Labors at Sunrise
Rainbow Dash sparkles when she flies.
Not literally—usually not literally. Her mane and tail can have a very striking glow, though, when they’re caught by the light in the right way. Sometimes it’s just… oh, it’s gorgeous. A splash of flavor and excitement and joy, streaking through the sky.
But the light isn’t what I’m talking about.
It’s not that she’s lifeless, when she’s on the ground—which is rare. She’s still full of energy and stuff, when she’s not napping or sleeping or slacking off, or… there’s probably something else she does on the ground, too, but it’s not coming to me.
She belongs in the sky, though, and she knows it. I catch a close-up glimpse of her big, bright eyes, as she shoots past the balloon and the wake bats at my mane like an excited foal. She winks at me, a grin splitting her face almost in two, and that fleeting image is burned into my eyes. Kind of like when you’ve stared at the sun too long, only… Rainbow Dash.
I don’t have to think about it. My hooves start clapping all on their own, and I smile back at her whether I want to or not. But I do. Of course I do.
The sun’s coming up, now, inching over the horizon. However many colors you think the sky has, it finds a way to sneak in just a little bit more. That cloud’s orange with touches of yellow, that one off in the distance, that one’s a deep, husky red, and when I look behind me there’s touches of purple and blue stretched out at the other end.
I turn around again just in time to see Rainbow Dash breaching one of those beautiful clouds, popping it like a balloon.
And then she does… a thing. I couldn’t tell you what it is. It’s a loop and a twist and a swirl and a corkscrew and…
I just know that it takes my breath away.
And that notoriously lazy Rainbow Dash was up well before sunrise, practicing a trick she hasn’t shown anybody else.
And that I’m the one who gets to see it.
It’s tough to say how that makes me feel, it really is. Giddy and bubbly and floaty, like the balloon I’m riding in, but much more energetic.
Eventually Rainbow wraps up. It feels like it’s come too soon, but there are other things to do in the day, and she’s breathing slightly hard when she gracefully circles around to slip into the basket of the balloon.
I rush over to plop down in front of her. “You were amazing!”
She chuckles, batting at my foreleg with her wing. “You always say that…”
“Only ‘cause it’s true.”
“No argument there.” She exhales loudly, her wings ruffling. Even “grounded,” she’s rarely not in motion; now, she’s glancing around, her eyes wandering. “So, we sticking around up here for a bit, or…?”
“Straight to the point, huh?” Scooting a little closer, I turn to shimmy up to her side. “I thought the sunrise should’ve made things pretty clear.”
“My bad, I just—”
“You’ve got twenty places to be the next couple of days, right?” The life a Wonderbolt who’s friends with the princess and also a teacher and also so many other things. I couldn’t handle that, and I don’t want to.
“… Something like that. This is a pretty cool one, though.”
“Well. Ready for it to be cooler?”
We’ve got presents for each other, in the corner of the basket, wrapped up and ready for presentation. It’s very difficult to think about this without smirking.
And that seems to be infectious. Rainbow grins, stamping one of her hooves excitedly. “Let’s do it. Me first? You first?”
“I’ve been really looking forward to this, so if you don’t mind…”
“Works for me.”
I lean in to give her a little nuzzle, which she reciprocates, and then I scurry off to go drag over the package meant for her, which is wide and flat. “Be careful with it, please.”
“When am I not careful?”
As I turn to put the present in front of her, I give her a look. Her nose scrunches up and she waves a hoof limply. “When it matters, I mean,” she says.
I snicker, nudging the present towards her and then sitting patiently at a comfortable distance. “Here you go.”
It’s tough not to be a little nervous, as she tears open the wrapping. She’s not known for tact or subtlety, after all. And the gift is… well, amateurish, if I’m being objective. Literally so, in fact.
And when Rainbow pulls aside the wrapping to reveal a painting, she reacts quizzically at first, tilting her head and squinting. There’s a happy little crook of her eyebrow and twitch of her lip as she recognizes her own likeness, and then her eyes dart to mine. “Cool subject,” she says, “but who’d you get to—”
“I did!” I announce, puffing up with what I swear is a bit of pride, not just childish giddiness.
Just like that, Rainbow’s smiling. “No way!” she exclaims, giving the painting a closer look. “I didn’t realize you painted.”
“Look at it again. I don’t.” I hope it looks like… well, I’m satisfied with it looking like something. The scene it attempts to depict isn’t so different from the one I’ve been witness to this morning.
I think the sparkles look nice, at least.
“It’s cool,” says Rainbow. I can tell she means it. “Looks like you spent a lot of time on it.”
“At a positively glacial pace, I’m sure.” Not all of it was fun. I’m not good enough for that. Probably won’t ever be.
Rainbow’s face makes a pretty compelling argument, though. “So why this?” She looks at me, but not for long, and her mouth’s twitching and bending like she’s trying to hold back laughter.
“Because you couldn’t find that in any store, no matter how hard you looked.”
“No, the ones that look like this don’t get sold.”
I roll my eyes at her, huffing out a breath. “Everybody’s a critic.”
She snickers. After a moment she finally puts it down long enough to shuffle over and wrap a wing around my shoulders. “I can’t believe you talked me into letting you go first,” she whines in that raspy croak of hers. “Mine’s not nearly as cool.”
I lean into her side; her feathers are soft and warm against my skin, their touch still surprisingly dextrous. “Doesn’t need to be.”
“But it does though.”
She gets a poke in the ribs, and a sterner look. “No. Doesn’t.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re not listening.” She’s given me something special just by making time for this. Anything more is a bonus; I’ve had my mind made up there for a while.
“I am. My brain isn’t.”
“Uh-huh. You can wait, if you’d like. Give it to me some other time, when the competition’s less recent.”
“Okay. When you least expect it, it’ll be there.”
“Can’t wait.”
“Too bad. You’re gonna.”
My eyebrows arch upwards.
But, well… waiting doesn’t seem so bad, right now.
I reach up and give her a kiss on the cheek. It makes her squirm a little, and that makes me giggle, especially when she gets me back on the mouth.
Things are pretty nice.