Imprisment

by Petrichord

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Rainbow Dash, Horror, Tragedy, Slice of Life
Length: 6839

Rainbow Dash has a beautiful life. Shame others don't see things that way.

Rainbow Dash's life is full of colour: of sunrises and sunsets that dance, of skies so blue you can taste them, of prisms that fracture light and fill one's soul with rainbows. Truly, it is a life where she couldn't ask for more.

Why do ponies fear that? It's as if they're scared of beauty. Or maybe scared of her, possibly.

If only they'd let her enlighten them. But maybe today will be a luckier day...

I know I made promises about what my 50th fic would be. Trust me, I do have them in mind and I will finish writing and publish them, for your sakes and mine. I just didn't want to write two romance stories in a row, that's all, and I figured that I could shake things up a little and try something new.

Art commissioned from the ever-wonderful Cyonix!

Thanks to Flashgen for helping me write this. And my sincerest thanks to Hay Tea for making this possible.

Published 2022-09-05 16:50:00 UTC
Last updated 2022-09-07 16:58:06 UTC

Incandescence

The dawn is alive.

It reaches up in bounds and waves, like a rising tide disrupted by the hooves of fillies and sent skittering up the sand beyond its time. Colors reach and fade, recede and spring forward again, as the oranges and yellows and reds finally begin to retake the sky.

And the iridescence. Oh, the blessed iridescence. I stare into the sun, the sun stares back at me, and the world is awash in rainbows.

The gossamer soap-bubble strands that rise and pop with the ascent of the sun. The beams and little chunks that hit my window as if it were a prism, scattering rainbows across my dresser and my floor and my bed and Tank’s cage and me.

And I can feel the rainbows in my soul.

In dawns like these, I can’t imagine how anypony else would ever choose to live an untouched life. How could they shutter themselves away from seeing a life full or rainbows? Or a life full of the glitter of cold stars, the uprising of tiny seeds as they erupt from the soil and fill the world above the roots with greenery and flowers…

Why would they not want to see that?

They’re scared, I know. But what are they scared of? Seeing things differently, or of the way I see things differently?

Or maybe of me?

It’s puzzling, and maybe a little frustrating, to think about. I haven’t hurt them yet, and I’m not sure that I will. But the way some ponies stare at me, and whisper words they think I can’t hear, that my very presence is somehow infectious. Like I’ve got the plague.

A plague of what, rainbows? An infection of light?

Silly them. Sad, too, but I guess it’s their choice to make not to see things in a…

Wait, losing my bearings, losing my bearings. Get a grip…Rainbow Dash. So. What would I normally say about this sort of thing?

That it’s awesome?

Yeah. It’s awesome. Totally awesome. And I should probably feed Tank, head to Wonderbolts practice and prepare myself for another awesome day.

It’s a beautiful twenty-degree Celsius day, and there’s clouds over roughly fifteen percent of the sky (as visible from Ponyville.) The sun is warm, yet firm, like a father reassuringly clapping his son on the shoulder before his first day of school. The sky is the color of Princess Luna’s soft laughter. I’m not sure Princess Luna knows that.

I can feel myself radiating the sky as I swoop in front of Flight Captain Spitfire’s office and knock.

“Come in,” Spitfire replies. She’s clearly frustrated. I would be too, if I was inside. She should be outside, practicing like the rest of us. Is it paperwork shackling her here? Why not assign it to somepony who likes paperwork? Otherwise, she’s hiding her cutie mark away as much as she’s hiding herself.

“Good morning, Flight Captain!” I reply with characteristic Rainbow Dash enthusiasm as I step into her office. “What are my orders?”

“Your orders?” Spitfire barks, standing up and walking towards me with unnecessarily forceful steps. “You’re going to come in thirty-eight minutes late and talk to me about orders? How about this for an order, you’re scrubbing—”

Spitfire pushes her face right in front of mine, just for a second. Then the color leaves her cheeks as she leans back, mouthing something I don’t think I’m supposed to hear. But if she didn’t want me to hear it, she shouldn’t have moved her lips.

But my name isn’t “Prism Eyes.” Why do ponies keep calling me that?

“Nope! It’s me, your friendly neighborhood Rainbow Dash!” I try to put a hoof on her shoulder, but she flinches and pulls it out of reach. Did she injure it? “Or would you prefer Friendly Flight Captain Rainbow Dash? Or Flight Co-Captain—”

“I’d prefer—” Spitfire bites down on her words for a moment, looking away. “—Prefer that you wouldn’t be late for practice. The Summer Sun Celebration’s less than a week away, and now isn’t the time to be slacking off. That’s all.”

“I couldn’t help myself.” I can’t bear to bring myself to look towards a window. Even if I had a good view of the outdoors, it would be barred, as if locking the sky out of the room. It was cruel. “A day this nice deserves to be savored. Mortality’s such an absolute for most ponies, and one would think that filling the moments from the void before conception to the void after death with as much delight as one can fit in their frail bodies would be of paramount importance, yes?”

Spitfire’s jaw drops slightly. Then she shakes her head, as if trying to clear out a blockage from her mental drain. “I don’t—It’s not a good time to talk about mortality right now, okay? We’re on the clock, Pr…rrrrainbow Dash. We need to practice and get ready for—”

“Why?”

Spitfire seems dumbstruck for another moment. “Um, because…it will, uh, ‘bring delight to other ponies?’ The ones watching us?”

Such wisdom! I’d look her in the eyes and offer my sincerest gratitude, but she doesn’t seem keen on looking me properly. Perhaps she’s worried that enlightenment will distract her from her duties.

Truly, Spitfire is one of the wisest ponies in the sky. How I wish she could understand and appreciate that.

“Yeah! That’s a good point!” I can feel the smile on my face unfurl like petals in the sun. “I’ll go help out with practice, then. Run everypony through some drills, some special training…get to know the rookies and help them figure out what they need to improve on—”

“Wait!” Spitfire’s eyes widen as she looks ever so slightly away from me, hoof extended in some sort of pleading gesture. “On second thought, they should be able to manage fine on their own. You should take the day off, okay? Come back tomorrow. You need it.”

She’s trying to improve my day! So kind of her. Such a kind pony. “It’s okay, Spitty! I know just the thing to help them limber up their minds and bodies for the day. A new approach that should help them with flying in general!”

“But—”

“Doing the same drills over and over’s just gonna make them freeze up if something’s even slightly out of place. It’s important to practice until everything’s perfect, but it’s also important not to have things become so rote that they’re only doing what you tell them will make them better fliers instead of understanding what can help them fly better in the first place.”

She knows I’m right. The slump of her shoulders is as clear a tell as any. “...Okay, Rainbow Dash. Do what you need to do. But please…” She bites her lip, faltering.

“Please what?”

“Please…don’t be too intense with the rookies,” Spitfire concludes. “I don’t want them to get overwhelmed. They’re new, and I don’t think they can handle that sort of thing.”

My sort of thing. “Don’t worry, Spitfire. I’m not gonna lecture them. Just offer a helping hoof.”

She nods, and I turn around for takeoff. Before I disappear like a rainbow lightning bolt into the blue, I can feel her mouth something behind me, assuming that I can’t see it.

I can’t, in fact, see it. But I can still feel it. And I don’t understand.

Why is “That what she’s afraid of?”

The day is still beautiful. Perhaps moreso, what with all the Wonderbolts and Wonderbolt trainees going through their drills: Performance practice for the former, and basic drills for the latter. Exactly as ordered.

Exactly as needed, though? I’m less sure about that. Spitfire has to have the best of intentions, I, Rainbow Dash, know this, it’s objective and obvious, but…where’s the appreciation of life? Where’s the love of the beauty of flight? It’s there, of course, implicitly, but it has to be the case that it’s being suppressed, too.

This can be fixed. Somepony looks in my direction—Soarin, I think—but he’ll have to wait for the next fifty-eight seconds. Without another word, I spread my wings, take off and head for one of the free-floating clouds.

By the time fifty-four seconds are over, I’ve gathered all the clouds I need, hauled them over to the practice grounds, cleanly broken them apart into identically sized sections and landed in front of an increasingly curious and unfocused group of veterans and rookies alike. The next three seconds let me take a deep, satisfying breath. On the last second, I blow the whistle.

So many stares. Confused stares, questioning stares, a couple annoyed stares. I think there’s at least one stare from a rookie who I remember being starstruck with me some time ago. But all those more-or-less uniform stares come from such different eyes, and I’m positive that a good look inside them would let me see the rainbows in their soul.

Business first, though.

“Okay, everypony! I know that you’ve all got your regular practice to go over, but it’s time for a little bit of rejuvenating exercise!” I gesture at one of the clouds behind me. “We’re going to be expressing our creativity and testing our anaerobic skills at the same time, with an emphasis on sharp angles and precise movements. There’s some potential for strain, so be mindful.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Spitfire walking toward me, though my words seemed to have slowed her down a bit. I think she’s listening. Wonderful! You can never be too good at flying not to hone your skills or learn something new. Even if you’re me!

Well, maybe not that, but…

“I’m going to assume that all of you are familiar with statues, and how there are, like, a lot of different statues in fancy museums that charge wayyyyyyy too many bits to get into.” I waggle my hoof for emphasis, which seems to placate Spitfire a little more. “I’m not gonna ask you to quit your job and stop being awesome Wonderbolts, don’t worry. But I thought, well, why not take something stuffy and boring and make it fun?”

I’m not wrong. It is boring to make them the traditional way, and it is stuffy to have to go into walled-in, over-decorated chambers to get a good look at them. And I am going to make it fun. But that doesn’t necessarily make statues bad by design, and as I spread my wings I know exactly how I’m going to show them all.

I cut left next to the cloud closest to me, letting the wing shear into the fluffy column, and that’s about the time where I lose track of what I’m doing. It’s more about the feeling of the cloud. Of letting the droplets tickle my feathers and tell me where I need to go. Of imagining exactly how everything would refract the comforting sun, of how the condensation would unfurl in the drowningly bright sky. I work the glittering stars with every swoop and cut, and I can feel the stars gaze back as I slice and hack with each nimble tumble of my body and flap of my wings.

And suddenly, it’s done: a pitch-perfect facsimile of Rode In’s “The Ponderer.” I could have made an identical copy, of course, but it wouldn’t have been the same—everypony needed to know it came from me, so I made the necessary adjustments to the face and the mane.

And it couldn’t have been beautiful if I hadn’t bent the water droplets to angle just so. It couldn’t have been art unless the statue shimmered as it stood, rippling with…

Iridescence.

I'm tempted to sit there and stare until time slips away, until the endless blue sky fades into yawning warmth and the death of the light. But the others needed to fill themselves with colour, too, so I step back, turn to face the crowd, puff out my chest and wait for the euphony.

And their applause is, of course, euphonic. From the ecstatic hoof-stomping of the rookies to the whooping of most of the Wonderbolts and the quiet sitting-down forehoof-tapping of Spitfire and Soarin, it is a nigh-symphonic serenade of adulation. It is to the ear what an opal monument is to the eye, and I dread the seconds of silence that might follow if I give it the chance.

“Now, now, anypony can do it!” I reply, shushing the crowd. “Sure, maybe not something that awesome on the first try. Start by making clean cuts while flying through the clouds as fast as you can—while still making actual slices with your wings and not just crashing into the clouds, I mean. Start with basic shapes: cubes, pyramids, that sort of thing. But once you’re feeling like you’ve got the hang of it, smush your cloud back together and try to make something really cool. You’ll probably need to make a bunch of really tight turns all at once, so don’t let yourself get dizzy, but remember that if you aren’t pushing yourself to be as awesome as you can be then you aren’t really trying to be the best Wonderbolt you can be. Who’s with me?”

More cheering. Spitfire's actually smiling. That's rare these days. Maybe I should have a talk with her and help her be happy again. Confident in my knowledge that anypony can be fixed, I blow my whistle again and watch everypony get to work.

It's surprisingly disappointing. After a few hours of practice, I was expecting the experienced Wonderbolts to be better than the rookies. They caught on to the geometrics much easier, of course, but watching them try to make something artistic was…painful. There were pegasus figures and renditions of paintings, but they were so formulaic and plain that they might as well have not existed at all. It was craftsponyship that they were applying and nothing more, no real ingenuity or forethought. The sort of replicas of images that one might make if they were only accustomed to performing drills and following schedules. And not a single one of them shimmered with even a hint of refracted light—

“Um…Permission to speak, Flight Captain Rainbow Dash, ma’am?”

I turn my head. It’s the mare who seemed so starstruck when she first joined the team, with a gentle golden coat and a sparkling, multihued mane…and now, a curious expression, as if she wants and doesn't want my attention at the same time.

“Sundown Starfall?” I reply. “What’s up?”

“I, uh…” She looked rather sheepish. “Can’t think of something creative to do.”

“You, uh…”

Sundown Starfall glances over at what is, presumably, the cloud she's been working on. It's far lumpier than it had been when it started, and while the rookies in general were making a—admittedly more delightful—mess of things, none of their structures look quite as malformed as hers.

“I’ve tried!” Sundown whimpers. “I cut and recut and when things started to fall apart I tried to put it all back together again and start again, but I can’t think of what it’s supposed to look like!”

“Hold on, squirt. What what’s supposed to look like?"

Sundown throws her head back in an unnecessary display of theatrics. “I don’t know!”

This should be a problem. A big problem. It should be something for Flight Captain Spitfire to chide her over, being disruptive in the middle of a lesson like this when she should still be working and figuring it out on her own. Flight Captain Rainbow Dash should chide her over this, too.

But this isn’t a mistake: it’s just the sort of opportunity I've been hoping for. The reaction I’ve dreamed of.

“You really can’t think of anything?” I reply.

“No.”

“Do you want me to help you think of something?”

“Um…yeah. That would be great.” Sundown hangs her head. “But what are you going to do?”

“Just take a look at you, that’s all.” Gently, I reach forward and tilt her chin up. “Get a better look at what kind of pony you really are.”

Sundown, seemingly dumbfounded, lets me look her in the eyes—

And the mud and dirt of caked-on convention ebb away like the life of a drowning child

Knots of worry undo themselves,reform,rearrange their base components and are undone again

Primal instincts roar up and devour themselves, body yielding entirely to mind

Mind unravelling like yarn in the paws of a curious kitten

True self emerging

Shining bright as the sun

The rainbow of her soulpouring forward and out and showing me everything inside of her

The thoughts and memories and emotions,the fundamentals of herself and her cutie mark and who she had been and who she will become

Heriridescentself,rising and falling and—

“RAINBOW DASH!”

Somepony was tugging on my shoulder. Curious as to why they would have wanted my attention, I turn and see Soarin, his face practically pressed against mine.

Does he want to kiss? He seems tense. I didn’t know he had a crush on me, but—

“What are you doing?” Soarin shouts. No, that wasn’t ardor in his voice—that was panic. Gamey, umber panic in his words, failing entirely to complement his emerald eyes. He should panic less.

“I was helping out a friend.”

“By doing what?” Soarin sputters. “What exactly were you doing to Junior Wonderbolt Sundown Starfall? I need you to be as explicit as possible.”

Ohhh, that.

“Nothing major, Soarin” I reply with a smile. “She just wanted to know the true pony inside of her, so I was helping her unleash the colors in her soul.”

Soarin’s face pales. An impressive feat, given his naturally light coat color, but Soarin was always an impressive pony. He turns, suddenly, to look at Sundown, and I follow his gaze.

She was radiant. Well, her inner self is radiant. Her body is crumpled like an unloved toy, unmoving, irises flickering with the colors of a distorted image from a cathode ray tube.

“Does…does that look like…” Soarin seems at a bit of a loss for words. He's rather ineloquent today. Perhaps he'd like speaking lessons? Surely, he could speak with the grace of a street musician's mandolin in a summertime farmer's market if he'd give himself the chance to let his guard down and let me understand him better. But if he won't do that, then...

“Yes,” I reply. “It looks like she understands herself a little better.”

I catch Soarin’s gaze, and I still can’t quite put a hoof on whatever emotion is on his face.

“She’s very beautiful,” I add. Maybe if I got a better look at him…

No. His eyes are flat and hard, like he’s holding up a sheet of lead. Deliberately uncomprehending, deliberately unyielding. Protecting himself from beauty. Shutting himself off from comprehension.

“That…” Soarin takes a deep breath, struggling to maintain eye contact. “Doesn’t look beautiful to me.”

Poor Soarin. Too scared to understand, too bound by duty. Maybe I should kiss him after all. Or maybe I should just take a look at him, too—

“I think you need to be somewhere else,” Soarin butts in, voice shaking.

What?

“We can talk about what happened tomorrow,” Soarin adds after a second. “But I think you should be somewhere else today.”

“We can talk about it today, can’t we?” I reply, cocking my head to the side. “Here and now. It’s okay if I take a break from work for a little bit. If you have something you want to—”

“Tomorrow.”

“Why?”

I stare at him a little harder. I think part of it got through. I think the lead shield slipped, a little, giving me a hint of…

Fear? Of me? Why?

“N-never mind. It doesn’t matter.” Soarin’s shoulders slump as he breaks eye contact.

“No, really, if we need to talk about—”

“We don’t need to talk about anything! Forget…forget I said anything, okay? It’s nothing. I won’t bring it up,” Soarin mumbles.

“...Do you promise?”

“I promise,” Soarin says, sounding utterly defeated. “We won’t talk about this.”

“Okay.” He still looks like he could use a heart-to-heart. “But really, if—”

“Don’t you really have somewhere you need to be?” he replies, head snapping back up again.

But why would he be saying—

“Oh!”

A second dawn rises in my mind.

“That’s right, I do! I forgot that I was supposed to see Twilight for lunch today!” Silly me. With a silly shake of the head — to emphasize how silly I was, for his sake—I step away. “Thanks, Soarin! I swear, sometimes it seems like you know me better than I know myself!”

His body sags again, as if he’d used and depleted a second wind. “Don’t…don’t mention it. Please, just…go see Twilight. You can take the rest of the day off with her. Go do something fun.”

It was an excellent idea. With a wave, I spread my wings and take off into the air again, rising higher and higher into the blue. I wanted to get a good view of the landscape before I left. Twilight liked hearing about Equestria and all the ponies in it these days, so I know that she’d like hearing about the landscapes.

But as I rose, whispered words—and the impression of whispered words—rose with me; said, perhaps, with the assumption that I wouldn’t notice, but they were as much a part of my world as the sky was.

But they still didn’t make sense.

Why would there be an emergency?

Why would somepony need to do something about me? And why did Spitfire say that she didn’t want to find out what I would be like if I was angry?

…What would I be like if I was angry? Maybe it would be fun to find out. Maybe I could let Spitfire and Soarin make me really mad one of these days and erupt with rage. Would Cloudsdale tremble? It might be fun to see what would happen to it all.

But then the sun taps me on the shoulder again as I rose above another cloud, and everything else but the endless light and the seas of color fell away again, and I let myself slip silently into peace.

Iridescence

The sun reclines in the sky like a ladle left carelessly on a kitchen counter, uplifting and pressing down on the world below. Somewhere, the clock strikes twice. And caught between the city and the sky, I let myself drift down onto a balcony in Canterlot Castle, alighting like a bird on the seat laid out for me.

Twilight sits in the seat opposite, poring over pages and pages of documents. Unlike Spitfire, she enjoys documents. I think. She looked up almost immediately after I sit down, but it's still hard not to feel a little guilty about interrupting her.

“Oh! Hello…Rainbow Dash!” Twilight says, good humor dipping into slightly-less-good humor. Strange that she forgot my name for a little bit. Then again, Twilight always Twilights a little, so perhaps her brain’s too addled with pages of words to remember her friends.

“Hey, Twilight!” I put on my best smile for her. “Sorry about interrupting your paperwork. You can finish that up if—”

“Nonono, trust me! It’ll take hours to finish everything, and at that point I’d basically have to serve you dessert and make sure you fly home safely.” Twilight chuckles. “Don’t want you to bump your head in the dark or anything.”

It’s projection. Twilight never was a good flier, and I doubt that her growth spurt made her any better. She’s easily as tall as Princess Celestia now, maybe even a little taller. And her mane definitely outclasses both Princess Celestia and her sister. I could get lost in it, honestly.

But no matter how different she looks, Twilight is still Twilight, and always will be.

“Don’t worry, Twilight. I’ll just use the light of the stars to guide me. It’s kind of nice, actually.” I take a seat the normal way, sort of—opting for a drooping hind-legged affair instead of curling up like a cat—and yawn. “It’s peaceful. You should try it sometime, unless you’re worried about bumping your head.”

“I’m a princess!” Twilight feigns a pout. “We do not bump heads. We simply neglect to correct the askew elements of our surroundings so we don’t disrupt anypony else, that’s all.”

“And that makes you bump your head.”

“You’re just being technical.” Twilight’s voice is childishly annoyed, but her grin is incandescently impish. “You don’t need to make me look dumb.”

“What can I say? I’m the flier in all of Equestria least likely to bump their head on anything.” I throw in a shrug to emphasize casualness. “So that basically makes me an expert, except in the exact opposite way of having a lot of experience.”

Twilight snorts in an unprincesslike manner. “Of course. All hail Rainbow Dash, the know-nothing know-it-all.”

“How did I know you were going to say that?” I reply, pointing a hoof at her.

The snort turns to laughter. It’s so nice to hear Twilight laugh. It’s like the tinkle of the tiny bells hung around shop doors near Hearth’s Warming by businessponies affecting an extra bit of cheer, mixed with a half-dozen young fillies trying to harmonize while singing a rousing rendition of “Hearth’s Warming Eve Is Here Once Again.” It’s such a nice laugh that I even forget to be bored, which is something I’m positive I might have done before.

I wish she could laugh forever.

Eventually, though, she stops laughing and takes a brief moment to catch her breath before beginning again. “Anyways, lunch is ready. The chefs promised to prepare something ahead of time and keep it cooled, so it’ll still be fresh by the time you’re here. Be right back!”

Then, in a brief flare of magic, Twilight Sparkle poofs out of existence. Fortunately, she poofs back a moment later, setting down on the table a plate full of little…

“Cucumber sandwiches!” Oh boy oh boy oh boy, these are great. I remember that I didn’t used to like them, but I suppose the difference is in having them prepared by professionals instead of Rarity’s hoofwork. That, or I’ve allowed my horizons to expand. But in any case, I can’t help but lunge forward, snatch one off of the plate and chomp down eagerly.

Twilight’s horn glows as she takes one and bites into it with much more decorum. I guess restraint is necessary if you’re a princess, and I guess I can’t blame her for doing what’s proper, but it still feels a bit sad. Holding herself back like that means that she isn’t filling her mouth with the frosty blue tang of dill and white sauce and can’t fully appreciate how the softness of the sandwich bread feels like a midsummer cello chord. But if she chose to keep being a princess and doing princess things, then she must enjoy the restraint, too, and I can respect that.

Still, I have my fill of sandwiches, after Twilight Sparkle takes exactly two. Four and two is roughly an equal balance, and I allow myself the luxury of a relaxed sigh as I brush the sandwich crumbs off of my hoof. “That was delicious!”

“I’m glad you liked it.” Twilight’s smile could melt butter. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure if you’d like something like this. I was considering asking for a hayburger and fries for both of us, but I didn’t want to get ketchup or oil stains on the royal paperwork.”

“Eh. Maybe next time!” I lean forward onto the table. “I mean, if you’re offering, I honestly wouldn’t mind eating lunch here with you every day!”

“I’ll pass along the compliments to the chef.” Twilight’s smile widens. “And I’d like that. I doubt the Wonderbolts would appreciate you taking off every day to have lunch with the princess, though.”

“Actually, Soarin seemed totally fine with it!”

“He did?”

“Yeah! He encouraged me to take a break, actually.” I look up to meet Twilight’s eyes. “He reminded me that I was supposed to meet you here, actually. I totally forgot until he pointed it out. Isn’t that silly?”

Twilight’s smile freezes. It doesn’t abate, not entirely, but it does fade a little, as if she’s trying to gradually control its groundward descent. “He did, did he?”

“Yeah! I guess he thought I was distracting the rookies. One of them wanted to figure out how to be creative, so I helped her out!”

“I…see.” Twilight’s smile continues to gently fade. “And how did you do that?”

“I took a good look inside of her. I knew that if I could see exactly what was quintessentially her, I could help her figure out how to see her own inner beauty, and the beauty in everything else, too!”

Twilight remained silent, smile gone.

“I think it might be like looking into the sun. You know…how most ponies think they shouldn’t do it because it’ll hurt their eyes, right? Which is so silly.” I can’t suppress a chuckle. “Because I don’t know how you’re supposed to really see the light if you don’t do that. And if you can’t see the light, you can’t see all the wonders of the sunrises and the sunsets. You can’t let the blue skies stroke your coat or the sunlight kiss your cheek. You can’t fill yourself with rainbows.”

I try to look her in the eyes. Twilight looks back, but just like with Soarin there’s something in the way. It’s subtler—almost intangible—but I know she’s still keeping her distance from me. Scared of filling herself with the rainbows, too.

“Rainbow Dash…” Twilight takes a slow breath, but doesn’t close her eyes or rub her face. “What was she like after you showed her the…beauty that you’ve talked about?”

“She seemed overwhelmed, just like most ponies do. It’s okay. I know she’ll get her thoughts back together eventually.” I shake my head a little. “But Soarin and Spitfire made it seem like it was a big deal. They won’t let me really look at them, though, so I don’t know why. Maybe you could ask them?”

Twilight’s face remains impassive. “Actually…I was hoping I could ask you something else, instead.”

“You sure are full of questions, Twilight! But I guess you were always curious, weren’t you?” I shrug. “Okay! What’s your question?”

“Do you…” Twilight’s ear flicks. “Do you remember the last time The Elements of Harmony came together? You, me, our friends…?”

“...No.” I shake my head. “Were we having a party?”

“You don’t remember that we came together to investigate the Pebble in the Sky?”

“Is that what we were doing?” This is…starting to get annoying. I think she’s leading me on. I don’t think I like that.

“So you don’t remember how it hatched into the Prism-Eyed Serpent? Or the big, long quest we went on to figure out how to defeat it before it hatched, after we figured out that it would destroy everything? How it was almost too late?”

She’s up to something. I try to get a better look at her, and she’s not having any of it. I think she’s toying with me, and I know I don’t like that.

Is she my enemy? I don’t want her to be my enemy. She’s beautiful, and she gets other ponies to make the most delicious cucumber sandwiches. But I don’t want her to treat me like this, and I don’t think I’m going to let her keep treating me like this.

“Twilight…”

“I just…” Twilight takes a deep breath. “Don’t you remember almost dying?”

That’s…

Wait…

“I do remember!” Oh boy oh boy oh boy, I know this. “There was this beautiful thing, with shimmering scales, and it plucked me out of the air like I was the sweetest peach and carried me to the ground. Into the ground. Through the earth! We went spelunking together! And that was…” I can’t suppress my grin. “You would have loved it, Twilight. I felt like I could see everything forever! I felt like I think…I think there was something more than just seeing things, but…it’s not coming to me.”

I wish it could. I bet it was a beautiful memory.

“Dash, it…” Twilight’s eyes are starting to water. Maybe she should stop looking back at me like she needs to keep her distance. Maybe she should let me in. “It impaled you on its fang. It went right through your heart. Don’t you remember that?”

I think…

Maybe…

“Yeah.” I sigh in contentment. “I think I really felt alive, then. Like all the pieces slid into place.”

“No, that’s not how…Dash, you weren’t moving by the time we pulled you out of the hole. I know we disin…defeated it after—”

“About that. That’s…” The taste of cucumber sandwiches sours slightly in my mouth. “I hope you didn’t hurt it, Twilight. It was such a friendly creature. It helped me out so much.”

“We…” Twilight’s eyes water a little more. I think there was something about them that was starting to crack. “Maybe we should talk about this some other day. I’m feeling a little…”

“No! No, it’s okay! We can keep talking about this!” I find myself sitting up a little. “So you pulled me out, and…”

Twilight takes a deeper breath. “Fixed the hole in your heart. As best I could. It was still…”

“Still what?”

Twilight stays silent.

“...It was beautiful, wasn’t it?”

“Your heart shimmered. Like it…like it was iridescent, even after I finished mending the hole. I thought it was just...I don’t know what I thought, but…”

“That…” Wait, I think I remember this last bit. “That was when I started seeing how beautiful life was, I think.”

“Your eyes. They’ve been the same most days, but some days, they…why am I even telling you this?” Twilight suddenly snaps. “You’re just going to forget it all again. You always forget this! No matter how I coax you, no matter what I try or how much we talk, it never ends, does it?”

“Twilight…” Her eyes are starting to get ugly. Her mane…I don’t think I like her mane right now. I don’t know why.

“It just keeps happening more and more! I thought it would just be one day, maybe two, but every week it feels like it’s happening more often than not, and I swear one of these days it’s just…just going to be that. And that’s going to be Rainbow Dash. Not my…not my friend.”

Twin tears trickle down her cheeks. It’s…entrancing. Entrancing enough to make me forget her ugly eyes and dull mane. The way it catches the light, the shimmering trail it leaves as it descends, that bead of liquid so evanescent and so worthy of committing to memory. I wish she could see herself. She’s so beautiful when she’s sad.

“Twilight…of course we’re friends. We always have been. We always will be.”

Twilight’s breathing is shaky. Shuddering. She needs more reassurance.

“And I know that someday, when you’ll let me into your heart just the way you fixed mine, that I’ll help you see the world like I do. And you’ll be the happiest pony in the whole world, I think. Maybe even happier than me. And I can’t wait to see all that we’ll be able to see together.”

It doesn’t make her smile, but it does seem to steady her. At least she doesn't keep crying, which is a shame. She does dab her eyes, though, and look back at me, once again not letting me really look at her at all.

“Rainbow Dash, or…I don’t even know what I should call you, at this point—”

“Rainbow Dash is fine! It’s my name, isn’t it?”

“If I find out exactly what’s happened to you, and if I find out how to cure this…this disease, I will. But if there’s nothing else I can do about it, and I have to make a choice…”

I know what she’s not saying. I know she wants to shutter the light, snuff my senses, extinguish the rainbows. And if she can’t…

She’ll make me disappear. All of me.

And I think, for the first time, I can feel myself start to get angry. I don’t like this. I don’t like what she’s saying, I don’t think I like her anymore, there’s something sick and ugly and filthy green in my guts and I want to pour it out all over her, watch her scream, pour out this ugliness over the entire world and tear all their ugly stuffiness to pieces and watch it all disappear and break and crumble and leave behind nothing but light and—

“Excuse me, Princess? Madame?”

There’s somepony behind the ugly princess. Wearing a suit and with an uninteresting coat or mane and carrying—

“Cucumber sandwiches!”

“Since Princess Twilight Sparkle suggested that you may have been fond of these, I took the liberty of crafting more for you two, should you so wish.” The besuited stallion sets down another small platter of cucumber sandwiches, then whisks away the empty one. “I trust they were sufficient for your meal?”

“They were marvelous.” I can’t stop my tail from swishing. They really were marvelous, after all. “Thank you for making more! I’m so going to carbo-load on these. Or veggie-load, I guess.”

The stallion chuckles. “As you say, madame.” Without another word, he’s off and away, back toward whatever part of Canterlot Castle he came from. With a sigh of contentment, I pick up another sandwich and toss a glance at Twilight.

She looks shocked. Why does she look shocked? Did she see something just now? Ohh, if she saw the light like I did, even if only for a second…that would be beautiful.

“Twilight? Is everything okay?”

Twilight’s body jerks a little, then she nods her head. “Yeah! Everything’s fine! Just fine! All…wonderful, am I right?”

“It is a really beautiful day.” I take a generous bite of a sandwich and just barely remember to avoid talking with my mouth full. “You gonna have any more of these sandwiches? They taste awesome. Though if you’re gonna leave them all for me, I’m not complaining.”

“It’s…have as many as you like!” Twilight chuckles nervously. “Actually, I just remembered, there’s even more work that I need to do than I thought. I…I should probably get started on that."

“Aw.” I can feel my ears droop. “But I was having fun!”

“Maybe we can do it some other time, okay? Just…just I need to focus on this for a bit.” Twilight replies with a sad little smile. “But maybe if you wanted to help out…maybe you could paint something for me? Maybe that would help me see things the way you do, so you wouldn’t have to try and talk to me about what it’s like.”

This is why Twilight’s my best friend in the whole world.

“Yeah!” I reply, standing up. “I’m…actually, I’m gonna take a page out of today’s workbook! I’ll make you some cloud sculptures, Twilight! The biggest and the best you’ll ever see, and I’ll put them all above Canterlot, and I’ll really wow everypony with how awesome the castle will look after I’m done!”

“Yeah, that’s…that’s great” Twilight says, nodding her head. “Well, maybe you can do that, and…well, if you’re hungry and you’re feeling clearheaded, maybe you can stop by tomorrow? For lunch?”

“Totally!” I spread my wings. “That’d be the coolest thing ever!”

And then I once again take off into the sky, spiralling upward until there’s nothing I can see but the clouds and the blue.

It isn’t until later, while I’m feeding Tank, that I realize I forgot the sandwiches.

But that’s okay. I’m sure Twilight enjoyed them without me. I forgot to move all the grand, ornate cloud statues down and around Canterlot Castle, too, but that can wait until tomorrow. I know I’ll have time to do everything tomorrow. On days like these, there’s so much wonder and splendour to everything that time feels like it lasts forever, at least until the sun starts setting.

Which, of course, it has. Daylight pours through my window, like a phoenix breathing its last, waiting to be reborn again. The light sinks in bounds and waves, like a falling tide disrupted by the hooves of fillies being called back for dinner. Colors coalesce, performing their final dance as they gradually await gentle night to take their place again.

And yet the iridescence lingers. I stare into the sun, and the sun stares back, and once again the rainbows fill my house and paint my body and fill my soul to bursting. Gossamer soap-bubble strands tickle my body as it stands in aureole, and I know that this fully touched life is the best life that I could ever hope to have.

I can’t wait until tomorrow.

I can feel, deep in my heart, that it will be the most beautiful day ever.