Inspired by Smoke and Sweat
Sweetie Belle was so enthralled that she clean forgot to press the stopwatch. It was still ticking when the show slowed down and the audience in her head got up for drinks.
Guiltily, she pressed the button. The result? A time worthy of a normal pegasus, perhaps, but not one befitting the supersonic mid-air writing tool that was…
Rainbow Dash landed hard on the grass beside her. Up close, she stank of drenched hair and adrenalin that dissolved the nose like acid. That killed the mood somewhat.
“Um…” said Sweetie Belle.
“So!” spluttered Rainbow in-between the gasps. “How! Did I! Do!?”
“Well…”
The trouble was: there was too much working against Sweetie Belle.
Blue, vast, open, gentle summer skies. Pine trees of Whitetail Wood, so fragrant they put her in a trance. Great wide rolling hills outside Ponyville town, away from the messy hubbub and closer to the puffy bumblebees and the colouring book world of meadow flowers.
“It was…” Sweetie Belle squirmed.
Distracting. That’s what all this painter-perfect scenery was. And this was just the backdrop to the performance.
Rainbow tutted and staggered round, peering over her shoulder. “OAUGH! Ten seconds slower!? I swear I was ahead of my time the whole…” Her stock of words ran out, so her brain tossed in: “…time!”
“Yeah, about that –”
“Again!” Rainbow threw herself up into the air.
At least Sweetie Belle was comfortable, though she wondered if a nice, fluffy cloud pillow would sweeten the deal. Probably too wet for a unicorn like her. Plus the whole little hiccup that she’d go right through it.
She sighed and lay back on the grass, curly mane flopping into her eyes as though to box her for being so foolish.
Up high, Rainbow Dash squared herself up for the challenge.
Both of them waited for the smoke to clear. Then…
“You ready!?” she heard Rainbow Dash shout.
“READY!” she shrieked, voice cracking at the effort. “THREE! TWO! ONE! GO!”
Rainbow shot off. Sweetie Belle hit the levitating stopwatch, then lay back again to soak up the dewy tickles of the grass in her ears.
Even now on the umpteenth go, Rainbow weaved, ducked, zigzagged, curled round. To watch the sky write itself in rainbows… Sweetie Belle wondered if this was what Scootaloo saw all the time, but could only capture with one word: “Awesome!”
Whereas hanging around Rarity had introduced Sweetie Belle to quite the sophisticated vocabulary. Rainbow Dash in motion was elegant, exquisite, extraordinarily agile, a swift of art, a dove of colours, a hawk of martial arts savaging the air, a peacock of a blade with a tail that sliced clean through the eye. Her ninja’s stealth met the exotic power of an Amaponian warrior and the raw speed of a fencing champion. Her silken silence hid a steel flash of vicious leonine fury and claws. She was a beast. She was a beauty. She –
Oops.
Sweetie Belle hastily hit the stopwatch just as Rainbow Dash landed.
“It’s gotta be this time!” barked Rainbow Dash, too angry to pant properly. “OAUGH, WHAT!? Twelve seconds now!?”
“That’s… pretty good,” ventured Sweetie Belle.
“Not good enough!”
They both looked up.
What Rainbow had done was an old Wonderbolt trick. At the right press of her hind leg, a small device tucked against the dock of her tail spewed smoke. Rainbow then flew through the air, spelling out – down to the punctuation mark – a message in the sky. The motto of the Wonderbolts, back when they’d still been part of the Earth-Unicorn-Pegasus Guard.
Per ardua ad astra!
Impressively, she’d managed it in joined-up cursive, which saved repeatedly kicking the device to get it to stop-start between letters.
“Not good enough,” repeated Rainbow Dash.
Sweetie Belle stared at her as if she’d suddenly fainted and started falling out of the sky mid-routine.
“What are you talking about!?” she exclaimed. “Look at that!”
“Yeah,” said Rainbow warily.
“The italic alone is just perfect. And you looped the ‘ardua’ like it was nothing. Rarity writes like that, and she’d have to stop and bite her tongue ligg dith just to try something like that.”
Suspiciously, Rainbow gaped from her to the floating smoke letters and back. Her mouth might be caught off guard, but her lowered brows were ready with the skeptical shield, just in case.
“It’s not too… slanty?” she said.
“Nope.”
“Yeah, well… I still want to try again. All or nothing.”
In a particular “Don’t say I didn’t warn yooouuu!” sing-song voice, Sweetie Belle said, “You’re gonna knock yourself ooouuut…”
But she didn’t know Rainbow as well as she’d thought; the pegasus stiffened, and despite wobbling and stumbling, flared out her wings.
“Watch me!” Rainbow snapped.
She shot up into the air.
“Again!”
Sweetie Belle groaned and reset the stopwatch.
How did Rainbow not see how good she was? She acted like the perfect motto in the sky was a big ink blot. At her worst, even Rarity would throw in a couple of self-congratulations at the same time she beat herself up over a dress.
Although that said, Rarity could get like this too. Call Sweetie Belle over to ask her opinion of a new ballroom gown, and what should have taken Sweetie Belle a quick “I like it!” would end with her standing around, waiting for Rarity to make picky adjustment number umpteenth and ask for an opinion every time. Anyone would think Sweetie Belle was a hireable mirror.
Sweetie Belle squinted really hard at Rainbow’s silhouette against the glare of the sky. Still, try catching Sweetie Belle being unhelpful.
“READY!” she shouted up. “THREE! TWO! ONE! GO!”
She barely scrambled to hit the stopwatch.
Up above, Rainbow flew through a new patch of sky whilst the old smoke message faded into the background. Even down here, Sweetie Belle heard the “COME! ON!” and “ALMOST! THERE!”
Per ardua ad astra, maybe, but Sweetie Belle merely sat there and the stars appeared naturally in her eyes.
Rainbow was insane. She was absolutely stunning.
When she half-landed, half-crashed, her spoor of a smell led the mind to think of heaving, panting tigers, wet weakness clinging to their fur, yet sizzling away under the sheer friction of muscles poised, fangs slick with hunger, skin flowing into a controlled, stalking stride. Her very wings unsheathed as sabres.
It wouldn’t be a smell suited for Rarity’s nose, but in her ruthless self-punishment, Rainbow had a beauty and power all of her own.
She also had a chance to peer over Sweetie Belle’s shoulder.
“You didn’t hit the stop button!?” she roared. “Sweetie Belle! You had one job to –!”
“I’m sorry!” yelled Sweetie Belle back in a high-pitched moan. “It’s just really hard to remember what to do when you’re up there doing stuff.”
“You serious!?” Yet Rainbow’s tail flicked idly. Something of the tigress backed off.
“It was just so hard not to watch.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah, it’s like…” How did Rarity put it once? “…like poetry in motion.”
Rainbow’s tail flicked again. “Uh huh?”
Sweetie Belle sighed. “I wish I could fly like that. Actually, I wish I could fly first.”
“Mm. Good luck, there.”
At which point, Rainbow had to break off; she’d been trying to hide how out-of-breath she was.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with being a unicorn,” continued Sweetie Belle, not least of all because it took them both away from the stopwatch blunder. “Magic’s nice. But you ever wonder what it’d be like if you were born as something else? Like a pegasus?”
Rainbow waved her wings as obviously as possible.
“I meant,” corrected Sweetie Belle, “as one of the other pony tribes? Like… Like if you were born a unicorn?”
Gradually, Rainbow straightened up. “What does it matter? You’re born as whatever you’re born as.”
“But don’t you ever wonder…?”
A nonchalant shrug. “Not really.”
“Not even a little bit?”
“Look, See Bee.” Rainbow began stretching her calf muscles, one at a time. “When you’re as boss as I am, you got everything you need right here.” For emphasis, she waved her wings again and then thumped her chest.
Lack of vision, Sweetie Belle thought. It’d be Rarity’s verdict. Dress her up in beauty and grace as much as you like, but at the end of the day, there was something deep-down uncivilized about Rainbow Dash. She didn’t go in for ponderous thinking, like: “What’s it all about, really, when you get down to it?”
To be fair, it probably wasn’t a survival trait in her world. It had come as a shock to Sweetie Belle to learn from books, her teacher, and the local animal expert Fluttershy that flying was such an energy-eating business. Most flying creatures obsessed over it. Had to obsess over it. They had to preen the feathers, keep the muscles tuned, pick up the slightest hints of treacherous headwinds split-seconds before they hit, gorge themselves on tons of food for fuel…
And if normal birds were firecrackers, Rainbow Dash was a rocket. She’d be fighting every second for control. Start thinking Why am I the way I am? and she might find herself on the way to the ground in a dead faint, followed by a dead death.
Still, if only she could understand…
“I wouldn’t mind being a pegasus,” blurted out Sweetie Belle.
Rainbow stopped preening her wing and turned back to her, tongue hanging out – she noticed and sucked it back in.
“Ha,” she said. “Only natural. Just keep in mind not all pegasi are as mind-blowing as yours truly.”
Huh, thought Sweetie Belle: A minute ago, you were complaining you weren’t good enough.
“You make it look so easy,” she said. “You’re like a ballet dancer.”
To her surprise, she saw Rainbow bristle at this. “Hey! Flying for the Wonderbolts ain’t no ballet recital.”
“Oh no,” corrected Sweetie Belle. “Dancers don’t do ‘recitals’. That’s a music thing. Dancers do ‘rehearsals’.”
“Re-who’s-its, re-what’s-its, whatever.”
“I just meant you fly so easily, it’s like you don’t put any effort into it.”
“Who told you that nonsense? Flying’s a lot more than just dancing on air. It’s serious work! You can’t let your guard down for a second.”
“But…” Sweetie Belle had only meant it as a compliment. Why was it so hard to say nice things so ponies didn’t take offence all the time?
“You never heard of the Pegasus Code?”
“The Pegasus…?”
Too late: Rainbow swelled with pride and lecturing. “Every pegasus knows the Pegasus Code. Flying’s more than just a fancy way to get around. We’re fighters. We’re warriors. We’re tough and if gravity wants us, we tell it where to get off. Air friction, too. We push right past that. And eddies, and crosswinds, and stuff like that. You wanna fly, you gotta earn it. Train for it. Live for it. You fight for the right to fly every. Single. Second. Of every. Single. Day. Of every. Single. Year of your life. That is the Pegasus Code.”
She subsided a little.
“And the Wonderbolts are the pegasus’ pegasus. So you can quit giving me that look, ‘cause as soon as I’m ready, we’re trying this again.”
Sweetie Belle blinked, and in her starry eyes, the vision of Captain Rainbow Dash, or General Rainbow Dash, or Legendary Warrior Rainbow Dash, or Goddess of the Sky Rainbow Dash… became mere mortal Rainbow Dash. But only just.
Sometimes, it was easy to see where Scootaloo was coming from.
Sweetie Belle sagged where she sat on the cold, sticky grass. Inspiring as it was, there were only so many times she could watch Rainbow spell out the same words over and over.
“Awwww,” she groaned.
“Hey, you want to spend a day with me, them’s the breaks.”
“But I don’t get to do anything.”
Rainbow harrumphed. “Push a button: can you do that?” Spite prompted her to add, “This time?”
“Awwww…”
“Spending a day with me is not the soft option. It ain’t silk scarves and stitches here. You doing this or not?”
Later, when her head was clearer of anger and preteen embarrassment, Sweetie Belle started to believe Rainbow was not just being catty. This was the tigress, playfully prodding her to see if she’d bite back. A tiny thought even wriggled under the idea right here and now, only it was up against a mind on the boil.
“Then I wanna fly too,” she demanded.
Rainbow didn’t move. An immovable object, huh? Well then, how about an unstoppable force?
Determination simmered. Sweetie Belle folded her forelimbs and pouted.
“Say again?” said Rainbow Dash. It was hard to tell if she was angry or just furiously surprised.
“I wanna ride on your back. Or I wanna be carried. One or the other.”
“This isn’t a joyride, you know.”
“You’d do it for Scootaloo.”
A pause. A curt nod. “Maybe I would.”
“Anyway, I can time it better when I’m in the middle of it. I can feel when you stop, so I won’t get distracted. How’s that?”
Rainbow regarded her as a lioness might regard a snout-swatting cub. Her jaw jutted.
“Oh, really?” she said, but there was an amused purr in her throat. “This isn’t some flash-in-the-sky idea, right?”
“I,” said Sweetie Belle, “am deadly serious.”
“Ha. You’ll be whipped like crazy. Even Scootaloo would struggle to handle the tight turns.”
“I still wanna try.”
A grin with fangs in it. “You’re committed, then? You wanna face your fears and do it anyway?”
“Yes,” said Sweetie Belle, but uncertainly: it hadn’t occurred to her to fear this little stunt at all. “When you put it that way…”
“Dare to be awesome?”
“Well…”
Suddenly, Rainbow’s glower sharpened. “A moment ago, you were wondering what it was like to be a pegasus.”
“Yeah, but that was just, you know, daydreaming…”
“No, I don’t know. Daydreaming never got anything done. I don’t do it. Ever.”
What a show-off, Sweetie Belle thought. I bet you do really. Yet, to her surprise, rushing to overtake the rising fear was a sudden daring delight. She felt like she’d escaped something, and it was great!
Before she could change her mind, Sweetie Belle extended her hooves to be seized and lifted. “Is this that Pegasus Code thing again?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“Erm…” Sweetie Belle lowered her hooves. Fear rose so high her bravery had to wade through it, and then swim, and then struggle not to sink. The heights alone…
“Well, if you’re not pumped for it, stay down here and this time stop the watch when you’re supposed to, got it?”
Rainbow bent her knees to lift off –
“Wait!” Sweetie Belle cried out.
She could find a way! Her bravery, her daring delight: all leaped out of the waters of fear and made a mad dash. Don’t think about it. Don’t let her mind wander. Don’t forget the stopwatch.
And then she thought, If it’s so beautiful on the ground, then maybe up in the air…
“I guess I could give it a try,” she said.
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Well, I guess I could maybe flap my wings and not blow your eardrums out, then. Come on! Let’s hear some oomph!”
“I wanna give it a try.”
“More oomph!”
“I’m gonna give it a try.”
“Oomph! Oomph! You’re not oomphing hard enough!”
“Let me at it!”
Grinning, Rainbow nodded. “You ready?”
Sweetie Belle’s forelimbs rose so fast they scorched the air. “Readier than ready!”
She let Rainbow Dash grip her by the armpits, then adjust her grip so that forelimbs crossed Sweetie Belle’s chest: she was as securely locked into place as a prisoner chained to a wall. Only then did the wall rise up.
This wasn’t the first time Sweetie Belle had flown on a pegasus, not even on Rainbow Dash. Such a show-off loved to take the odd fan for a spin in the air, especially when Scootaloo drew a lot of attention in the playground at school by announcing Rainbow Dash was her new “sister”. Sooner or later, every foal had wanted a ride in the sky.
Whipping winds forced her to squint, but Sweetie Belle felt as elated as a diva in the spotlight. She was rising! Going up in the world. Literally and figuratively, this was gripping!
All the same, Sweetie Belle’s own hooves clung to the lifebelt that was Rainbow’s gripping limbs. Unicorns don’t naturally take to heights unless they are peering out of airships and tall towers. And even then, they still have hooves firmly on a floor.
Rainbow hovered in place. Sweetie Belle saw the hills around Ponyville, the spread of Whitetail Wood, even the distant red dots of Sweet Apple Acres, as a gigantic stage. Like a patterned carpet, one of the finest made by the Saddle Arabian weavers or by the cunning craftsponies of Canterlot, studded with emeralds.
That moment: that moment was when Sweetie Belle stood onstage, the audience hushed, and she knew without a doubt that her play this time would be a rousing success.
Somewhere in all that, she remembered the stopwatch. She levitated it.
“OK?” she shouted over the winds.
“What?” shouted Rainbow.
Sweetie Belle’s curls flapped around her face. “I SAID: OH KAY!?”
Despite the winds, Rainbow’s voice cut clean through as experienced as a wing. “You want me to start? Right? Count me in first!”
Sweetie Belle looked down. For a stomach-wrenching moment, her mind flipped and she saw the green carpet turn into the grassy ground very, very far away.
“ERM! OK! THREE! TWO! ONE! G–”
Without lots of air between them, Rainbow’s twitchy muscles didn’t have a second to waste.
Sweetie Belle froze.
Winds became boxing gloves. Noise became a crowd in full riot. The yanks and swirls of her stomach became a horrible explosion of alchemical fits and struggles, as if the gastric juices themselves wanted to fight their way out.
She rammed her eyes shut: the blue and green blurs hurt her with each hit. She was painfully aware of so many organs inside her, and every single one wanted to get out and find a new body with less rattling.
By the time she sensed a slowdown, her brains needed a moment to catch up. She’d dropped the stopwatch.
“Er… you… OK?” breathed Rainbow Dash. Her voice landed heavily on each word.
“Nngh,” squeaked Sweetie Belle.
The last time she’d felt like this, she’d been standing onstage, in front of a silent audience. They’d been silent when she’d started, fair enough, but they weren’t supposed to be silent when she’d finished too.
“You sure?”
“Nngh.”
“Your face… has gone… green.”
“Nngh.”
The worst time she’d felt like this, she’d been really young. She’d put on a dress and makeup, and then made the mistake of comparing herself to Rarity. The effect was like drawing a stick figure and then showing it to Decent Van Doff. And then hearing his reply.
“I’ll, er…” breathed Rainbow, “take us… down now.”
“Thngh.”
Sweetie Belle rediscovered breathing as soon as hooves met hill. The reunion was strong and clingy and took a long time to settle down. Her limbs were so stiff, they barely swayed while the rest of her organs tried to agree on which bits of space they were supposed to share to make one body.
They all gave up and she collapsed on her side, panting heavily.
Off to one side, Rainbow Dash thumped onto the ground. She wasn’t panting heavily: she was struggling not to gasp to death.
Eventually, Sweetie Belle felt brave enough to lift a head and check on her. Rainbow gleamed.
“Let’s,” said Sweetie Belle, and then waited for the scrambled words to separate themselves. “Let’s not. Again. Do that. The flying thing.”
“Ha…” Rainbow covered up her chest to stop her flexing ribcage poking through. “That? Was nothing. Ow.”
They both waited, first for their breath to come back, then for their minds to settle.
“Nothing!?” said Sweetie Belle. A core of annoyance heated up the planet she was on, whilst she wondered what kind of mad world Rainbow herself inhabited. “Nothing!?”
“Yeah,” gasped Rainbow. “No big deal. To a pegasus. Built for it.”
Sweetie Belle sat up on sheer disbelief. “Are you kidding me?”
Rainbow struggled to breathe, so she settled for a rolling headshake without getting up.
Hastily, Sweetie Belle swallowed something hot and stinging that made a bid for the back of her throat. “That’s the most not-nothing thing I’ve ever seen. Or felt. Or heard. Or everything, really.”
“Just… a warmup. No big – ow… deal…”
“Are you OK?”
“Yes!” Rainbow winced at her own flexing throat. “Fine!”
“You wanna stop now? You’ve been doing this all day.”
“Nothing… to it. Just… gimme a… gimme a sec… to catch my breath.”
Frankly, Rainbow looked like she’d crashed. Limbs spread out at random. Hair and feathers stuck out even more so.
Well, serves you right, said a nasty voice in Sweetie Belle’s head. Another voice spoke up later, though. One not used to seeing Rainbow look so weakened.
Rainbow must have noticed, because she panted out the words: “I’m. Fine!”
“No, you’re not,” Sweetie Belle said, matter-of-factly. “Rarity says that when she’s not. I can tell. When she says she’s ‘top of the world!’ or ‘in the zone, as it were!’ then you can tell she’s fine. But she says she’s ‘fine’, and I know what that means.”
She looked up, admiring for the first time the latest in Rainbow’s smoke calligraphy.
Rainbow’s rolling eyes followed her gaze – lifting her head seemed to be beyond her for the moment. “Coulda done… better.”
“T’chuh! You’re crazy. It looks exactly the same as the first dozen you did. And the second dozen. And the third.”
“Yeah… coulda… done… waaaay… better.”
“I meant you were doing fine all along! Look at that thing!”
Rainbow screwed up her lips. “P’s all wrong.”
Sweetie Belle glared at it. “What? It’s a P. It looks like a P’s supposed to look, for Pete’s sake.”
“S’too straight.”
Instantly, Sweetie Belle knew what Rainbow Dash was doing. Rarity did it often enough, and it was maddening as all Tartarus then too.
Sweetie Belle got as far as, “You’re so pick–” before she realized who she was talking to. Or rather, who she wasn’t talking to. Unlike Rarity, Rainbow wouldn’t take a push without bouncing back harder. If she pushed any more, she could break something.
“Anyway…” said Rainbow, as angrily as she could be when her throat seemed to be sore from gasping. “You dropped the… thing. Stopwatch.”
And now she was trying to change the subject. Sweetie Belle despaired, she really did.
Instead of arguing back – and a shouting bit of her brain really wanted to – she lay down next to Rainbow and stared at something less aggravating, like the blue, empty sky.
Perhaps you needed the brain of a Scootaloo to deal with this. Scootaloo cheered and cheered on, and in a strange way – that Sweetie Belle had noticed but Scootaloo herself hadn’t – Rainbow actually tried less when she did that. Whereas arguing with her only made her try harder. It was like she waited to see if she’d proven something first.
Besides, as terrifying as the last few minutes in the chaos had been… now she wasn’t actually in the middle of it, it looked as exciting as she’d thought it’d be. She could tell ponies she’d done it, which was miles better than having it done to her. Her little heart thrilled, like a society lady surrounded by admirers. Success! Victory! Dazzling showponyship!
To her relief, everything else around her heart relaxed.
The blue, empty sky helped. There were no complicated ponies to work out, nor any weird sisters or clumsy ground-bound things like buildings with dozens of architectural flourishes, or millions of blades of grass or trunks of trees. It was just blue. You couldn’t get any simpler without closing your eyes.
A few small clouds blotted patches of the blue, but they merely nudged the simple sky a bit. They didn’t do anything else. They blended in quietly. After a while, she felt better for having them around.
“What a lovely sky,” she said aloud.
“It’s just sky,” said Rainbow, still with a sore throat.
“I could lie here all day.”
Rainbow grunted through restlessness. “You don’t remember… where you dropped the… stopwatch, do you?”
“No, let’s relax!”
“Er… OK?”
Yet Sweetie Belle had a hard time relaxing when she knew Rainbow Dash lay nearby. On her own, why, she really could lie there all day. She hadn’t needed Rarity – long ago – saying there was a certain grace in simplicity. Sweetie Belle had worked that out for herself. But it was nice to have an ally who agreed.
She heard the grass rustle; Rainbow was finding it hard to relax.
“You OK?” Rainbow asked suddenly.
“Yep,” said Sweetie Belle. “Peachy.”
“Fine, fine, fine.” Sounded like something was on Rainbow’s mind.
Well, the longer Sweetie Belle admired the blue fall before her, the less was on her mind. Soon, it could float and be free.
“You’re not in pain, right?” said Rainbow. She tried to make it casual, despite the worry lurking among the words.
“Just a little dizzy, but it’s going away now.”
“Scootaloo doesn’t… have any problems with it.”
Sweetie Belle should have felt annoyed at the one-upmareship, but she found it hard to care when her head seemed so light. “She really likes flying.”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
Rainbow really sucked at hiding her feelings. She was trying to apologize without actually doing so; the hesitancy, the dancing around the subject, all the stuff a socialite-to-be would spot in an instant. Another thing that should have annoyed Sweetie Belle, but didn’t. Not right now.
Instead, she pointed at a random cloud. “What shape do you think that one is?”
A ruffle of grass as Rainbow’s head rolled towards her. “What?”
“It’s a game Rarity used to play with me. See, you look at the clouds, and you try and spot some shapes in them.”
“That sounds exciting.”
But sarcasm simply rolled off Sweetie Belle. “She said the shapes you tend to see will show your true self.”
“Puh, yeah, right.”
After Rainbow made no further effort to put her down, Sweetie Belle counted to ten and pointed at the cloud again. “For instance, that one looks like a musical clef to me, but maybe you see something different.”
“Puh-lease. It’s just a long… cumulus with a blob on the end… Nothing else.”
“It’s not like writing letters in the sky really fast. Your mind’s eye has to do a lot of work.”
Perhaps the mention of their most recent – and unflattering – activity shut Rainbow up, because neither of them spoke for a long while. Cool breezes whispered over them, and the shudder of distant treetops was a gale causing a stir among their ranks. Excited murmurs spread from pine to pine.
The sky just stared back. It was a comforting, blank stare, though. No judgement, no threat: just a vacant sea, passive and silent, yet powerful and inspiring. Sweetie Belle felt safe.
Rainbow squirmed. Then she stuck a shaky hoof up and pointed.
“So, what’s that one?” she said nervously.
Sweetie Belle examined it for a while. Tricky, but if she turned it around…
“I think it looks like an upside-down pegasus,” she said. “See the little wings on the bottom? And the bulgy bit that looks like a head?”
“No.”
“Imagine it’s looking right at us.”
“Ah, I see,” said Rainbow, not with any confidence.
“What does it look like to you?”
“Huh? Oh. Um…”
Sweetie Belle glanced across, briefly shocked by the sight into remembering she was still tethered to the ground. Rainbow Dash’s eyes were half-closed. She shrugged, looking shattered enough for just a brief one at that.
“Just looks like a blob to me…” she confessed.
“Not like a butterfly?” Sweetie Belle prompted. “Or a stubby dragon? Or one of those ancient war boats made to look like a dragon?”
Rainbow’s eyes squinted in effort. “Where are you getting all this?”
“Oh, you pick up the shapes and things. You only need a few, but Rarity says any mare worth her salt could make a lot out of a little.”
“Mmm… I’m still just seeing a bunch of bleh.”
“That’s ‘cause you’re tired. It takes a bit of effort, but it’s worth it.”
“Right. And that proves what?”
Sweetie Belle ignored the question. She had an answer – Rarity had explained all this to her once, on one of those pleasant sisterly outings when they weren’t trying to shout in each other’s faces – but she couldn’t recall it at the moment. Her mind didn’t want to. Sweetie Belle’s contentment had sunk too far into the cool blue.
“Rainbow Dash?”
“Mmm.” It sounded like she was seconds from snoring.
“I really like your flying.”
“I get that a lot,” yawned Rainbow, utterly bored.
“You’re so beautiful when you’re flying.”
Rainbow gagged. “Er, what? I think the word you’re looking for is ‘awesome’, or ‘amazing’, or ‘stupefyingly spectacular’. We don’t,” she added, with much rancour, “use the B-word in the Wonderbolts.”
Sweetie Belle allowed herself a small smile, one Rarity would be proud of. Sometimes, you had to be cruel to be kind. Sometimes, it was even fun.
“Puh!” spat Rainbow, without much rancour. “‘Beautiful’. Puh-lease.”
Ponies like Rainbow Dash were so predictable. And since no one else was around, and she could trust Sweetie Belle…
Sweetie Belle counted under her breath.
Very quietly, Rainbow asked, “You really think so?”
“Absolutely.” Just to be nice, she added, “And all that other stuff you said too. It’s all good.”
“Oh. Well. Good.”
“Good,” Sweetie Belle agreed.
She risked a glance. Rainbow was blushing. That blush might have just been the heat of her exertions catching up to her. It might have been wondering how “beauty” worked for someone who usually didn’t care about it. It certainly had to fight against the big blue of Rainbow’s coat.
“Sweetie Belle?”
“Yeah?” Sweetie Belle stopped looking hastily.
“Just when I’m flying? Not any other time?”
“Doesn’t matter, does it? You said they don’t use the B-word in the Wonderbolts.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s right. I didn’t really care, anyway. Just seeing how… Just seeing how weird your brain was, Miss Sees-Things-In-Clouds.”
“Well, it’s a nice day. I’m feeling in a good mood.”
“Eh, I’ll give you that.”
They didn’t seem to want to get up for a long while. The sky was just that peaceful. Even a big blue bleh had its charms.
Eventually, Rainbow Dash started snoring.
Heat, exercise, and the recent experiment in relaxation finally made her mortal again.
Suited Sweetie Belle fine. It wasn’t often you heard noises like that coming from anything healthy. Rainbow Dash was an education all on her own, albeit not one approved by the official curriculum.
For instance, fact was that Rainbow Dash napped all the time around Ponyville, sometimes on tiny clouds or in tree branches.
Rarity just thought she was a layabout, when she wasn’t admiring Rainbow’s flying technique. But Sweetie Belle thought it was just another kind of beauty sleep, though not one done at night when it was sensibly organized. These beauty sleeps just happened whenever and wherever needed.
Laziness was a vice in Rarity’s world – creativity didn’t rest even when you wanted it to, because the mind could be cruelly infinite, all the more so when it had artistic eyes to see beyond the horizon – but it was just another part of the sky in Rainbow Dash’s, like cumulus clouds. Unlike working minds, working bodies could only take so much punishment.
Sweetie Belle giggled. She thought she might like to try it. Just this once.
She dreamed. Usually, she dreamed of elegant ballgowns, sparkling diamond necklaces, and gentlecolts guffawing along with her jokes and applauding her songs. But she didn’t do much in those dreams.
This time, she dreamed of wings, and terror, and wonder, weaving her own words with her whole body, lost yet comfortable amid the big blue. No other ponies. No other complications. Just her and freedom. Her mind simple, yet the world around her infinite instead.
When she later woke up to sunset, she patiently waited like a toy dog beside Rainbow, who was still curled up, to eventually wake up and notice the stars. It was too dark to search for the lost stopwatch.
Then, when Rainbow sheepishly led them back to Ponyville, Sweetie Belle followed close behind, laughing and skipping on Rainbow’s hoofsteps, loyal as a newly joined disciple.
