"That whirring sound. Don't you hear it?"
“Come on, come on!”
Rainbow Dash rocketed into the living room of her home, hovering over the puff of white cloud she was proud to call her carpet. Twilight Sparkle trudged in after her, the hot-air balloon waiting just outside and the lavender pony making sure to tread lightly, even after using the spell.
“I wanna get there before they’re all sold out!” Rainbow exclaimed, “There’s got to be something in here!”
“Dash,” Twilight sighed, rolling her eyes. “I’m pretty sure there’ll still be a pair of headphones when you get to the store.”
Rainbow swooped over to her unicorn friend, grabbing her face with both of her cyan hooves and looking into her eyes with the utmost conviction. “But you don’t know that!”
The scholar at the door groaned. “Come on, Dash. It’s not a new book or arcade game or anything. It’s a pair of headphones. Which, I don’t understand why you’re buying now, considering they will most certainly go down in price in the future.”
“Because!” Rainbow yelled, making wild gesticulations.
“Because why? Why do you need to have them today?”
“Because it’s too quiet in here! I need some noise. I need some music!”
“Rainbow, you’ve been in here fine for the last couple months without any. Why can’t you wait a few more days?”
Dash opened her mouth to say something, but, instead, put a hoof to her mouth, thinking. She honestly couldn’t think of a counter-argument that’d suffice her intelligent friend.
Twilight smiled in spite of herself. “Hmph. See? Can’t find a reason.”
That smirk on her friend’s face gave Rainbow the motivation to actually conjure up a reason. Or rather, a question in return. “Well, why do you need books on the first day? Don’t they go down in price?”
Twilight raised a hoof, about to speak, before Rainbow said, “I mean the ones you don’t put out in your library.”
The unicorn lowered her hoof. Twilight scrunched her eyebrows in thought for a moment or two, before looking up and sighing resignedly. “Well, I guess you’ve got me there.”
“Perfect!” Rainbow darted into another room, and various objects began flying back out into the main room at ludicrous speeds. “Now, help me find some stuff I can sell to the pawn shop that’ll get me enough bits! I have some money saved up, but it isn’t quite enough…”
Twilight trotted over, albeit uneasily. Being a pony accustomed to the ground, the feel of clouds beneath her hooves was weird and somewhat alien. The only thing keeping her from falling through to the ground at that moment was a certain spell she had learned. But, that didn’t take away from the strangeness of it all.
Stranger still was the odd whirring she kept hearing as she got closer to the opening to the next room. It wasn’t continuous – just a short, half-a-second long whir that happened about every two seconds. Twilight looked all around the room at the cumulus walls and furnishings, but could find no source to the strange noise.
She put it at the back of her mind for the time being. “What exactly are you looking to sell?” she called out to Dash, who was busy burrowing through a closet.
“Hmm…” the pegasus said, throwing a small binder she was holding in her teeth to the side. “Not quite sure. I need more time to look through all the different keepsakes and stuff – honestly, I’d just like to find one thing that’d do it, and have it be over and done with.”
Twilight shook her head. That’s Rainbow Dash, always looking for the quickest way out of things.
The whirring once again established itself in her mind, and the unicorn once again tried to throw it elsewhere. She distracted herself with some of the various odds and ends that her friend was throwing out onto the cloud floor. Twilight levitated one of them, a crystalline paperweight, in front of her.
“You could try selling this,” she suggested, rotating the heart-shaped cut glass, which had a bit of a blue tint to it. “It could bring you in a couple bits, guaranteed.”
Dash stopped her looking and changed her focus to the object in the her friend’s reddish-purple field of levitation. “Yeah, try, like, three bits. I want about three dozen. It’s a paperweight; I could probably get one for five bits anywhere.”
Twilight let it drop to the floor unceremoniously. It landed with a small poof on the cloud floor.
Whirr…whirr…whirr…whirr…
“Hey!” Twilight suddenly exclaimed, resisting the urge to look for the sound again. “What about this old necklace of yours?” An immaculate pearl necklace, complete with a sapphire heart in the middle, floated in her field of levitation. “I’ve never seen you wear it. This – this would go for a lot of bits.”
Rainbow once again stopped and saw for herself, only to lower her eyelids in a slightly comical, almost disbelieving look. “Twilight, that’s the necklace I wore to senior prom.”
“Okay," the unicorn said, the inflection in her voice telling Dash that the idea was still rooted in that mind of hers. " Well, you aren’t going to senior prom anytime soon, are you?”
“Twilight." Rainbow's voice was as flat as three-day old cider. "Not selling it.”
The necklace was soon flying across the room, landing among the pile of other junk deemed unsellable. Already this task was becoming tedious. Twilight sighed. “Okay, then – what am I looking for?”
“Something that might sell for a lot,” Rainbow replied, returning to her closet of random stuff. “Try for something I don’t really care about. Just one thing, preferably.”
Whirr…whirr…whirr…whirr…
“Okay, I might be able to look better if that noise wasn’t there,” Twilight finally said.
“What noise?” asked Rainbow, as she pulled her head out of the closet, a metal bucket loosely on top of her head.
Twilight seemed not to notice. “That whirring sound. Don’t you hear it?”
An ear perked to listen, Dash raised her eyebrows expectantly, tuning in to hear whatever her friend was going on about. “Nah, Twi’ – I don’t hear anything. I don’t have a washing machine or dryer. Hay, I barely have clothes.”
“You seriously don’t hear it?” Twilight inquired curiously. “That weird whirring that only happens once every one or two seconds?”
Dash hovered over to where Twilight was standing, the bucket tumbling off of her head and down her prismatic mane. She stood next to her friend, perking an ear and waiting expectantly like she did before. Except, this time, she did an about-face, and, pointing a hoof up to the roof, said, “You mean that?”
Purple eyes followed cyan hoof, and Twilight almost did a double-take at the thing she had missed upon her entry into the house.
There, hanging from the only spot of non-cloud on the ceiling, the only spot of wood, was a pearly white ceiling fan. Five polished oak blades shaped into rounded rectangles slowly cutting through the air at a modest pace. Enough to barely attempt to cool it.
A bit off-kilter, also. The slight wobble of the fan made itself clear to Twilight, and she now heard the whirring more clearly and frequently that she had isolated the source. The rotor pieces were rubbing against the frame of the fixture itself. It needed to be fixed, or replaced, or… something.
“Wait a second,” the pony said, interrupting her own thoughts. “Dash, why do you need a ceiling fan? It’s cooler up here than it is down in Ponyville.”
Rainbow shrugged. “I don’t know. My family was getting rid of it – I decided to take it.”
“But, that whirring – doesn’t it bother you?”
Dash shook her head. “Used to, but now I can’t even hear it anymore. It’s just part of the background. Like the fact that it does absolutely nothing to cool the air, either. Pretty busted if you ask me.”
“I was going to say, how could a pony as cool as Rainbow Dash need something to make her even cooler?” Twilight asked, a bit playfully.
Dash returned the mood. “Beats me!”
The sound of two ponies laughing echoed throughout the cloud house. Twilight, after her brief shared chuckle, sat down, just thinking about the strangeness of it, now that it had been brought to her attention. She had found it rather odd. The fact that it was broken, it made annoying sounds, it didn’t do what it was supposed to, and yet it looked good.
Somehow, Twilight thought that not many ponies who entered the home, Rainbow Dash included, stopped and looked up at the ceiling to admire it. It seemed to just be there, without a purpose.
The gears in Twilight’s head began to turn.
“Dash!” Twilight gasped.
“What is it, Twi’? Think of something? Or another comment about my coolness?”
“No, not that – the fan! Sell the fan!”
The fan whirred on as Dash looked up at it once again. Images, ones that Rainbow almost never recalled, and for good reason, glimmered behind her rose eyes upon the thought of selling the fan. She simply stared at the device, not saying a word. Eventually, the pegasus asked, a bit warily, “Somepony would actually… you know, take something like this? And buy it?”
“Well, it looks good,” Twilight stated. “Not to mention that at a pawn shop, looks are all that really matters. This thing could go for easily what those headphones cost."
She pointed a hoof to the broken fan on the ceiling. "You wanted an item, Dash? Here you go. This is your item."
Expecting to see an excited face, one where eyes were lit up at the realization she had found her treasure to sell, Twilight was rather surprised to see Rainbow's face. It was flooding with hesitance. “…Really?”
“Definitely." The unicorn cocked her head to the side, feeling the urge to question Dash's reaction, but continued anyway. "If you really want those headphones and make this place ‘less quiet’, I suggest we get this thing off its hooks now and take it over before the first, precious day is up,” she added sarcastically. Looking at the fan itself, “Now, it doesn’t seem like the thing is all that hard to take off…”
“Twilight…”
“I suppose there are a few wires, though how you hook them up in a cloud, I’ve got no idea…”
“Twi’…”
“Maybe I should teleport back to the house real quick to see if I can get a screw driver…”
“Twilight!” Rainbow finally spoke, loud enough for her rambling friend to stop and look over questioningly.
The pegasus sighed. It was going to sound lame; she knew it before she spoke.
“I…” she began reluctantly, swallowing a gulp of air before continuing. “I don’t really want to sell the fan.”
Twilight turned to the fan, and then back to her friend. The action was repeated, before she said, “Well, if it’s a matter of getting it off, we can do it safely and quickly pretty easily…”
“No, Twilight,” Dash said again, a bit more sternness present in her voice. “I don’t think want to sell the fan. Like I said, I got it from my family.”
“Oh.” Twilight’s words were slowed greatly in comparison to her previous ramblings. She had forgotten that Rainbow said something about the broken fan's source. “Yes, you, um – you said. Sorry.”
“I-It’s fine,” Rainbow replied, her usual cool demeanor coming back to replace the reflective, almost melancholy one. “Now, I’m sure there’s something else we can find, so let’s keep looking.”
Twilight nodded a quick, jerky nod while Rainbow hovered back to the other room, to where the junk closet was. The gears hadn’t stopped turning in the the unicorn’s mind. Dash didn’t often lose her “coolness” like she just had. Something was special about that fan.
“Hey, Dash?”
“What’s up, Twi’? Find something?”
“No, not about the selling things…I’m just curious…was the fan always broken?”
The rumbling and tossing and shaking from the background paused. After a moment, “As long as I can remember. Why do you ask?”
"Oh, um... just curious, I guess."
Rainbow looked back at her friend, her eyes just peeking over the edge of the closet door. "Don't worry about my fan, Twilight. I'm not selling it, and that's all there is to it."
Dash's head disappeared into the closet, and the noises returned to their full volume as if nothing has occurred. So did Twilight’s questioning. “Well, then – why did you want a broken fan that your family wanted to get rid of?”
The din stopped. Again. This time, there was a longer pause.
Dash poked her head out, again, her face glowing with irritation. “Twilight, I told you, don't worry about it.” she said flatly.
"It just doesn't make sense, though! Why have a broken fan? Why haven't you gotten it fixed yet?"
"I just haven't, okay? It doesn't really bother me. I don't even hear it."
"Then get rid of it!"
"No, Twilight. How many times do I have to tell you that I'm not getting rid of it?" The irritated face was slowly morphing into one of anger. Dash was becoming increasingly possessive of the broken fan that her friend was so eagerly questioning about.
"Why not? Why can't you just tell me?"
"Because I don't want to remember!"
Rainbow stopped in her tracks. The anger in her face was replaced by one of shock at what she had just said. It was the truth, without doubt - but, Dash honestly felt no desire to remember the events she associated with the broken fan on the ceiling. She didn't need to tell Twilight that, though. She shouldn't tell Twilight that. Unfortunately, she was a bit too late on that realization.
Her friend looked to her with sad eyes. Rainbow cringed even before the words came out of Twilight's mouth. "Rainbow Dash...what happened?"
Rainbow closed her eyes, looking away. She wanted to tell her no. Dash wanted to tell her friend that she didn't want to talk about what happened. Even as she thought about it, though, images of her past, ones she had kept sealed away for the longest time, began to come back into light. Rainbow had done just fine not thinking about them.
She wasn't sure how well she was going to be if she was thinking about them. They were so painful... it might actually do some good to talk about them to somepony with a listening ear.
Dash looked back to her friend. The eyes hers were met with were brimming with expectation. Her mind was set.
“Twilight, sit down on the couch. I'm going to make us some tea.”
* * *
“It was my dad who bought the fan, or so my uncle tells me. A Frederickson Model Number One. First of its kind.”
Dash took a sip of her tea, using her wing to hold the handle and lift it to and from her muzzle. “Funny. The ‘Number One’ fan broke pretty quickly, as I’ve been told.”
“I take it that the fact it's broken isn't really the reason you want to sell it, though, is it?” Twilight asked, remaining patient.
Rainbow shook her head.
Dash sighed, closing her eyes as she breathed out. She took another sip of her tea and placed it on the table. Still looking at the ceramic cup, she said, in almost a whisper, “Ever have some memories you wish you never had?”
Twilight looked upwards, attempting to rack her mind for such an instance. She nodded slowly.
The ceiling fan whirred like it had been doing, like it had always been doing, in the background. Dash nodded, swallowing.
“Now, those same memories - have you ever felt like you can never truly part with them? Like, they're a major part of your life or something?”
Twilight found it a bit more difficult to find an instance of that. “You mean, like a childhood memory or something?”
“Well,” the pegasus continued. “Not all of them are necessarily childhood, but yes, earlier memories. One that have helped me to be the pony I am today, no matter how much I hate to admit it. Now, one more question for you: those memories, or any memories you have - can you attach them to something physical?"
Rainbow's friend pursed her lips, recalling to mind her favorite childhood doll. ”You know, I think I can."
Dash looked over to Twilight, a soft, sad smile on her face. "Then you might understand."
She looked to the fan, brokenly whirring as it always had. “I have a lot of bad memories. Ones I wish I could forget, but at the same time, I don't want to part with.”
Twilight raised her eyebrows. She understood what Dash was trying to get at, but at the same time, she wasn't sure she did. Thankfully, Rainbow continued.
“They were important memories - ones that helped make me, well, me, as I've said before. But they all weren't peachy keen. And this fan - this broken, whirring Frederickson fan - it was involved in the majority of them. My memories are connected to the fan. Almost as strong as a physical connection. As long as the fan is here, my memories are, too." Dash remained fixated on the device, her tone becoming sadder. "As long I forget the fan is here, I forget the memories are, too. Just the way I want them."
The unicorn opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing, thinking better of it. Then she spoke anyway. "I'm a bit confused. I understand that they're important memories; but there's no way you'd want to part with them? If they're that bad, they can't be that important, can they?"
Dash looked to her friend. "You'd be surprised. They're all coming back to me, and I wish they just stayed invisible like that fan does."
She sighed. This wasn't going to be easy. She needed to make Twilight understand, to help her friend help her. Looks like she'd have to do a bit more.
"Take, for instance, one of my more important childhood memories. One about my mother."
* * *
“Go fish.”
Rainbow stamped a hoof on the table. “Again, Cinna? Really?”
Cinnamon Dash giggled from across the table, her evergreen coat shaking with laughter. “Hey, just 'cause I’m your older sister doesn’t mean I go easy on you, Rainy.”
Rainbow fake-groaned and reached into the deck, pulling a card out at random. The playing card slid back in her hooves smoothly over the surface of the table. She gave it a glance with her small, frizzy, filly hoof, and placed it with the others she had in her hooves.
“Hmmm…” Cinnamon said, rubbing a hoof against her chin. “Got any…threes?”
Rainbow the filly looked through her cards. Ha, thinks she has me beat, does she? But she doesn’t know that I –
There it was. A three of diamonds. Just sitting there in her hooves.
She began to wonder if her sister was psychic.
“Ugh! Cinna!”
“Oh, did I take another of your cards? Ha, ha, ha!”
Rainy slid a card across the table. “You have to be kidding me. You’re cheating, I know it!”
Just then, the slam of a door echoed through the house, destroying the peaceful aura the vinyl Cinnamon was playing had instilled in the home. The winds of outside crept in, and the force of cloud upon cloud was somehow enough to make the fan above the table wobble a bit. It began whirring.
“Aw, shoot, didn’t Dad just fix that?” Rainbow asked, looking up at the five-pronged thing.
“Hey, I'm not the one who can't handle these kids!”
As if on cue, Rainbow thought to herself as the booming voice of her dad echoed throughout the house. A mad, booming voice.
“Oh yeah? Well, I can see the one who can't handle his wife!”
And there was the shrill yet street-based tongue of Rainbow and Cinnamon’s mother, just as expected.
They were at it again.
“I can't believe you!” Dad was screaming. “I try to take you out on a date, do something nice for you, and this - this is how you repay me?”
“I can't repay you anything, remember?” the opposing voice yelled back. “Apparently I've wasted all of my bits on drugs, remember?”
“Well, somepony I know took a whole bunch when we first started out!”
“That was years ago!”
"You could still be doing them! Ever wonder why we're always out of bits?”
Cinnamon shook her head, looking down at the card table. “We better pack this stuff up, I guess. Don’t want them stormin’ through our game like they did last time.”
Rainbow agreed. When Mom and Dad fought, it was brutal. As kids, they were never struck, but they came pretty close to it sometimes.
Using her wings, Cinnamon grabbed as many of the cards as she could, her younger sister giving her the hoof of cards she currently had. All of them were shoved hastily back into the paper box, Cinnamon turning it right-side up and repeatedly hitting the bottom of it against the table to get the cards straightened.
“Oh, give it a rest! Why would I start up again? I have little fillies now, in case you haven't noticed!”
“Then start doing your fair share of parenting them!”
“Dammit,” Cinnamon swore under her breath, pulling the top over the box. “They’re dragging us into it again.”
“Oh, is that so? Do you want to see me parent? Is that what you want?”
“Yes, in fact I do!”
“Alright then!”
Stomping came closer to their table. Rainbow felt a surge of panic as in walked in their mother, frazzled and hyperventilating and very, very angry.
“Get to bed, the both of you!” she demanded in an exhausted but scream-y voice. “Now.”
“But it’s only 8:30!” Rainbow protested, almost instantly putting a hoof to her mouth to cover her blunder.
“Why you little - listen to your mother!” Mommy Dearest raised a hoof to smack her little filly.
Just as she was about to hit Rainbow, another, dark brown figure leapt in front of the two of them, blocking the mother’s attempt to hit the child. Dad to the rescue.
“What has gotten into you?” he shouted. “You've never hit the children before!”
“Well, maybe it's high time we start.”
“You know what?” Dad said loudly, looking down at the ground for only half a second before meeting his wife’s eyes again. “Get out.”
“What did you say to me?”
“Get out of my house until you can be a real parent to your children.”
For a moment, all that reverberated through the house was their breathing. Mom’s heavy, deep breathing; Dad’s hyperventilation. The two fillies were as petrified as a deer in the carriage-lights. The only other noise was the off-kilter whirring of that dumb fan, and Cinnamon's record that no one had bothered to turn off.
There was a small click as the final song in the album ended.
That dumb whirring was as close to silence as it could get in that room, each blade threatening to cut the tension which was as taut as a tripwire.
“You know what?” Mom replied, her voice softening but maintaining all the sternness and frostiness it did before, “I think I will.”
Dad said nothing. Still hyperventilating, he watched as Rainbow and Cinnamon’s mom composed herself, and without so much as a “hmph!” walked towards the door, still hanging open.
She didn’t stop for anything – she just held her head up high, never looking back. Rainbow and Cinnamon's mother walked right out the door, shutting it behind her.
Just like that.
Without so much as a goodbye or anything.
The silence that perforated the room would’ve been louder than a sonic boom, had it not been for the busted ceiling fan.
The thing kept whirring long after Dad has stopped hyperventilating and all three had looked to the door for minutes on end, watching, waiting.
* * *
“But that was it,” present-day Rainbow said, “She cantered out on us. And when I say that, I literally mean she cantered out the door. Never came in again.”
There was brief silence for a moment, save for the whirring of the ceiling fan which had witnessed it all. Twilight found her mouth dry.
When she finally spoke, her voice was on the edge of cracking. “Oh, Dash…” She trailed off. As her voice decreased in action, her mind increased. She was beginning to see what Dash had meant.
"Even after all those years, I can't believe my mother did that," Dash said, anger threatening to enter her voice, "It was the truth that she did drugs and stuff, but to this day, I don't know if she was doing them while Cinnamon and I were still around. I doubt I'll ever know. What I do know is that she could barely handle herself."
Rainbow sighed. "If it wasn't for my dad, as her family tells me, she'd still be out on the street. Even when she was with him, she couldn't handle herself. They fought all the time. Over dumb stuff, but sometimes over us kids."
The pegasus squeezed her eyes shut, as worse memories came to light. Time when Mom was screaming in her face. Times when she had threatened to disown her. The one time where she actually insulted her.
When Dash opened her eyes again, they were shaking. Water was forming around the edges. "I... " she attempted to say, before her voice cracked. Rainbow swallowed, taking a deep breath, and tried again. "I hated her."
Twilight put a hoof on Rainbow's shoulder. "But, it's in the past now, isn't it?"
Dash nodded slowly, the anger leaving as she was finally able to say the words she had wanted to all her life. That she had hated her mother. Four syllables have never taken that much trouble to come out. As they did, though, she felt as if the whole of Equestria was lifted off of her shoulders. "Yeah."
Twilight kept her hoof on her friend's shoulder. Rarely had she seen Dash on the verge of tears, and it seemed that this fan was connected with a lot of events she wasn't usually willing to disclose. The unicorn could see, though, the world of good it was doing her friend. This wasn't about Twilight learning about the fan anymore. It was about helping Dash.
Twilight thought about continuing, and opened her mouth - and then immediately shut it. It was hard enough to get Rainbow to tell one memory - why put her through more?
Rainbow looked to her friend, the long between them being broken by her voice. "Did you say something?"
The unicorn sighed. "I was, but, I'm not sure I want to. I understand why you don't talk about your family anymore - but, it seems your sister was pretty great."
Rainbow sniffled. “Are you kidding? She was the best friend any filly could ever ask for. Smart, kind, caring – and really fun to be around."
Her friend cocked her head to the side. "Well, you've never talked about her before."
The room suddenly became flooded with an aura of depression as soon as Twilight looked at Dash's face. Her friend was frowning, looking down at her hooves with disinterest. This seemed like a touchy subject.
"I don't usually like to talk about my sister,” Rainbow said, "mostly due to the fact that I try not to remember her. She may have been great, but there's one thing I have trouble forgiving her for. Just like my mother." She paused. "Exactly like my mother."
"How so?"
* * *
The bag fell to the table with a plop. She opened the top of it with her wing, checking to make sure everything was there.
“Sis, please,” Rainbow, now an older filly with a cutie mark, pleaded. “Don’t do this.”
Cinnamon sighed. She looked back to her sister with sad, soft, apologetic eyes. “Oh, Rainy. If only you understood…”
“What I understand,” the cyan pony retorted, “is that you’re leaving me and Dad to go off with some guy. Cinna, you’re not even out of high school yet.”
“I only have a couple months, it wouldn’t matter anyway. And Polaris is not just ‘some guy’, Rainbow. He understands me. He helps me. He’s the motivation I have to leave this. To leave our poverty. To leave that stallion you call Dad.”
“Look, I have to deal with it,” Rainbow snapped back, “and I’m a lot younger than you are. You’re telling me somepony who’s almost grown-up shouldn’t deal with a parent’s alcoholism, but somepony who’s younger should?”
Cinnamon reached out a hoof in consolation, but Rainbow swatted it away.
It had been five or so years since the sisters' mother cantered out on them. Their father, who used to drink every now and then as a hobby, had trouble dealing with her leaving and raising two kids on his own, took on alcohol as a full-time job. If he wasn't the most pleasant person before, he was one hundred times worse when under the influence. Rainbow knew this; Cinnamon did, too.
“Don’t you do that!” The younger pegasus was drowning in a mix of anger and sorrow, yelling at her sister for attempting to put a hoof on her. “Don’t you try to console me.”
“Rainy, you know I’d take you if I could. But, it’s a dangerous world…”
“So, trotting off to marry some stallion you’ve known for only a couple months is your solution? Aren’t you the pony who always told me to never run away from your problems?”
Whirr…whirr…whirr…whirr…
The busted fan did the talking the two girls couldn’t. Cinnamon sighed, lowering her head so that her younger sister couldn’t see the tears forming. “I…I did tell you that. And I stand by it.”
“Well, I’ll have to second-guess your judgment from now on, then. Somepony shouldn’t be giving out hay they wouldn’t eat.”
Rainbow’s rose eyes stared into that of Cinnamon’s emerald ones. The smaller of the two had Cinnamon locked in a position she had no desire to be in.
“Rainbow,” the older one insisted, “Please…”
“No, Cinnamon.” Rainbow Dash stood her ground. “If you were a real sister of mine, you wouldn’t be leaving me to deal with…with him by myself. Instead, you’re running away from your problems. Do you know who’s going to have to deal with his anger once he’s found out you left?”
The ceiling fan whirred eternally. “Do you know?”
The fan was the only one to give a response. Rainbow didn’t like it.
“Celestia damn this fan!” she yelled, swearing at the inanimate object currently flooding her mind with obnoxious noise. “Why doesn’t he just get rid of this damn thing? It’s so…so….”
She stamped a hoof on the ground, gritting her teeth, her eyebrows scrunched together. Cinnamon put a caring hoof on her sister’s shoulder. “Rainbow, it’s okay…”
“No!” Rainbow said sternly, looking up at her evergreen sister with tears in her eyes, her voice cracking even as she began. “No, it’s not ‘okay’! My mom left me before I got my cutie mark. My dad’s an alcoholic who does nothing but yell and swear and threaten. All of my friends have no idea what the hay is going on here, and my best friend, my closest one, the one who’s been through it with me, is ditching me for some stallion that she barely knows just so that she can get out.”
The smaller pegasus was breathing heavily now. “Where’s my escape, huh? Where is it? Or do I not get one because ‘it’s too dangerous’? You think this is any easier for me? You’re leaving us all, Cinnamon. You…you’re so…you’re so selfish!”
The evergreen pegasus said nothing. She merely watched as Rainbow sat down, turned around, and buried her head in her hooves, sobbing. The older sister had no idea how to respond. Her younger sister had pinned her as the bad guy, and, as she came to realize it, she was the bad guy.
One last time, Cinnamon tried. “I know I am, Rainy. And I know this…this isn’t right for you, at all. And I think that, if you were in my position, you’d actually stay and watch over your little sister.”
The sobbing softened, gradually coming to a slow. Cinnamon continued.
“Rainbow Dash, you have one thing I don’t think I’ll ever be able to possess, and that’s a loyalty to your family. Something I wish I had. Something that makes you a better pony than me.”
The cyan pony looked up from her crying, her eyes puffy and reddened slightly.
“I’m sorry, Rainbow. I…I truly am.”
Cinnamon’s eyes watered as she looked down on her younger sister, who looked up to her with not pleading eyes, but stoic ones. Ones of anger, fury, sorrow-induced rage.
“And,” Rainbow began, “I’m sorry that I’ve kept you waiting. I don’t care all that you’ve admitted, you’re still leaving and that doesn’t change that. In fact, you should just leave right now.”
Cinnamon opened her mouth to say something, but, nothing could come out. Her sister, however, did speak.
“Get out of here, Cinnamon. Run away from your problems - just like you always told me not to.”
With that, Rainbow turned and buried her head in her hooves again. No tears flowed down from her face. She just closed her eyes and wept inside.
She heard nothing but the whirring of the fan for the longest time. And then, softly, but enough to interrupt the ambience, she heard the sliding of a bag off of the table. The poof of hooves against the cloud flooring. And the creak of the door letting in all the outside noises.
It hung there, for a minute or two. The humid air of the outside, the sound of cicadas’ calls and birds’ chirping and ponies milling about everywhere. The sounds wafted into the room like the smell of a freshly-baked pie wafts down the street.
And then, after a minute or so, the creak returned, and the door shut. All outside noise stopped.
All that Rainbow heard was the incessant whirring of the broken ceiling fan.
The young pegasus looked up from her hooves, her eyes still puffy and tired. She looked around the main room that she was in for a moment or two, but there was nopony else in there. The bag was off of the table, and Rainbow seemed to be the only one in the house at the moment.
“C…Cinnamon?” the pony called out into the room.
As if giving an answer, the fan continued what it had never stopped doing.
Whirr…whirr…whirr…whirr…
* * *
It was too much. The pegasus buried her head in her hooves and began crying.
Twilight had tears in her eyes, too, but she did her best to help her friend. She rubbed a hoof up and down her back. "There, there... "
"No, Twilight!" Rainbow bawled. "You don't understand! She was all that I had! My best friend! The one who went through what I went through. She knew what it was like. And... and... she left me!" She let out a sob and continued to weep into her hooves.
Twilight brushed away a tear of her own. What Rainbow went through... she shuddered on the inside. The unicorn thought she'd had a pretty decent life - she could only imagine what it must be like to have a mother and sister abandon you, and you were alone with an abusive father.
"Why do you think I live alone?" Dash sobbed, "There's no one else I want to live with but her! I don't even know where she is. She could be dead for all I know!"
Another bout of crying. Twilight never stopped rubbing her back. "I'm so sorry, Rainbow Dash. I really am."
"It doesn't change that fact, though," the pegasus said, still crying, but beginning to wind down. "It doesn't change that my mother was a pony who couldn't take care of herself, let alone her kids, and left. It doesn't change the fact that because she couldn't do that, my dad took up alcohol. It doesn't change that my only friend in the world at the time ran away! She left me with him! Those were the worst years of my life!"
Dash, getting her screaming out, was suddenly realizing that this was the first time she had taken the time to remember those memories. They were so terrible, so awful - she knew she was going to break down reliving them, and break down she did. The image of her mother walking out the door without a care in the world. The sweet voice of Cinnamon telling her that she was a much better pony than her older sister could ever hope to be, despite leaving anyway.
Even that damn fan stuck out in her mind. That wobbling thing that never stopped whirring. Never, it seemed at some times. Dad never did get around to fixing it.
Dad...
As her tears began to subside, another feeling came into her mind - the feeling of soft, brown forelegs wrapped around her in a warm embrace.
Dash wiped her tears, sniffling loudly. "They were the worst years of my life," she repeated. "But, at least somepony apologized for them."
Twilight maintained her friendly, comforting backrub. "You're saying Cinnamon came back and said sorry that she put you through it?"
A haughty chuckle found its way out of Rainbow Dash's throat. "Yeah, I wish." She shook her head. "No, Twilight. I haven't seen her since that night."
For the first time since this conversation truly began, Rainbow managed a smile. "I was given an apology for the years with my Dad by somepony else. Somepony I still hold dear to my heart today"
* * *
Dash grunted as she heaved another box into the carriage. Only two more to go.
She was now a young adult, moving from her home in Cloudsdale to Ponyville. It was high time to leave her childhood home – although, “childhood” isn’t exactly what Rainbow would’ve called it, considering how dysfunctional it was.
Her mother left before Dash had even gotten a cutie mark. Her sister before she entered high school. It ended up just being her and her dad.
Actually, her and her aunt and uncle and her dad. When high school rolled around, the decision was made to have Dash go to school somewhere else, away from the verbal abuse and alcoholism that was her father. A growing pegasus mare didn’t need that. She needed a loving environment. Enter her aunt and uncle from her mom’s side. They, unlike her, welcomed family, and didn’t run from it.
However, high school was now over, and Rainbow Dash was debating about college or not. She didn’t plan to do it here, though – now that she legally could leave, she was leaving.
The pegasus walked slowly back into the house to grab another box. The last two were on the cloud floor, just waiting for her to carry them away.
She reached one, and lifted the bottom with her forelegs, staggering for a second, but then regaining her balance as she began to walk out the door again.
Somepony was coming down the stairs just as she got to the door. The creak of the steps wasn't exactly in-sync, like whoever it was walked with a limp. Her father and his bum leg. Couldn’t the old man just let her move in peace?
Dash heaved another box into the carriage. One more to go.
“Rainbow?”
Her father, his hair now beginning to gray, stood at the doorway, timidly.
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Dad?”
“I… I’d like to talk to you for a minute, if you don’t mind.”
The cyan pegasus pointed a hoof to the carriage. “Dad, I’m kind of in the middle of something now.”
“You’re leaving, though. We can do it now while you’re still in the city.”
Dash sighed. “Alright, alright.”
The pegasus hovered inside, following her dad to the table under the broken ceiling fan that was still whirring, even now. Her dad sat down at the very surface where Rainbow had watched her mom leave, all those years ago. Where her sister had placed her bag before leaving all of them behind.
Rainbow followed suit, sitting across from her Dad. She put her hooves together, waiting just a smidge impatiently.
Dad exhaled. “This… this isn’t going to be easy for me to say. But, since you’re leaving, I feel I need to say it now. Now or never.”
Oh no, Dash thought, He’s going to say I can’t move or something like that.
“Yes, Dad?”
Another exhalation. The sound of the fan whirring filled the house for a moment or two.
“I’m sorry.”
Rainbow knit her eyebrows. “Huh? Sorry? For what?”
“I’m sorry for everything. I know it won’t mean much, but I am sorry.”
“Everything?” Dash was still confused.
“I mean, I’m sorry…for everything.”
It hit Rainbow like a train.
He was apologizing for her childhood.
She had an urge to slap him across the face. Tell him, “What’s sorry gonna do? I was traumatized because of you!” “Sorry” didn’t get rid of her parents fighting. “Sorry” didn’t forgive her mother’s cantering out. Didn’t excuse her sister’s need to leave. Didn’t lessen the pain of all the fighting she had gone through with her dad. All the threats, all the drinking – it didn’t really help anything at all.
She was about to tell him so, when another realization hit Dash harder than the first.
It was all he could do.
Could he go back and change everything? Of course not.
Even so, as the daughter looked into the sad, sapphire eyes of her father, she saw something she hadn’t seen in him for years – true compassion and regret. He meant it. He was sorry with all his heart.
No, her father couldn’t go back and change everything.
Something told Dash though, that he would if he could.
Her father… he actually apologized.
“Now,” her father continued, “I know you won’t forgive me. I don’t expect you to. Not after everything you’ve been through. But, I hope it’s at least some consolation that – “
Without any warning, the pegasus jumped over the table and wrapped her father in a tight embrace. His forelegs went rigid at first, but then slowly wrapped around her daughter’s in a family hug.
The warmth coming from his forelegs resulted in the warmest hug Rainbow had ever received.
The only sound in the room was that of the fan, providing the same ambiance it had since before Rainbow could remember.
Whirr…whirr…whirr…whirr…
“I love you, Rainy,” her father whispered in her ear, breaking the silence.
There was another pause. The whirring of the fan continued up above. Dash thought to the box she still had to pack into her carriage before her move to Ponyville. She thought of all the mistreatment she had gotten over the years. All the yelling her father did. All the drinking.
All the hardships that came with Rainbow’s childhood flooded into her mind.
Then, like a magic eraser, momentarily they all went away. Replaced by the knowledge that somepony had noticed. Somepony was sorry for everything.
The pony who had caused it.
The quiet noise of the busted Frederickson model was deafening at that moment. A tear rolled down Rainbow’s cheek.
“I love you, too, Dad.”
* * *
Twilight gave Dash a half-smile. “So, everything kinda-sorta-not-really worked out in the end, then?”
Dash grinned at her friend’s choice of phrasing. She sniffled. “I guess you could say that. My dad and I are a lot closer now than we were.”
Twilight nodded. “Sound like you had quite a…quite a previous life.”
“Guess so. And all that I have left of it is that fan up there.”
The two looked to the odd ceiling fan in Rainbow’s house. Whirring as it had done since the beginning of time, at least according to Dash.
The two looked to each other, Twilight looking at Rainbow happily. "That took a lot of guts, to say what you just did." She reached her forelegs out.
The two friends shared an embrace, the feeling similar to that of her father’s final hug before she had left for Ponyville.
Those memories…Dash had almost completely forgotten about them. Like they had been stored in some locker and that ceiling fan was the key. It was really odd.
The more the pegasus thought about it, though, it really wasn’t that odd at all.
“Well, I suppose we should keep looking for something to sell,” Twilight suggested, standing up. It had been a lot for her friend to say - she honestly needed something to take her mind off of all those things.“You still want to, don't you?”
“No doubt about it,” Dash said, smiling.
The unicorn walked into the next room. Rainbow looked at the empty tea cups sitting in front of her, totally forgetting that they were there.
Standing up, she reached out to go put them into the sink, but as she did, she stopped.
There was a weird noise.
The pegasus stopped for a second, perking her ear up and listening intently. She looked around the room, searching for the source of the noise, but couldn’t find one. A weird, mechanical sound. Something friction-related, she guessed. Like something rubbing against something else.
“Hey, Twi’,” Rainbow called from the main room, “Do you hear that?”
Twilight stopped scanning the closet and looked to her friend. “Hear what?”
“That weird whirring noise. Do you hear it?”
Twilight gave Dash the same comical “seriously look?” that she had been given earlier. “Dash, that’s your ceiling fan. Now, come on and help me look for sellable objects.”
“That’s my…fan?” With puffy, tired eyes from crying, Rainbow looked up to the ceiling fan. Sure enough, the brief whirring noises were in sync with the fan’s wobbling.
Dash stood, mesmerized by the object on the ceiling. It had become part of her ambiance for so long…she honestly couldn’t hear it anymore. Now, for the first time in years, she was actually hearing the whirring noise. She was hearing the background music of her life.
“Dash, are you coming to…” Twilight trailed off from the closet, spying her pegasus friend, “Dash, what are you doing?”
Rainbow was lying on her cloud floor, just staring up at the ceiling fan. “Twilight, would you come here for a second?”
The unicorn sighed and sauntered over to Dash, who patted the floor next to her. After giving the cloud floor a quick scan, Twilight laid down next to Dash, just watching the wobbly ceiling fan do what it had always done.
For a moment, nopony said anything. They let the fan do the talking.
Then, Rainbow Dash finally spoke. “You know, I think I can wait on those headphones.”
Twilight propped herself up on her forelegs and looked to her sky blue friend. “Oh, can you?”
Those rose-colored eyes drifted up to meet the lavender ones of Twilight’s. “I think so. It turns out that my house isn’t completely silent after all.”
The unicorn smiled, lying back down next to her friend with a smug grin on her face. “So, I guess this means…”
“Sh, sh,” Rainbow shushed, “Just be quiet and listen for a while.”
There were no words. Just two friends lying on the floor in the pegasus’s house, watching a broken Frederickson Model Number One spin as it always had done. Not blowing any cold air at all, making that noise it did. Just spinning around and around like it always did.
Rainbow Dash sighed and let the orchestra of her life play its beautiful symphony.
Whirr…whirr…whirr…whirr…
Music to her ears.