They were under strict silence protocols, so they could only communicate with wing-signs. Dash waited for the Captain to give her the signal.
She didn't have to wait long. Spitfire tilted her head toward a darkened warehouse. That must be where the target was. The Captain raised one hoof in the air, took three short flaps, and twisted to the left.
Rainbow Dash nodded. Spitfire would clear the roof while Rainbow went in through the lone window on the front of the building. She took a perch on a stone ledge and waited for Spitfire to give her the all-clear.
The Captain took off noiselessly, circling twice around the warehouse before carefully alighting on the eave. A pony without as sharp of eyes as Rainbow might have missed the nod of her head from this distance, but Rainbow saw it and made a line for the window.
Fortunately it wasn't a glass window, but a simple opening with a couple wooden slats. Dash had been trained how to breach glass without getting scratched up, but she didn't like having to pick the little shards out of her primaries. The wooden slats broke easily under a quick blow of her hooves.
She wasn't entirely certain what to expect inside. They had been a bit vague on the exact nature of the mission objectives during the briefing. Need-to-know stuff, and all that. She imagined a group of rough thugs huddled about inside. Maybe they were smuggling salt, or were part of an underground sugar-beet ring.
It was dark inside. Very dark. Rainbow blinked, looking around her. The only light was the square of moonlight cast from the window she had entered.
She frowned. Something was up. Either they had the wrong place, or they were waiting for her...
Rainbow twisted and rolled away the moment she felt a hoof touch her back. She kicked out blindly, grinning as she felt her rear hooves connect and elicit an “oof!”
She didn't have much time to celebrate her triumph, however, as a leg swept her hooves out from under her. Rainbow snapped her wings sharply against the air, rising upwards rather than falling to the ground like her assailant no doubt expected her to.
Rainbow whistled loudly, the signal for Spitfire to come in and back her up. Still unable to see her attackers, she braced her hindlegs against the wall and sprung forward. She just needed to delay until backup came in to even the odds.
Or that was the plan, anyway. Something wrapped around her wings, dragging Rainbow Dash to the ground. She tried to roll out of it and keep moving, but the weight of somepony kept her pinned to the floor. Dash tried to struggle, lash out, throw her attacker off balance, but she couldn't get leverage.
A match lit up ahead of her, revealing the outline of a stallion. “Welcome,” he said. There was something familiar to that voice, but Rainbow couldn't quite place it. “What brings a famous Wonderbolt here, I wonder?” His tone was jovial and mocking.
Rainbow growled, “I'm not telling you anything!”
“Hm, hm,” the stallion laughed. “Perhaps not. Perhaps you won't tell me anything, little Wonderbolt.” Dash winced as she heard his hoofsteps come closer, stopping just ahead of her face. Something was dropped on the ground in front of her. “But perhaps you will tell... my pie!”
The lights suddenly flipped on. Rainbow Dash squeezed her eyelids against the sudden brightness. When she opened them, she saw an apple pie on the ground in front of her. Soarin' grinned at her over the top of it, dressed in his blue flightsuit. The pony on top of her, Fleetfoot, also wore her flightsuit as well. In fact, of the half dozen ponies in the room, the only two who were not wearing their Wonderbolts uniforms were Rainbow Dash herself and Spitfire, who she saw leaning against the wall, smirking.
“Wha?” Dash said.
Fleetfoot got off of her, and Soarin' helped her up. “Congratulations, rookie! Welcome to the 'Bolts!”
Rainbow worked her mouth soundlessly.
Cloud Fire rubbed his jaw where Dash had kicked him. “They do this with all the new recruits,” he said. “You should've seen the one they pulled on me. I'm still finding bits of goo in my feathers!”
((Prompt: Everypony was surprised to see them kiss.))
Nopony was really surprised to see them kiss.
If you asked anypony in Ponyville, they would tell you it had been a long time coming. The sweet pink baker who was never satisfied unless she was surrounded by smiles. The confident athlete who feared nothing and would go to any lengths for her friends.
All of Pinkie's friends could see that she was absolutely smitten with Rainbow Dash. And she was friends with all of Ponyville, so all of everypony could see it. They could see the way she lit up when Dash was nearby. They could hear the joy in her voice when she described the pegasus's daring maneuvers to anypony that would listen. They could see the way she bounced just a little higher and smiled just a little brighter whenever she was thinking of her.
And they could see that Rainbow Dash could see it, too. They could see how she held onto her grin just a little longer than usual when she spotted Pinkie. They could hear the tiny nervous cracks in her voice when she spoke to her. They could see the way she played up her bravado just a little bit more when she knew Pinkie was watching.
Everypony knew it was just a matter of time before something like this would happen. Pinkie was hardly the type of pony to hold these sorts of feelings in, and they figured the only reason they weren't already listening to her shout it from a mountaintop was because she didn't realize it herself yet.
That could only last so long, and when she did say something, they knew Rainbow Dash wouldn't turn her down. Somepony as fiercely loyal as Rainbow Dash would surely at least give her a chance, even if she didn't want to. And most ponies agreed, she really wanted to.
Everypony could see this kiss coming from a mile away. Which was why they were all surprised...
It happened on a busy, bustling Tuesday. Crowds of ponies all stirred about the marketplace, keeping to the shady areas to escape the midday heat. There, in the middle of the market square, there before the eyes of everypony, that was where they met together.
Ponies are, by nature, a very social and gossipy bunch, and so as they saw the familiar pink and blue coats draw near one another, a collective hush settled over the throngs of onlookers.
Pinkie stood on the sun-baked cobbles, looking up into the sky. Rainbow Dash slowly descended from above, wingbeat by wingbeat, until she stood on the ground facing her.
Pinkie leaned forward and whispered something in Dash's ear. The nearest onlookers strained to hear what was said, but for once, Pinkie did not make her voice carry.
A small, inscrutable smile formed on Rainbow Dash's lips. She leaned forward to whisper a reply.
Pinkie's eyes widened, and she brought her head back to face Rainbow. Her mouth opened as though asking a question, but no sound came out.
In response, Dash simply shook her head. The same, tiny smile that Rainbow had worn now spread to Pinkie's face. Rainbow brought a hoof up to gently cup Pinkie's cheek, bringing their lips slowly towards one another.
Nopony was surprised to see them kiss. Everypony agreed that it was bound to happen. Destined, even.
But everypony was surprised that they only kissed once.
Dash withdrew, and without a word, shot into the air, a contrail of swirling wind left in her wake. Pinkie Pie stared up into the sky, watching the rainbow speck grow smaller and smaller. Finally, when there was scarcely anything left to see, Pinkie's gaze fell back to the earth. A wide, wide grin was set into her face, and she sang a merry tune as she bounded out of the marketplace.
She left a swath of confused ponies in her wake, trying to puzzle out just what had taken place before them.
((Prompt: Write a story about a character experiencing an extreme emotion without mentioning that emotion or its synonyms.))
Rainbow Dash's jaw pressed firmly, uncomfortably shut. Her jaw muscles ached from the pressure, but she kept her mouth clamped shut regardless. She knew that if she relaxed, her teeth would start making that chattering noise again. She hated that noise.
She took deep breaths. In through the mouth—past her closed teeth—and out through the nose. Repeat. Again. Calm. Yeah, she was totally calm. Everything was cool, no problem. Now, if she could just stop her hoof from tapping unconsciously on the cobbles.
Rainbow shook each leg out one by one. Get those kinks out. You can never be too loose, right? Yeah, she needed to be loose, in case there was a, uh, a dragon attack or something. Then she could just shoot off into the air and take care of the scaly menace, Rainbow-style, while all those other ponies were still on the ground, too stiff to react.
Dang, she sorta wished there would be a dragon attack. Or something. It didn't have to be dragons. Just some kind of excuse to have to fly off and save the day. That would be way better than standing here, waiting to find out if... well, she just wanted something to do, was all. That's it, she was bored. Her ears swiveled, listening for any signs of trouble. You can never be too careful; dragon attacks can come out of nowhere.
If only her wings weren't numb. That could be a problem if there was a dragon attack. She stretched her wings out, wincing as needles seemed to shoot through them. Apparently she had been squeezing them too tight against her body. She shook her wings out, letting the blood flow back into them.
This was ridiculous. Rainbow Dash snorted. Was she—was she pacing? She forcibly stopped her legs. Eggheads paced. Rainbow Dash was not an egghead, she was Rainbow Dash. She beat her wings against the air and began hovering.
There was no reason for her to pace, or to bite her lip, or to clamp her wings tight. She had this. It was a done deal. After all the stuff with Lightning Dust, Rainbow had been indisputably the top cadet at the Academy. There was no question what the results were going to be. Either she was in, or this year's entire class had failed.
Her eyes widened, and she quickened her breathing just a little. They couldn't do that, could they? Fail a whole class? Sure, there had been a handful of her colleagues that hadn't been especially impressive, but surely some ponies had made the cut, right? She had made the cut, right?
The stern officer at the front of the crowd read the next name from his list. “Flitter.”
The mare stepped away from her twin sister and perked her ears forward.
“Deferred,” the officer said. “Try again next year.” Flitter's posture sagged. Her sister placed a comforting hoof on her shoulders.
A bead of sweat formed on Dash's brow. Flitter had been a great flier. Sure, her speed could use some work, but she'd had an excellent turning radius. Rainbow Dash gulped. Maybe the standards were tougher than she thought.
“Rainbow Dash,” droned the officer.
This was it. The moment of truth. Don't let them see you sweat, just be cool. You know you've got this. Everypony knows you were made for this.
“Rejected.”
Rainbow Dash's heart stopped. “What?”
The officer adjusted his tinted glasses and cleared his throat. “Sorry, I mixed up the lines, there. You're in, Miss Dash. Next is, uh, Snowflake.”
((Prompt: The world is all darkness. Tomorrow will be pitch black. or... Tomorrow will be a great day.))
This was the part she loved. The part she lived for. The moment she saw the fear and respect dawn in their faces. The moment they realized what was truly going on, that they were in the presence of the Shadowbolts. Rainbow Dash lived for this.
She let her profile slide across the moon, sneering as the foals below broke into panic. Idiots, every last one of them. Like they really believed they could outrun the Shadowbolts. She held her altitude above the town as her wingmates swooped down, corralling the ponies into the center of the town square.
Shouts and yelps of fear rose throughout the village. What was this place called, again? Dash stooped to take a glance at the decaying plaque above the town hall. Oh yes, Ponyville. Now she remembered. She had once been a lowly weather manager in this pathetic dump. That was before the night had come. She gave silent praise to the Moon that so much had changed since then. The thought that she would still have been a cloud-pusher for some worthless little dirt-hole if not for her Queen's glorious ascension made Dash physically ill.
Instead, she was the captain of the most feared flight of pegasi in Equestria. Grown ponies trembled at the mention of her name, and fillies and colts fearfully asked their parents to check if she was perched on their roof before they could fall asleep. It was all she had ever dreamed.
The majority of the town was rounded up into the central square by now. There were only a few foalish stragglers and holdouts. Snake and Moonlight would be rougher on them than they were on the rest. Examples needed to be made, after all.
Rainbow landed on the small platform in front of town hall. She smirked as gasps ran through the crowd before her. Weaklings and cowards.
She cleared her throat, and spoke in a slow, deliberate tone. “I guess you're all wondering what has brought you the honor of a visit from the Shadowbolts, huh?”
The crowd was locked in terrified silence. Nopony dared to bring attention to themselves by speaking. Pathetic.
Rainbow curled her lip and paced to the end of the stage. “Well, maybe not all of you are wondering,” she said. “Some of you know exactly why we're here.” She gave a signal to her lieutenant, who dropped a wooden barrel onto the stage.
Dash kicked the barrel over. Bruised and rotten apples rolled out, tumbling over the edge of the platform. Ponies at the front of the crowd yelped and scrambled back. “When Nightmare Moon demands food as tribute,” she snarled, “you send her stuff that's edible, not the slop that you would feed to the hogs!”
Frightened murmurs rippled through the townsfolk. Dash smirked. Let them stew for a little bit, let them wonder about just what sort of punishment was coming to them for their misdeed. Then they would beg her to take their best stock.
A voice rose above the din, steady and clear. “Ya don't like it, ya can go ahead an' starve!”
Dash's eyes narrowed. She gave a small nod, and Moonlight shot into the crowd. The Shadowbolt pushed an orange pony up to the front of the stage. Dash remembered this one. Applejack.
“Would you care to repeat that?” Dash said, flaring her wings.
Applejack looked at her with defiant eyes. “Food don't grow without sunlight,” she said. “That there's a barrel of the best we got left. If you don't like it, y'all can go home hungry.”
Rainbow Dash flicked her tail, and picked up a mushy, worm-ridden piece of fruit. Moonlight put the farmer into a rough headlock while Dash jumped off of the stage, the moldy apple in her hoof. “You're a liar,” she said, and shoved the rotten apple in her face. “Your queen, in her endless majesty, enchanted the moon so that plants could grow by moonlight!”
Applejack coughed and spat the greasy chunks of fruit out. “It don't work,” she gasped. “The plants that do grow are weak an' sick, an' we can't eat 'em!”
Rainbow Dash snorted. “You're just not trying hard enough.” She beat her wings against the air, and rose back to the stage, addressing the whole town. “Listen up, all of you! The moon turns in two hours. If you haven't scraped together an acceptable offering of food by then, well,” she laughed sharply, “I'd hate to be in your horseshoes! Shadowbolts, move out!”
Dash took to the air with her Shadowbolts in line behind her. They would circle the edge of the town, punish anypony that thought they could use those two hours to try and escape instead of gathering food.
The moon crept toward the horizon. Soon it would reach the mountains in the west, stop, and begin traveling back to the east again. That was how they measured days under Nightmare Moon's reign. In two hours, a new “day” would begin, and it would be just as black as the one before it.
It was a stupid tradition. There was no reason for it anymore. Just an old, useless, stupid ritual that they sprung on you on the last day of flight school. The older ponies said you weren't a real pegasus until you did it. They were stupid, too.
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, the flock couldn't afford to be held back by weak fliers. There had been predators that hunted the skies, and the pegasus tribe always had to be on the move. Hanging back to wait for slow fliers then meant giving monsters a free meal. Maybe back then something like this would have made sense.
But it was way out of place and wrong today. This was Celestia's Equestria. Harpies were just old legends anymore, the sort pegasus mothers told their foals to scare them into behaving. Manticores kept to the Everfree, and dragons hadn't attacked ponies in more than a thousand years. Pegasi didn't migrate anymore. Cloudsdale was in the same place in the sky that it had been when it was founded centuries ago. There was no cloud-bucking reason that they should still be doing this.
Rainbow Dash sank a few inches into the cloud as one of the instructor's assistants tied weights to her neck. She already had the metal disks fixed to each of her hooves and the base of each wing. The weights clinked together as she shuffled in place.
She wasn't worried for herself, of course. She knew she could fly with ten times the weight they were hanging on her. Rainbow Dash was, after all, the fastest filly in her class. Nopony expected her to fail this.
But her friend... Rainbow glanced to the side. Fluttershy was nearly in tears as the older ponies fitted the metal disks to her. The yellow filly could hardly fly even when unencumbered. What did they expect her to do, suddenly triple her wingpower in midair?
It caught Rainbow off guard when the cloud was pulled out from under her. That was part of the ritual, of course. You had to be surprised, you had to fall. They had probably had somepony watching her and waiting for a moment when Dash was distracted so that they could buck the cloud she had been standing on.
The unfamiliar weight made her movements awkward, and it took Rainbow more time to level out her fall than she had expected. She beat her wings hard against the stiff air, and only grudgingly did it yield to her. The horizon stopped spinning and held still.
Rainbow Dash hovered and took a look around herself. A couple others among her classmates twisted in the air, fighting against freefall. Most of the class was still up above on the cloud platform, getting their weights prepared.
In olden times, the pegasi would do this test just before it was time to move on to another place. If a young pegasus didn't catch back up with the flock, they would be left behind. Nowadays, with pegasi living in permanent housing and cities, the tradition had changed just a bit. You get pushed off the cloud, and from there you fly home.
Rainbow glanced over to Cloudsdale. The house where she lived with her parents was a few levels below the iconic weather factory. It wasn't too far at all. She would be winded from flying there with all these weights, but she had no doubt she could make it.
A high-pitched squeal ripped her attention from Cloudsdale. Yellow dropped from the sky, trailing pink hair behind. Most pegasi had a natural instinct to twist and flap when they found themselves in a freefall, but Fluttershy curled into a ball, her wings glued to her sides. She wasn't just going to fail to make it back to Cloudsdale, she was going to die!
Rainbow flipped around and dove. She put her forehooves in front of herself to become more aerodynamic as she shot forward to intercept her falling friend.
Something whipped past Rainbow Dash like a brown bullet, causing her to reel back in surprise. A falcon passed her, screeching as it flew. The bird streaked towards Fluttershy. With a precise strike, the falcon's talons ripped through the straps that secured the weights to the yellow pony's neck. The metal disks tumbled away.
“Huh?” Rainbow paused and watched as the bird turned and made another pass, tearing the weights away from Fluttershy's hooves. Fluttershy looked up as the bird screeched at her. Finally, she seemed able to open her wings. Relief flooded through Rainbow as her friend pulled out of her fall and leveled into an unsteady glide.
But then, Fluttershy didn't turn back towards Cloudsdale. She beat her wings against the air as she followed the falcon, which emitted a happy screech. They slowly descended groundwards, towards a clearing at the edge of a forest.
Rainbow Dash hovered in hesitation. She looked to the north, to Cloudsdale. Where her parents were, and her bed, and all of her stuff. And then she looked to the south, to her yellow friend who was, despite her exertion, smiling as she followed the falcon. She was supposed to fly home. That was the whole point of the stupid tradition; you can't take your weights off until you're where you belong.
Rainbow Dash wheeled in the air and began flying south.
That wasn't some kind of poetic metaphor, or anything. She wasn't pouting on a cloud somewhere, sobbing at the unfairness of life. She wasn't crushed by depression, or overwhelmed by all her feelings—though she was currently a bit overwhelmed by the feeling of all that water rushing above her head.
She gagged on a lungful of icy water. Okay, to be fair, the water wasn't really all that cold, but being where it wasn't supposed to be—namely, in her lungs—made the relatively cool water's temperature a whole lot less comfortable.
Drowning was not cool. Rainbow made a note to herself to tell Twilight, if she saw her again, to get out her list of Things That Might Be Cool—she was certain that egghead had a list like that somewhere—and cross drowning right off of it. Then she could add it to her list of Things That Are Definitely Not Cool, right next to slavery and not being Rainbow Dash.
Dash beat her limbs against the torrid current, fighting to swim to the surface. But the trick to that was knowing which way was up. Dash had no idea which way was up. Whenever she opened her eyes, all she saw was swirling water. There was swirling water on every side of her, and for all she knew, her flailing was sending her closer to the muddy bottom of the river.
So she stopped flailing. It seemed like the sensible thing to do. She used less energy that way, and moving was beginning to feel like a major chore. Just hang about and let the current take her back up to the surface. That was how rivers worked, right? The tingling in the ends of her hooves wasn't much of an answer, but she took it as a positive sign anyway.
She was only in the river for a dumb reason, anyway. She and Applejack had been arguing over something... Rainbow couldn't remember what it was anymore, only that she was right and Applejack wasn't. But the others had teased her, saying things like how the two of them ought to just kiss and get it over with. They're crazy; arguing with a dumb cowpony doesn't mean she wants to kiss her.
But Rainbow had decided she would show them. She would turn around and plant a big wet kiss on that farmer's lips, then laugh at the shocked look on all of their faces. Especially on Applejack's. It had been the perfect plan.
Except she sort of forgot they were crossing a rickety bridge at the time. As she had connected with Applejack's lips, the mare had reeled back in surprise, and, well, for some reason Rainbow's balance hadn't been quite as good as it should have been right then, and so she fell into the water. That wouldn't have been too bad, except it was late spring and the water was really fast and there was a lot of it, and Rainbow maybe wasn't as good at swimming as she was at flying.
That didn't matter, though. Soon the river was going to take Rainbow back up to the surface, because rivers weren't jerks that would let a pony drown just because she messed up a little on a prank. Any minute now, she was going to feel air on her muzzle again, and she'd get to breathe. Man, breathing was awesome. Rainbow Dash had never realized before just how great it was to breathe. Totally better than not breathing. Like, a hundred times better.
It seemed to get darker around the edges of Rainbow's vision. That was a good sign, right? The dark was all that air getting excited for her to get to breathe it. Yeah. Rainbow decided it was safe to take a nap. By the time she woke, she would be back up to the surface, and breathing, and all her friends would be cheering about how awesome she was to take on a whole river by herself. It would be great.
Her nap was only disturbed a little by something wrapping around her chest and pulling.
…
Her mouth tasted like fish. Fish and... rotten apples, maybe? Rainbow wanted to make a face, but she found that impossible because there was something pressed against her lips.
“C'mon, breathe!” Something pushed hard on Rainbow's chest, and suddenly she began coughing up river water.
Rainbow Dash hacked and gagged as she expelled a lungful of foul-tasting water. She felt mud and grass beneath her, and there was air all around her. Air was way better than water, she decided.
A number of relieved sighs sounded around Rainbow, and she slowly opened her eyes to see her friends gathered in a tight semi-circle around her. Applejack stood above her, wiping sweat off of her brow.
Rainbow licked her lips. Yep, definitely the flavor of day-old apples. “Geez, great going there, AJ,” she croaked weakly. No, wait, Rainbow Dash didn't do anything weakly. She croaked radically. “Now nopony's gonna believe we're not a couple!”
Applejack rolled her eyes. “Yer welcome, sugarcube.”
Dash wiped her mouth with a hoof. “Also, when's the last time you brushed your teeth? I swear I can taste last night's dinner!”
“That's it,” Applejack said, lifting Dash onto her shoulders. “I'm throwin' her back in the river.”
((Prompt: Two of the following characters go on a blind date: Bon Bon, Thunderlane, Princess Luna, Braeburn, Vinyl Scratch, Fancypants, Ditzy Doo/Derpy Hooves.))
Rainbow sipped at her drink and wondered exactly what had led her to this point, sitting in a mostly deserted bar while a tearful unicorn she hardly even knew leaned on her shoulder and wailed loudly.
“...I mean,” the minty green mare sobbed, “how am I even supposed to compete with that?”
It was Rarity's fault, Rainbow decided. Rarity had been the one that had told her that there was a place where they sold the surplus cider after the special seasonal sale was over. She was the reason Rainbow had been in the bar this evening.
“Sure,” the unicorn said, waving her hoof unsteadily in the air, “Bonnie and I were going through a bit of a rough patch. What couple doesn't have a few fights?”
Or maybe it was Applejack's fault for not making enough of the stuff during the regular cider season. If there had been enough cider to go around, Rainbow wouldn't have been in here looking for more when she had burst in the door, her eyes brimming with tears.
Rainbow Dash's companion took what looked like a significantly larger gulp of her drink than was strictly healthy for a pony to take in one go. “So when she put in for that matching service, I figured, why not let her have her fun, right?”
She looked to Rainbow, apparently looking for some kind of validation. Rainbow gave a noncommittal grunt.
This was enough for her, apparently. “We both needed a bit of space, some time to cool off. I knew it was gonna all blow over in a couple days. But then...” The green mare broke into a wet round of sobs. Rainbow winced as her feathers caught a bit of the deluge.
Maybe it was Rainbow's own fault. She was too nice. She needed to tell this lady to buck up and find a different shoulder to cry on. She gathered her breath up to say as much, but one look at the wretched thing on the stool next to her whisked all the admonishments away. So she grumbled and took another sip from her cider.
“Then she showed up at the door! Princess Luna! Princess Sun-and-Moon-bucking Luna!!” Much of the cuckolded mare's remaining drink sloshed out of her mug as she gestured wildly. “I thought it had to be some kind of joke! Bon Bon had to have gotten Raindrops to paint herself blue and strap a horn to her forehead. But no!” She shook her head. “My girlfriend is out on a date with the Princess of the Harmony-damned Moon!” The rest of her drink disappeared down her throat. “Barkeep, gimme another.”
Rainbow glanced over at her. There was a growing pile of empty mugs beside the mare, and she swayed unsteadily on her stool. Rainbow put a hoof on her back. “Look, Lucy...” No, that wasn't her name. Lamp Post? Line Dance? Rainbow shrugged and continued. “You're a great pony. Totally awesome at, um...” She stole a glance at L-Name's flank. “...harp-ing. I'm sure this Bon Bon chick sees that, and when she comes to her senses, it won't matter if Celestia, Luna and Cadance all want to do a four-way with her—”
The unicorn made a distressed moan and buried her face in her hooves. Perhaps that had been the wrong choice of imagery.
“—it won't stop her from coming back to you,” she finished quickly.
L-something looked up and sniffed. “Y-you really think so?”
Rainbow flashed her a smile. “I'm sure of it. And if she doesn't, then she isn't really the sort of pony you need to be with, anyway.”
A small smile formed on the teal unicorn's lips. The bartender arrived with a mug of cider. “That'll be three bits,” he said.
L levitated her bitbag out and turned it upside down. A couple of pieces of lint fell out, but no bits.
Rainbow Dash sighed. Too nice by far. “Here, let me get that one.” She pulled open the strings on her own bitbag.
The doors to the bar swung open. In burst a cream-colored earth pony, panting as though she had just run from Canterlot. “Lyra!”
Lyra—that was her name! Dash knew it started with an L—swiveled in her stool. “Bonnie?”
Bon Bon took a few more steps into the bar. “Lyra, I couldn't do it! The whole time, I was just thinking about you! I'm so sorry I ever thought I could...” She stopped, her eyes falling on Rainbow Dash and narrowing. “...Lyra, is she buying you a drink?”
Rainbow pinched her eyes shut. How did she get into messes like this?
Look at her go. She sure is something, isn't she? Fliers like that don't come more than once in a generation. Y'know, that might've been me up there flyin' like that... but never mind that. That's a whole other bundle of feathers. It's not about me anymore. It's about that filly up there, playin' tag with the sky like it's her old buddy.
'Calamity,' they're calling her now. Terror of the Skies, or somesuch. I'm not sure what was wrong with her old name, but I guess I never called her much by that name, either. To me, she was always Squirt.
You know, they once told her she'd never fly? What do you mean, 'who?' They. Doctors and folks. The ponies that are s'posed to know that kind of stuff. They told her right to her face, her wings never developed right. All she'd ever be able to do was buzz, maybe glide a few feet.
I tell ya, I've never seen a pony as low as that filly was when she got the news. It broke her heart right to pieces. Broke mine right alongside her, watching it happen. She cried till she didn't have no more tears left, then cried a bit more just for good measure. She used to go tearing across town on that scooter of hers, but after they told her, Squirt could barely drag the thing to school and back.
I couldn't watch her be like that. It hurt me too bad to see it. So I put together a plan.
Now, I'll be the first to admit, it wasn't the most brilliant of plans. I was a mare of action; I had a friend who I usually left all the planning business to. Wonder how she's doing? I oughta drop her a line sometime.
—I'm sidetracking myself, though. So yeah, I came up with a terrible idea. I figured I would give Squirt flying lessons, anyway. Don't know what made me think that would help any. My planning friend would've told me I was getting Squirt's hopes up just to have 'em crushed that much harder when nothing came of it.
But that's why I'm not in charge of planning. I'm a pony who does, so I did. I took Squirt out to a big old hill at the edge of town. Nice and quiet there, nopony to bother us, or gawk at the poor filly that couldn't fly.
And Celestia, she really couldn't fly. I did my best to walk her through all the steps, but the muscles in her wings just couldn't put it all together no matter how hard she tried. Squirt just lacked a setting between spreading her wings once and buzzing 'em too quick to be useful. Nerves wouldn't connect in the right way, or something.
I was probably harder on her than I had any right to be. I kept pushing her way past the point where any responsible pony would've told her to call it a day and start looking for a job at a ground-bound establishment.
But I couldn't give up on her. I just didn't have it in me to tell Squirt to stop. And as long as I kept smiling at her and telling her to try again, that filly would just keep picking herself out of the dirt, brush the grass-clippings out of the scrapes on her knees, and take another shot.
That went on for weeks. Every day, soon as school let out, she'd be there on that hill, and I'd be there waiting. The Weather Bureau got right ticked at me for cutting work so often. Threatened to fire me more than once, but I knew they were bluffing. They didn't have anypony to replace me.
Weeks, like I said, and any filly with any kind of sense would've realized I had no idea what I was doing out there. She went for weeks and never showed any kind of improvement at all. But Squirt had no sense at all. Instead, she had faith in me.
And then one day, it just happened. It wasn't even some kind of special thing, either. She didn't suddenly put it together as one of her friends was falling to their doom, or after being told some particularly inspiring piece on how she was capable of anything. Just one day, in the middle of practice, it all finally clicked into place. She stopped buzzing, and started really flapping. Just like that.
They said it was a miracle. I always figured They weren't the sorts to believe in miracles, but I suppose if anypony could convince a pony, it'd have been Squirt. Or maybe 'miracle' is the word they use for when they're wrong. I dunno.
She never came back down to the ground if she could help it. I bet she'd sleep while flying if she could manage it. I guess she figured she'd spent enough time with her hooves on the ground. It was time for her to fly.
Ah. Now I remember why they call her Calamity. It's her cutie mark. By itself, it's not really all that unique. Just a pair of wings reaching for the heavens. But on that orange flank of hers, it's something altogether different. Like fire itself grew a pair of wings and started soaring. A disaster that rose up from its own ashes to fly. Calamity.
((Prompt: Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.))
Guilt. Fluttershy was no stranger to the emotion. Ponies cracked jokes about how she would apologize for apologizing too much. The words 'I'm sorry' came to her tongue easier than her own name. Her friends always reassured her that she had nothing to apologize for, that she had done nothing wrong. Sometimes, they were right. It was just her over-cautious nature seeking to internalize things that she had no control over.
But there were other times when she deserved the guilt. Sometimes, she had done something so terribly, terribly wrong that just apologizing for it was utterly insufficient. She had to apologize for everything else, because it was all she could think of to do. She was sorry. So very sorry. Fluttershy was a sorry pony.
Guilt lanced through Fluttershy's heart like a knife as she watched Rainbow Dash strain to reach the cupboard. There was something so completely wrong about seeing Rainbow reach with her hooves for something above her head instead of simply flying up to get it. Her eyes were set on the wooden handle with a single-minded focus, and she made quiet grunts of exertion as she stretched for it.
Fluttershy couldn't bear it any longer. She flew up and opened the cupboard, fishing out the glass with Rainbow's cutie mark and placing it in her hooves.
Rainbow Dash scowled at the cup. “I had it, Fluttershy,” she said
More guilt. Fluttershy dropped to the ground and folded her wings to her sides. “I'm sorry,” she said, casting her eyes to the floorboards. “I—I should have asked if you wanted me to get it for you.”
Rainbow's expression softened. She set the glass on the counter and drew Fluttershy into a hug. “Hey.” She gave her a tight squeeze. “It's okay, 'Shy. You're just looking out for me. I appreciate it.”
Fluttershy put on a smile for Rainbow's sake. “Would you like me to get you some water?”
Dash put on a smile for Fluttershy's sake. “Sure. I'm a bit tired after my run with Applejack.”
Fluttershy twisted the tap, and a stream of water came out as Rainbow trotted out to sit on the couch. It wasn't as though Rainbow couldn't fly anymore. It was just not like it used to be. Short, unsteady bursts were all Rainbow could manage these days, and they hurt her when she tried.
The glass filled. There had almost been enough time to forget now and then. Fluttershy could look over at the blue mare perched in her sitting room, and almost pretend Rainbow hadn't once dreamed of being a Wonderbolt. That she was satisfied living here with her.
There was only a hint of a shadow in her eyes left these days to tell the tale of just how close she had come, only to have it stripped away from her.
Rainbow had been accepted and everything. Pinkie had thrown a party, and everypony in Ponyville had come to congratulate her, and wish her the best before she packed up and moved off to Canterlot to fly full-time with her foalhood heroes.
Fluttershy had been happy for her, too, except... well, Canterlot was a long way away. Dash had promised to keep in touch, but Fluttershy remembered making the same promise to her parents in Cloudsdale.
So that night, she had made a wish. It had been a horrible, selfish wish, and she hadn't meant it, but she had looked up at the night sky and wished there were some way Rainbow could stay in Ponyville.
Then the train accident had happened.
The doctors at Ponyville General Hospital were truly miracle workers. Lesser surgeons wouldn't have been able to save Rainbow's wings at all. Rainbow Dash was lucky to still be able to move them, even if they told her she would never have full range of motion again.
The Wonderbolts had been sympathetic; they had offered her a position as an assistant trainer when they heard. But Dash had declined. She couldn't bear to spend her life watching everypony else take part in what had been her dream.
Fluttershy had gotten her wish. Not only did Dash stay in Ponyville, she ended up moving into Fluttershy's cottage because her cloud-home was out of reach. Fluttershy got to spend all the time she could ever dream of doting on her oldest friend, taking care of her, and wiping away her tears when she shot out of bed at night, haunted by thoughts of what could have been.
Fluttershy carried the glass of water out to the sitting room, carefully balancing it on a wing as she offered it to Rainbow. “I'm sorry it's not as cold as it could be,” she said as Rainbow took the glass between her hooves.
Rainbow Dash took a gulp and smiled. “It's just fine.”
No. No no no no. You can't just flop on a cloud and shut your eyes, and call it a nap. That's not a nap. It's an insult to the whole idea of napping!
Move over, squirt, lemme show ya.
First thing is, you gotta pick the right cloud. You got most of that right, I'll give you that. It's got just the right amount of fluff—not so soft that you sink through it, but not so firm that it leaves you sore when you wake up.
Problem is, it's in the wrong spot. Look at where you're at, Scoots. Anypony in Ponyville can find you here! And if they can find you, they can wake you up and bug you.
Yeah, I know. Till you can fly on your own, your choices are limited to the clouds that drift low enough to climb to. Hang on tight, squirt, I'm gonna move this thing.
There. Much better. You got shade, and privacy, and trees for you to climb back down.
Wait, what are you doing? Just 'cause you found the right spot doesn't mean you're ready to start napping. You haven't stretched yet.
Oh sure, right now you're a filly and nothing gets tight or sore for you. But trust me, you'll thank me when you get older. You get in the habit now, and years from now you won't wake up with a sore everything.
Heh, yeah, a lot of ponies don't appreciate how much work goes into a real good nap. It's a lot more complicated than it looks. I mean, anypony can just lie down and snore, but it takes a real expert to squeeze all the rest out of a nap.
Okay, so, next you gotta shape the cloud. Push the extra fluff over to one end like this, so you can use it as a pillow. If it's chilly out, you can make a blanket, but we don't need that today.
Just like that, squirt. You're getting the hang of this.
We're almost ready to settle in and do some quality snoozing. All that's left is to get into the right frame of mind.
I like to think about flying. Close your eyes, and just see the blue all around you. The ground is nothing but a memory, it's just you and your wings, sailing through the sky. Feel the wind tug at your feathers. Hear it whisper in your ears. Taste its coolness on your tongue.
Easy, now. It's not a race, you're just gliding. Spread your wings out and just float on the sky. There ya go, squirt. Just relax.
There ya go, Scoots. That's... *ya-awn* ...that's how you take a nap.
((Prompt: This is not the greatest fanfic in the world, no, this is just a tribute.))
“Sharks.” Twilight leveled an incredulous expression at Rainbow Dash.
“Yeah, sharks!” Rainbow waved her forehooves open and closed in imitation of a pair of enormous jaws.
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “But you said she was a mile in the air.”
“She was,” Rainbow said. “These were flying sharks.”
“Flying sharks,” Twilight repeated.
“I know, isn't it awesome?” Rainbow grinned wide. “They're just as dangerous as regular sharks, but they can fly!”
“Uh huh.” Twilight tapped her hoof on the desk.
Rainbow dug under a pile of papers. “I forget how she gets out of that one, but she does, and it's really awesome. Where did I put it?”
“You know,” Twilight said, picking up a pile of discarded papers. She winced as she found some of them stuck together with bubble gum. “It wouldn't be such a problem to find this, um... 'piece of literary history' if you kept your place better organized.”
“Yeah yeah.” Rainbow waved her hoof. Her head was completely buried in her desk as she dug for the missing document. “I don't have time for any of that stuff when I'm 'in the zone.' I get that burst of inspiration, you know, and I just gotta write it out. I can't be wasting time putting it all in neat stacks!”
“No, clearly this is a much better way to do it,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes.
“Aha!” Dash stood up, a stack of papers clenched between her teeth. “Pfound itbh.” She dropped the manuscript on the desk in front of Twilight, who began reading.
“Spitfire let out a long, languid moan as the sure, steady hoof traced a circle around her heaving...”
Rainbow snatched the paper away. “Oops, that's the wrong one!” she said, a faint touch of red rising to her cheeks. “I mean, that one's awesome, too. Of course it is, I wrote it, but it's uh... it's not ready yet.” She pulled open a drawer and shoved the manuscript inside.
Twilight cleared her throat. “Well, maybe it might help you find it if you said what the title was?” She highly doubted the stacks of wrinkled, ink-smeared papers were arranged alphabetically, but who knows, right?
“Oh, yeah!” Rainbow Dash grinned. “It's called 'Daring Do and Commander Hurricane and the Fountain of Eternal Awesomeness.' Guest-starring Captain Badflank.”
“Captain who?”
“Captain Badflank,” Rainbow said again. “She's my own original character. Nopony can tell her real identity underneath her Wonderbolt uniform.”
Twilight resolved to try and refrain from rolling her eyes so much. She was getting tendonitis in her eye sockets.
Rainbow went back to digging through the reams of paper. “You're gonna love it when I find it, Twi!” she promised. “It's my masterpiece. The best fan-fic ever!”
Two mares sat across from one another at a table made out of an overturned crate inside the barn at Sweet Apple Acres. Sunlight filtered through the slats, casting bright lines over the heaps of hay and empty barrels.
“Ya sure 'bout this, sugarcube?” Applejack held the mug reluctantly in her hooves. She frowned deeply at its contents.
Rainbow Dash tapped her hoof impatiently. “You said it was free. Yeah, I'm sure about this. It's cider!”
Applejack shook the mug, sloshing its contents around a bit. “It really ain't,” she said, scowling at the mug. “More like applesauce an' sawdust. I meant it more as a joke when I said it was free; we don't ever sell the stuff that's left in the bottom.”
“Are you saying I can't have it?” Rainbow asked.
Applejack sighed and, with a moment's hesitation, pushed the mug across to Rainbow. “If ya get sick, do it outside, okay? I don't wanna have to clean it up.”
Rainbow grinned as she picked the mug up with both hooves. “Awesome!” She held the mug up, watching a moist drop on the rim glisten in a ray of sunlight.
Applejack raised her hoof. “Now, jus' take a sip first, okay? To make sure it's all right. Don't—”
Rainbow tipped her head back and emptied the whole vessel into her mouth.
“—down it in one go,” Applejack said, burying her face in her fetlocks.
The cider became a spray of mist as Dash sputtered and hacked. She spat little chips of wood and bark out as she fell back on her haunches, wheezing. Her blue cheeks turned two shades closer to green, and her eyes bulged.
Applejack rose to her hooves, knocking the makeshift table over. “Outside! If yer gonna heave, get outside!” She tugged on Dash's hoof, dragging her toward the door.
Rainbow Dash pressed a hoof over her mouth. Her eyes crossed for a moment, then she swallowed. She took a few deep breaths. Color slowly returned to her cheeks.
Sensing that vomit was no longer imminent, Applejack stopped pulling on Rainbow's hoof, and put a foreleg on her back. “Are ya alright, sugarcube?”
Rainbow wiped her muzzle and grinned. “Wow, that's got some kick to it!” Her voice was hoarse. She glanced at the empty mug lying on a pile of hay. “You got any more?”
23: Field Notes on Pegasus Courtship Practices [Romance] [Comedy]
Thanks to recent conversation with local expert on romantic practices, have come upon opportunity to study an example of Cloudsdalian courtship rituals from its early stages on up, hopefully, to its fruition. Initially did not believe this lead, but have been assured by expert that “they are absolutely smitten with each other, darling.”
Have started this log to record findings.
Entry 2
Have encountered difficulty early on, in that locating the subjects seems to be more difficult than anticipated. First subject, distinguishable by yellow plumage and pink mane, and from here on referred to as Subject A, not present in her usual habitat. Irate specimen of Leporidae found checking a watch and tapping its foot at entrance to cottage.
Subject B's cloud-home drifts on the wind and is notoriously difficult to find. Suspect Subject B allows her home to move on purpose so that ponies cannot wake her from her naps.
Entry 3
Have finally located both subjects. A and B discovered on hill outside of town. Will conduct interviews later, but first need to observe undetected in order to avoid contaminating the data.
Subjects appear to be arranging some form of communal meal on a blanket. This would be referred to as a 'picnic,' in laypony's terms. Am suddenly reminded that I have missed lunch.
Entry 4
Have discovered that pegasus hearing is particularly keen. Subject B able to pick up and locate the source of a rumbling stomach from what I had initially thought was a safe observation distance.
Have been invited to join picnic. Initially declined on grounds of neutrality for research, but Subject A had prepared a surplus of very delicious cucumber sandwiches.
Have asked subjects to proceed as though I were not present. Not ideal research conditions, but sometimes sacrifices must be made in the name of sandwiches.
Entry 5
Am beginning to suspect my presence is affecting the results. Am seeing none of the signs typically associated with courtship rituals; no preening, no extended physical contact, not even one mating dance. Possibly spotting occasional eye-contact, but nothing conclusive.
Have decided to withdraw to a less intrusive distance. Used old excuse, “have to compile my data.” Believe they bought it.
Entry 6
Perhaps local expert's intel was not as solid as she had me believe. Have observed for more than an hour now, and no new developments. Subjects A and B just lay there, watching clouds. Still no mating dance.
Am surprised to see Subject B remain still for so long. Unless she is napping, Subject B is usually rendered irritable and impatient from long periods of inactivity, but she seems to look content. Will report further on this anomaly as developments occur.
Entry 7
This may be it. As sunset approached, subjects began moving closer together. Subject B now has her wing draped over Subject A's shoulders, and there is prolonged eye-contact. All of my researcher's instincts tell me that this is the moment I have been waiting for. Am fully ready to record all the data I can from this.
Rainbow Dash slapped herself with a hoof. The last thing she needed was to fall asleep and crash. It was bad enough that one of them was missing in these Sun-forsaken woods, but if she broke a wing and lost her way out here as well...
She couldn't think about that. All Rainbow could do was keep her wings beating, keep one eye on the ground and the other eye on landmarks so she didn't get lost herself.
Celestia, there just wasn't an end to these woods. They just went on forever. It wasn't half so surprising that one of them was lost as that the rest of them weren't. Endless stretches of green, with twisted rivers and paths that led nowhere. Why would there even be a forest like this? Why did they have to come out here? Why couldn't they—
Why was she losing altitude? Rainbow Dash grimaced as she strained against the wind, only narrowly avoiding a collision with a gnarled old oak tree.
With a gasp, Rainbow perched on a branch to rest. She leaned against the sturdy wood and looked back the way she had come. Could Pinkie really have strayed this far out? Dash had been out flying through this forest for... Celestia, she couldn't even remember how long. Days, at least. And she hadn't spotted any sign of her.
Maybe she had found her way back to the others. Maybe they were all gathered around a campfire right now, listening to Pinkie tell them all stories of her wacky misadventures when she had taken that accidental detour.
No. Rainbow Dash shook her head. If Pinkie had rejoined the others, Twilight would have sent up a signal. There had been no purple starburst over the forest; Pinkie was still missing.
Rainbow let her eyes wander over the twisted vines and creeping bushes. She hated this forest. Maybe she had viewed it with a little curiosity and wonder before, but all that was replaced with bitter spite and contempt now. This was a stupid forest, it was too big, and too green, and too easy for a pony to get lost in. And the trees weren't comfortable for naps at all.
She pushed herself away from the tree with a start as she realized that her eyelids had drooped nearly shut. She couldn't be napping! Pinkie was out there, alone and lost! Who knew what terrible creatures were out there stalking her?
Rainbow shot back into the air. Her wings felt like they were full of wet sand, but she had to keep moving. There was no time to waste on breaks. Pinkie was out there somewhere. Maybe behind this next little bluff, or maybe on the other side of that ridge on the horizon. It didn't matter where, Rainbow Dash was going to find her, and bring her back safe and sound to the others, and then they were all going to get the hay out of this stupid forest and never come back, ever.
Wait, what was that? Rainbow stopped. She could have sworn she heard something. Maybe it was just sleep-deprivation playing tricks on her ears. Or maybe it was a hungry something-or-other looking to make a meal out of a tasty pegasus. But there was a chance it had been Pinkie, so Rainbow called out regardless.
“Pinkie?” she called.
A little bit of time passed, and Rainbow heard nothing besides the chirping of birds and the rustling of leaves. She frowned, and shook her head. She couldn't let phantom noises draw her off of her search. Rainbow pressed forward.
“D-Dashie?”
Rainbow wheeled around. She had definitely not imagined that. She made a low pass over where she had heard the voice. “Pinkie!” she shouted. “It's me!”
A muddy tuft of pink mane poked out of the underbrush. Scraped, dirty hooves dragged across the ground in a funny limp. Dash would have hardly recognized the creature that emerged from the foliage, if not for the grin that slowly stretched across her face. “Dashie” Pinkie rasped. “Am I ever super-happy to see you!”
Time. Time is a fickle thing. Ever does it march forward, unthinking, unfeeling, unwavering. An endless stream that never changes direction.
Or almost never. In a land of mad gods and capricious magic, time doesn't always work the way we think it should. Sometimes, time changes.
In the twisting throes of his defeat, the dark unicorn king Sombra's considerable arcane might was unleashed in a blind fit. Raw power was thrown directly at the fabric of reality, with no shape to it other than rage and spite and malice. Most of this magic simply manifested in the form of dark crystals that were quickly dispersed by the wave of hope and goodness emitted by the Crystal Heart.
But in his flailing, the Unicorn King managed to reach across time. It was brief, and small. All he could grasp was a single, tiny object: a sky-blue feather. But grasp it he did, and with the last of his dying hatred as the light cleansed his shadowy form from our world, he pulled.
*
“Ow!” Rainbow Dash winced as something tugged on her wing. A blue feather drifted to the snowy ground, a drop of blood stuck to the tip leaving a tiny red blotch in the whiteness. She looked back. “Twi, was that you?”
Twilight warded the wind off of her face with a hoof as she glanced up at Rainbow. “Was what me?”
Before Rainbow could say anything, Twilight's brother pushed them along impatiently. “C'mon, we need to keep moving. The Crystal Empire isn't the only thing that's returned.”
Rainbow Dash shrugged and fell into line. Maybe the blizzard had pulled her feather out of place.
*
“We can save the crystal ponies with their history~” The girls sang together as they looked up the cultural history of the Crystal Empire inside the grand library.
Rainbow Dash wasn't a huge history buff, but she could at least appreciate a library that had enough space to fly in. Twilight's oak tree got a little too cramped to do much more than hover. Here, Rainbow could put her speed and agility to good use, zipping up to the top shelves to retrieve any books Twilight might find useful.
“Oops, look out, Dashie!” Pinkie called out. A quick glance told Dash that an overzealous throw had overshot Twilight and was headed for her.
Rainbow smirked. Dodging something like that was nothing to an aerobat like herself. She deftly spun in midair, preparing to catch the book.
But the wing missing a feather didn't provide quite as much lift as she was used to. With a yelp, she overcompensated and the book thumped heavily against her shoulder. “Oof!”
“Sorry!” Pinkie said, scrambling over to pick up the book. “Are you okay?”
Rainbow rubbed her shoulder. A bruise was already starting to form beneath her fur. “Yeah, it's fine, Pinkie. Just watch where you're throwing things, okay?”
*
Dash panted as she set her lance aside. With her bruised shoulder, jousting had been more of a chore than an event, and the crowd seemed to pick up on that. A few ponies yawned, and none of them seemed to be getting any shinier.
Rainbow found Fluttershy in a heap of armor atop a pile of hay. She looked up at Rainbow with pleading eyes. “W-we don't have to do it again, do we?”
Dash rubbed her sore shoulder and glanced at the crowd. With a sigh, she shook her head. “No, Flutters, I don't think this is lifting anypony's spirits.” She helped Fluttershy back up to her hooves and helped her out of her armor.
*
Cadance soared through the air, Spike on her back and the Crystal Heart in her magic grasp. She banked low and slid the Heart into its place at the base of the palace. “Now!” she cried to the crystal ponies. “Fill the Crystal Heart with the power of Harmony!”
The crystal ponies glanced at one another uncertainly. A few of them gamely squeezed their eyes shut in concentration.
The Crystal Heart sputtered a few gouts of light and went dark.
King Sombra shook with laughter. “That's right, my slaves,” he said, his voice resonating off all of the faceted surfaces of the crystal city. “You are mine.”
((Prompt: How do you measure a year in the life?))
They were warm.
Rainbow Dash extended her wing, and Rarity just seemed to fit right there beneath it. Like she belonged there. She felt the unicorn's body heat as she leaned against her, and despite not really being all that cold, the heat felt good.
Some day, Rainbow was going to ask Rarity how she had gotten up to her cloud-home in the first place, but the truth was it didn't matter to her. She was here, and they were cuddled together on a squishy tuft of cloud watching the sun cast Rainbow's home in pink and orange and gold.
An easy smile slid across her face. This was right. It was good. It was totally awesome.
They were cold.
Rainbow beat her wings as hard as she could. Even though it was summer, she was high enough for bits of ice to form on her wingtips. Her breath turned into a mist of crystals as soon as it left her mouth.
Rarity couldn't reach her up here. She could get Twilight to conjure up however many wings she wanted, that fussy chunk of hairspray would never catch Rainbow Dash.
She couldn't believe she had ever fallen for the illusion that the unicorn had wanted her for anything other than to use her. How could it have taken her so long to see it?
They were warm.
Hooves ran gently across Dash's back. She closed her eyes and let the feeling sink into her as Rarity tugged the cloak into place.
It was beautiful, and more importantly, it made Rainbow look wicked-cool. Dark blue with white trim cut in curves to look like clouds. Slots in the sides allowed her to poke her wings out easily when needed, and keep them warm and safe from the autumn chill when they weren't.
Dash grinned and nuzzled Rarity in gratitude.
They were cold.
The cloak was in a heap in the mud. Rainbow couldn't stand to have the thing touching her any longer. Nevermind the chilly air that swirled around her shoulders. Nevermind the icy rain that soaked her wings and mane. Angry words poured out of Rainbow Dash's mouth like the torrents of rain from the sky.
Tears ran from the corners of Rarity's eyes, and she winced as though struck when Rainbow reared back and stomped on the cloak. She matched Rainbow Dash's every word with another cutting jibe or cruel accusation.
They were warm.
Rainbow sat on a cushion inside Carousel Boutique, exhausted from the day's work. Weather work was worst in the winter. Maybe the clouds were heavier in the spring, but there was so much more of them to move in the winter.
A mug of hot cocoa hovered in front of her, bathed in a blue aura. Rainbow took it between her hooves and smiled. Winter work was the worst, but hot cocoa was the best. She sipped from her mug and stared at the drifting snowflakes outside as Rarity sank into a cushion beside her, stirring a spoon in her own mug.
They were cold.
Rainbow flinched as the door of Carousel Boutique slammed shut behind her. She shivered as her hooves sank into the damp snowdrifts.
She probably deserved it, this time. Rainbow had been out of line, even she could tell. But when Rarity was involved, Rainbow Dash had a hard time stopping herself.
She raised her head to glance inside. Rarity stomped through the place full of righteous fury. When she noticed Rainbow looking, Rarity glared daggers at her, igniting her horn and pulling shut every shutter in the place.
Rainbow sighed, and sank to her haunches in the snow. She was cold. She wondered how long it would be this time before she was warm again.
Golden eyes narrowed. Rainbow Dash stared into them. She wondered how it was possible for something in such warm colors to convey such coldness. They were colored like fire, but Rainbow felt frost sting her cheeks just by looking at them.
Captain Spitfire spoke in a slow, dangerous tone. “Private Dash, what are you doing?”
Private Dash. Sometimes she forgot she had a rank now. The Wonderbolts were separate from the standard rank order of the Guard. They were a tightly-knit outfit, and they never referred to one another by rank except for calling Spitfire 'Captain.' The fact that Spitfire was addressing her as 'Private Dash' was a screaming alarm that things were about to go very sour, very quickly.
Not that Rainbow didn't already know that. She straightened her posture, holding her wings out to bar access to the door behind her. “I am protecting the Princess, ma'am.”
Spitfire's mane rustled as the breeze momentarily shifted direction. Her nostrils widened as she leveled a thin-lipped stare at Rainbow. “I have permission to enter, Private.” A snarl accompanied her re-iteration of Dash's rank.
Rainbow kept her stance steady, and her eyes locked with those cold golden orbs. Sheer force of will kept her knees from trembling. “Beg your pardon, ma'am, but no you don't.”
The Captain stepped forward, her face hovering inches from Rainbow's. “Private Rainbow Dash, you will stand down!” she barked.
Rainbow didn't flinch. She couldn't let herself flinch. If she flinched, even for a moment, she would start to doubt herself. Once she let that seed of doubt take hold, it was all over. The thing in front of her would seize upon it and exploit it, twist everything around until she would believe anything that came out of its mouth. She had let it happen to her before, she couldn't let it happen again.
Rainbow Dash spoke through gritted teeth. “All due respect, but you are not my captain.”
The golden eyes flickered for a moment, and then Spitfire's expression softened a bit. “This is about that thing, isn't it? Rainbow, you can't let that one incident run the rest of your life. You are stronger than that.”
“One incident?” Rainbow repeated, a harsh scoff bursting from her. “One year. That thing played me and my friends off of one another for a whole year. We still haven't put together which times we actually shared with each other, and which times were just it feeding on us.”
“And then you caught it,” Spitfire said, flicking her wings impatiently. “It got sloppy, and you and your friends sniffed it out. Now it's stuffed in a jail cell. Story over. This is not the sequel, Private Dash. You can't just go seeing changelings everywhere.”
Rainbow Dash set her jaw. “You are not Captain Spitfire.”
“I am Captain Spitfire!” she bellowed, stomping a yellow hoof on the flagstones. “And I don't have to prove it to you! I can have a squadron of Royal Guard haul you straight to the court-marshal you'll be facing for insubordination if you don't stand down!”
Rainbow Dash took a deep breath. One year ago, she would have let this thing play her for a fool. She had let a thing just like this one play her and all her friends for fools. It hadn't even needed to try very hard. Each of them had so wanted to believe the other just wanted to spend time with them that Rainbow never even questioned that Applejack had said she was too busy to come to the lake but then showed up anyway. Pinkie had never even bothered to ask why Dash was out playing pranks with her during her usual naptime. Fluttershy had never spoken up when Twilight showed up at her cottage, even though she was supposed to be in Canterlot.
Foolishness was the price of wisdom. Dash had paid a year of being a fool, and now she was that much wiser. She had learned her lesson, and she did not intend to have to learn this lesson a second time.
Rainbow Dash took a step forward, pawing her forehoof at the ground. “You just made your mistake, changeling.” Her eyes glinted in the light. “Spitfire wouldn't need a squadron of Royal Guard to take me in. If you were really her, you wouldn't be afraid to take me on by yourself.” She crouched into a battle-ready position, her wings cocked and ready to give chase if the thing tried to flee.
“Private Dash, I'm only going to give you one more chance—”
((Prompt: One year after they met, the mane six attend another Summer Sun Celebration.))
Rainbow Dash gave her best daredevil grin. Last year, only Twilight and Spike had been present to witness her feat of stupendousness and weather mastery. Which, it had been totally worth it to see the stunned look on Twilight's face. But this year, as Ponyville geared up for its first Summer Sun Celebration since Nightmare Moon had crashed the last one, Rainbow had a crowd of six there to watch her perform her miracles of cloud-busting.
“All right, Rainbow Dash!” cheered Spike, waving his claws in the air. “Way to teach those clouds who's boss!”
“Except, um, don't be too hard on them,” Fluttershy said. “I mean, I know clouds don't have feelings, but they haven't hurt anypony.”
“Darlings,” Rarity said to the two of them, “I don't believe she has started yet.”
Rainbow let out a confident snort. “I may as well have,” she said. “Those clouds are as good as gone already. Nine seconds flat this time.”
Twilight glanced at the sky. “Nine seconds? I don't know, Rainbow Dash. It looks like there's more clouds out here than there were last time.”
“Doesn't make a difference,” said Rainbow. She pawed an eager hoof at the ground. “I've been training ever since then. I'm a year faster, a year leaner and meaner—”
“—A year more full a' pies an' cupcakes,” Applejack teased, elbowing her in the side. “Pinkie had an awful lot of them set out at her party this mornin', an' I know I didn't eat 'em all.”
“Ooh!” interjected Pinkie. “I know who ate them all!”
Dash's confident smirk didn't fade from her face. “You got the stopwatch, Twilight?”
Twilight held the item in her magic grip. “Ready when you are, Rainbow.”
Rainbow Dash spread her wings and dropped into a crouch. “I'm always ready.”
“Go!”
With a crack of her wings against the air, Dash was off. She was a hot blue knife on a plate of white cloudy butter. She was a rainbow-maned shark in a school of fluffy fish. She was... she was some other way to say that she was awesome, and totally kicking some cloud-flank.
Bank to shorten her turn radius, kick off to keep her momentum off of that cirrus, loop around to catch those three nimbuses at the right angle to clear them all at once. Buck this cloud, kick that one, let the other one just fall apart in her wake.
Dash landed back in front of the others. Her wings tingled from the sudden exertion, and her lungs ached for oxygen. “Well?” she panted, “How'd I do? Eight and a half seconds? Eight flat?”
Twilight peered at the stopwatch. “Ten point eight seconds,” she read.
“What?” Rainbow said. “No way!”
Applejack laughed. “Guess yer gettin' slow in yer old age, huh?”
Celestia, she still sounds like she did when we started all this. My eyes are still closed—they ain't open a whole lot, these days—and I can swear I see that voice comin' out of the young blue thing I married all those years ago. When I open my eyes, I half expect to see her hovering over my bed, all brimming with more energy than she knows what to do with, and impatience plastered all over her face.
She ain't, of course. Doctors don't want her flyin' no more. Not that they could really stop her, but she's at least figured out that the less time she spends arguin' with them, the more time she can spend naggin' at me, so she behaves herself while we're at the hospital.
And it ain't impatience that's etched itself into her wrinkly old face today while she's lookin' at me. No, that's fear. She's standin' over my bedside, holdin' my hoof—funny, I didn't even feel her grab it—starin' into my eyes with a kind of fear that just breaks my heart to see. Her molting wings twitch in time to the beeps that darn machine next to me keeps makin', and I can see her fightin' hard to keep her lip from tremblin'.
Cripes, am I supposed to say somethin'? I try and clear my throat, not that it clears very much for the effort, and I wet my lips. “Can't do what, sugarcube?” My voice is all scratches and whispers. It didn't age well like Granny's had. With all the hollerin' I used to do, my voice ended up just givin' out.
Rainbow's eyes narrow on me. You could lose a whole bit in the wrinkles around her eyes, but them rosy things still got fire in them. “You know damn well what. You gotta hang on, AJ!”
Hang on, she says. I am hangin' on. I've been hangin' on for the last... shoot, I don't even remember. There comes a point where a pony just don't have anymore hang left in her bones. “I'm tired, Rainbow.”
The fear goes away. Instead, she gets angry now. Heh, she's cute when she's mad. “Tomorrow's our sixtieth anniversary, you dumb blockhead!”
Well that's telling. She ain't tryin' to buy another year no more, or even weeks. She's down to just beggin' for tomorrow from me. All the doctors in Equestria could line up an' each give me their saddest, 'I'm sorry, there's nothing more we can do,' look, and it wouldn't be half the death-sentence my wife just gave me now.
I try and move my hoof. She eventually figures out what I'm doing and helps me run it through her mane. There's still a bit of color to it, but mostly it's just different shades of gray now. “Look, hon,” I tell her. “Them sixty years ain't exactly been easy livin'. Remember that gorgon?” I stop, and shake my head a little bit. Now ain't the time to lapse into reminiscences. “An' we didn't exactly get an early start on them sixty years, neither. If we hadn't been so stubborn, we might be lookin' down the barrel of seventy right now, instead. But what difference is one anniversary really gonna make?”
Rainbow squeezes my hoof, and this time I can feel it. Prickles run up my foreleg and my chest goes numb. “Please,” she says, “Just try.”
I take a deep breath, or as deep a breath as I can manage nowadays. “What time is it, sugar?”
“Eleven thirty.” A cautious smile forms on her face.
I grin. “Well hay, that ain't nothin'. Break out the cake, an' in thirty minutes we can celebrate puttin' up with each other for sixty whole years!”
Her smile fades. “It's eleven thirty in the morning.”
“Oh.” My ears drop. “I... I'm sorry, hon,” I tell her. Maybe I can feel her tears on my hoof, or maybe I'm just imagining it. I pull her towards me, and she rests her head on my chest. Having her there seems to soothe the tickles inside just a little bit. “But fifty nine years with you is a whole lot more than I ever could've hoped for.”
((Prompt: The circumstances leading to, following, or surrounding someone beginning a speech with, “One year ago, on this day…”))
Rainbow Dash beat her wings against the air as she climbed higher and higher into the sky. She stretched her forelegs out in front of her, reaching out to capture the blue above. The whipping wind made her back cold while the bright sun made her belly hot.
Her eyes were squinted to see through the bright day's glare, but her lips were locked into a wild grin. Her breath grew short from the exertion and the thin air, but this was the easy part. Rainbow did not bother to look down to check her altitude just yet. She knew she would need to go higher still. She would need a whole lot of altitude for this.
*
The sun glinted off Twilight's sparkling tiara. She carefully ordered and organized her notecards—a habit, and nothing more. She knew her speech by heart, the notecards were just there to make her feel better.
Twilight peered past her podium at the crowd. A sea of pastel coats and shining eyes greeted her. She was not generally prone to stage fright, but she couldn't help but feel a little uneasy at all the attention. Twilight imagined this was probably what Fluttershy felt most of the time, and she had a sudden pang of empathy for the poor pegasus.
She cleared her throat. Thousands of faces turned to her in anticipation. “One year ago, on this day,” Twilight began, not giving herself the time to hesitate, “I gave up...”
*
This was probably high enough, Rainbow figured. Canterlot was a tiny cluster of gold and marble below her. She could see more of the snowy peak of the mountain on which it perched than she could of its wide base. A train made its way around the spiraling tracks that led to the city, and from this height it looked like a caterpillar inching its way around a tiny gray hill.
She hovered, sucking in a deep breath of the cold, thin air. She couldn't even make out the grand hall from here, it was all purple roofs and miniature gardens.
Here goes. Rainbow let her breath out, and folded her wings to her sides.
*
“I was up against the impossible,” Twilight continued. “An irrational creature with power far beyond anything I had ever known. Everything that had ever worked for me in the past was useless. None of my magical knowledge meant anything against him. I couldn't out-plan him. I couldn't out-think him. He even managed to turn my friends against one another.”
Twilight let her shoulders fall. “So I gave up that day. It was the first time I ever truly lost faith. There wasn't anything I could do. It was over.”
*
The wind roared in Rainbow's ears. She kept her wings swept back, only turning the edges of her feathers to keep her dive steady. Her hooves pushed out in front of her, keeping the worst of the wind out of her eyes, but it still stung to keep them open. The ground slowly grew as she picked up more and more speed.
*
Twilight put on a small smile. “Fortunately, somepony reminded me that the things I wrote to my teacher were more than just words. True friendship is a real and precious thing. Even when things look grim, friendship is something worth fighting for.”
She ventured a glance at the front row. Discord sat there, a bemused smirk on his face. Twilight laughed softly. “I suppose things have changed a little since then. Then again, this morning that same irrational creature stuck my crown to the ceiling with crazy-glue, so maybe not so much has changed, after all.”
The draconnequs snickered.
“But just the same,” Twilight said, “I owe him thanks for his part in showing me the true strength of friendship.”
*
Water vapor began condensing into a cone in front of Rainbow Dash. She was getting close. Her pulse pounded in her teeth as she pushed herself harder. She was no longer letting gravity do the work for her; gravity was too slow. Instead, she was actually flapping her wings against the air as it passed her, continuing to accelerate her dive.
The cone narrowed. That magical crackle began to form.
*
Twilight spread her wings. “So, to my dear friend Celestia, let me share with you what I learned that day. I learned that friendship can be hard. I learned that it can hurt, seeing ponies you love and trust say or do things you hoped you would never have to see them say or do. If I hadn't let them into my life, it would never have shaken me as badly as it had to see them act so contrary to their nature like they did that day.”
“But if I hadn't let them into my life, I would never have known how truly wonderful life can be when you share it with friends. I would never have found anything worth fighting so hard for. Princess Celestia, that day, I learned that friendship is worth every bit of hardship, every ounce of blood, sweat and tears that it takes to make it work.”
The grand hall shook with a thunderous boom. The sky suddenly filled with a dazzling display of colors as a prismatic ring opened up above them and spread towards the horizons. The crowd gasped in awe.
Twilight grinned. “Because friendship, my little ponies,” she said, “is magic.”
((Prompt: Re-imagine one of the songs from the show as having been sung by a different character in a different context.))
This day is gonna be perfect. I haven't had a day like this since we were young.
Yeah, it was a long flight to get to Ponyville—geez, Dash, I don't get what could've possessed you to move from Cloudsdale to a lame place like this—and I'm still a bit sore from it, but Dash was cool and let me crash at her cloud last night.
She doesn't ever let me down.
We're gonna hang today, just the two of us. It'll be just like old times. Gilda and Dash against the world. We'll show off our latest moves, and keep having little races to this cloud or that tree until Dash finally admits that I'm faster than she is. She'll talk about the Wonderbolts, and I'll show her the application I'm gonna send off to the Skytalons when I get back.
Heh, and then we'll sneak into the local weather's cloud cache and swap out all their cirruses for thunderheads. The weather manager won't know what the hay happened!
Wait, shoot, I forgot. Dash said she was the weather manager in this town. Well, that just makes it even better. I can finally get her back for that trick with the greased perch.
We can talk about the old days back at Junior Speedsters. Big dreams and bigger egos. We can talk about the blockheaded filly who was so full of herself she thought the class's only griffon needed her to stand up for me, even though I was like twice those bullies' size. About that time we both got sprained wings, and one of us carried the other back to camp anyway. We can argue about which of us was actually doing the carrying, and which of us was a weepy little pony blubbering about how she'll 'never fly again.' We can talk about... about how I never told her this before, but the time I spent with her was...
No. Be cool, Gilda. This is Rainbow Dash. She doesn't go in for any of that mushy emotional horsefeathers.
Anyway, yeah. Today's gonna be perfect. I've got Dash all to myself all day, and if anyone or anything tries to mess with us, they're gonna be sorry.
Huh. What's this? There's some pink dweeb down there groundside yelling for Dash. She better just stay out of the way.
*
This day is gonna be perfect! Days like this always make me feel young.
I've got all kinds of neat pranks that me and Dashie can pull. It's going to be so much fun!
Oh, hey! That doesn't look like Dashie. She doesn't even look like a pony at all! I wonder if she wants to come pranking with us?
