Chapters Chapter 1: Brilliant
Morning in Ponyville shimmers
Morning in Ponyville shi-i-ines
And I know for absolute certain …
That everything is going to be … fine.
The words drifted across the valley that held the sleepy village of Ponyville from the climbing spiral of the singer. The brilliant pink-coral and electric-blue bolt of energy that darted cloud to cloud in a soaring crescendo of elation fully had every reason under Celestia’s golden sun to believe every word. Reaching the peak of her ascent the singer paused to look over her shoulder with eyes the color of pigeon’s blood at the picturesque scene below as she let gravity gently drag her to a halt high above the few drifting clouds that shared the morning sky with her. It was the most beautiful morning she could ever imagine, perfect in fact.
Gravity’s insistent tug that had brought her to a halt now beckoned her return to lower skies. Closing her eyes, the pink pegasus rolled over on her back, tipping her nose down slightly, tucking her fore legs and wings tight to her barrel and extending her hind legs full out in back as she let gravity’s caress pull her from the heavens.
Eyes closed, the falling mare began to count slowly in her head. ‘One Thunderstorm… Two Thunderstorm…’ Even with her ears pinned back against her head she could detect the changing air pressure as she fell towards the valley below.
‘Eight Thunderstorm … Nine Thunderstorm …’ The count continued even and steady as her plummeting form streaked towards the valley floor, until … ‘ELEVEN!’
Eyes snapped open as the verdant meadow rushed up to embrace her. Wings opened and caught air. The pull of the force against her wings felt wrenching all the way to their roots as the mare righted herself to the horizon. The grassy embrace of the ground fell behind, again evaded with but a heart’s beat distance to spare, the mare merrily skimming the edge of the natural field.
Dropping one fore hoof slightly she let the cheated ground kiss the tip of her hoof as she sped on, her barrel only a few hoof spans above the ground. Behind her the narrow furrow cut by her one hoof through the top of the grass was pushed out by her own wake into a broad channel curling at the edges that was easily visible from some distance.
She tightened her wide turn through the meadow as she skimmed the ground gaining some altitude as she fixed her sights on the three story cloud tower that hung dreamily roughly its own height above the valley floor. The mare pumped her pink wings hard a few times adding some height and much needed speed as she closed on the island of cumulus upon which the sculptured white tower of stood.
‘Okay,’ the pegasus thought to herself as her flight path brought her altitude just higher than the approaching cloud deck, ‘last one.’
She gave herself a little shimmy in the air then pitched over and back pulling ‘G’s’ while simultaneously rolling laterally. Once, twice, she bottomed out of the first loop and straight into the second. Back and over and around and … Her wings backed air hard as she pulled up out of the last loop, drawing to a complete hover a body length and change above a small cloud formed bridge above a narrow rainbow stream that flowed across the top of the cumulus island the tower sat on. Wings beating, heart racing the coral pink Pegasus gently lowered herself from the air and touched down on the cirrus bridge above the stream, back, back, front, front, left to right, all four hooves came to alight upon the vaporous deck of the bridge. The divine gift of cloud walking that allowed pegasi to stand atop clouds as easily as other ponies stood upon earth and stone prevented her from plunging through the less than a hoof’s breadth of packed white vapor into the liquid rainbow stream below.
The pink pegasus looked back over her shoulder for a moment, a grin of prideful satisfaction stretched across her muzzle. A perfect double inside out loop, her signature maneuver. Pride satisfied, and grin still in place, Firefly trotted off the short bridge towards the tower door only to have it open expectantly at her approach.
From within a pair of golden eyes looked out at her as the stallion stepped forth into the sunlight to greet his mare. The light blue pegasus stallion had just the slightest tint of purple in his coat giving him a striking ‘royal’ appearance. Even more striking was the unruly waves of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo hair that comprised the male’s mane and tail. The by virtue of his coloration alone, Bifrost was a prize beyond value in pegasi society, the mane in particular was thought to be a badge of the ancient pegasi royal family, and many a mare had attempted to attract his attentions. Firefly hadn’t.
In fact their first meeting had opened with her quipping acidicly that the ‘pretty stallion’ was probably a ‘cloud’, all looks and no substance. Bifrost’s response had been a feigned act of ‘Who? Oh me?’ replete with flared wings, exaggerated glancing about, and expressions of shocked, almost effeminate decorum.
When Firefly had finally had enough of the act, and chose to affirm her first insult with a sharply tongued, “Yes, you, pretty-colt.” Bifrost had delicately trotted up in front of her, nose in the air, and then bowed low, wings spread, head level to the horizon. Firefly had rolled her eyes in a condescending expression of ‘Oh Please’ at the actions of the stallion, until she looked down and met his up turned gaze. His golden eyes had become hard, boring into her, his face a mask of focused roguish determination, and then he spoke, firm and even, with a slight northerly hint to his accent, and sealed the game with four words.
“Was that a challenge?”
Firefly shifted her view to her now beloved husband in the present. That same roguish smile was again present on his face and curiosity raced her for the answer.
“What has you so happy Frosty?” Firefly asked warmly as she and her mate first bumped noses then moved to passing each other face to flank down the right side in the traditional greeting of married pegasi.
Reaching under his left wing Bifrost drew out a folded letter bound in red ribbon and closed with a silver wax seal bearing a winged lightning bolt. “A couple of cadets dropped this while you were out.”
Firefly’s eyes got wide as she saw the Wonderbolts’ seal. Carefully she took the letter from her mate in her mouth and slipped the seal with the tip of a wing. The letter unfolded as she took it in hoof to read.
“Yahoo!” The pink pegasus pony erupted into a winged back flip of pure exuberation.
“You got in!” Bifrost exclaimed before snatching the now free-floating letter out of the air with his teeth.
“Yup! First attempt, and I broke the record for youngest Wonderbolt ever to make the team by…” Firefly paused her giddy explanation to quickly do some math in her head, “forty-three, no … wait, forty-four days. For anypony to beat that, they’d have to be foaled almost a month early!”
“Three weeks.” Bifrost’s academic side slipped out as he spoke, transferring the letter from mouth to hoof. One didn’t work with advanced weather theory and not have a good mind for math.
“Still, that’s most of a month.” Firefly returned playfully flicking her tail in her mate’s face as he read the letter of acceptance, a smile of pride growing with each second.
Bifrost’s gaze was so firmly fixed on the letter he didn’t notice the tail flick. The moment was perfect for Firefly’s prank-loving soul. She lifted a hoof admiringly, perhaps she might be tempted to go for a hooficure now, though her hooves were ticklish, it was hard enough for her to lay through the one for her own wedding, but on to the point.
“Too bad I’ll have to decline.”
Firefly waited for the words to settle in Bifrost’s preoccupied mind as she continued to contentedly study her right forehoof.
Three…. Two…. One…. Firefly counted down to the inevitable moment of realization that was to be punctuated with a …
“WHAT!” Bifrost reared in shock, jaw agape, wings flared, and eyes wide and set firmly on Firefly.
Firefly moved in close, rubbing her head affectionately against her husband’s belly and barrel, as he remained statuesque in his shock. Moving as high as she could, Firefly nosed Bifrost’s jaw closed before taking to wing and hovering at eye level as she looped her forelegs around his neck and leaned in close to whisper in his ear.
“Yes dear, decline.” She purred happily as Bifrost’s jaw dropped open again.
“But…but…but…” was about where Bifrost’s mind was stuck, his mouth quite obviously along for the ride.
“Why?” offered Firefly as she touched her nose to his.
Bifrost nodded lightly.
“Because I’m pretty sure they won’t permit me to perform advanced aerial displays while I’m carrying our foal now, would they?” Firefly pushed him slightly and the larger stallion toppled onto the cloud deck with a muffled thud.
Settling herself down on top of her fallen lover Firefly crossed her forelegs under her chin and regarded her still motionless husband with a bemused look.
“F-f-f-foal?” The stallion stammered, Bifrost’s vocal track finally having gotten out of the ‘but’ rut.
“Yes, stallion of my dreams. Foal.”
“But…but…but…”
“No, actually it was more of that, other plot, I’ve been letting you till for me.” Firefly grinned as the shock finally was melting from Bifrost’s face, his wings closing around her as she lay atop him.
“What about the Wonderbolts?” coherent speech had finally regained sufficient a foothold to allow the question to be asked.
“Well, since I was only a first year academy student, the chances of being accepted to the team were pretty low, so if you did happen to get me with foal I’d just take a year’s continuance and …” Firefly’s expression faltered in mid explanation, “why are you doing this? Don’t you want me to be happy?”
The odd change in Firefly’s tone caught Bifrost offside.
“Of course, but, aren’t you disappointed about having to decline the Wonderbolts?”
“A little,” the blue maned pink mare sighed, “but the most important thing I’ve ever wanted to be was happy, and right now I’m the happiest mare in Equestria. It’s not every day you have to choose between two dreams coming true the same day. But I get to do just that and not have to discard the other.” The expression of elation on his wife’s face to Bifrost was threatening to outshine the glory of Celestia’s own sun as she spoke. “So why don’t you quit being so analytical and just be happy for us. I’m going to be a dam and you’re the sire.”
Bifrost couldn’t help but smile as he nuzzled his joyful mare at the base of her electric blue mane return as she snuggled deeper into his embrace.
This day was perfect.
Chapter 2: Fading Light
The last rays of Celestia’s golden sun had long vanished behind the western horizon. From high in the deep sapphire blue night sky Luna’s glorious silver moon cast its cool light across Equestria. A cool breeze wafted through the air as, high atop the balcony of the tallest spire of Canterlot Castle, the Diarch Nocturnes, the fallen and redeemed Princess of the Night, Luna, watched serenely. All was well in Equestria this young summer night.
Well, mostly well. The lunar diarch turned her head slightly, taking a sip of the hot Earl Grey-Mare tea from the cup that floated in the cobalt blue aura of her magic next to her. Replacing the cup beside the pot on the low table that shared the balcony with her, Luna used her telekinetic abilities and adjusted the alignment of the telescope that sat perched like an odd three-legged bird near the balcony railing. It really wasn’t necessary, the enchanted device would permit her to view as she wished regardless of its alignment, still she found actually shifting the device made the viewing feel more ‘true.’
As she peered through the eyepiece, the Princess of the Night could still not quite understand what kept this one of her subjects unsettled this night. She had watched the golden-yellow and amber stallion since she felt his uneasiness a short while before. His wife still slept peaceably at his side, yet he lay awake, though he had not been earlier. As he was awake Luna could not enter his dreams to help him allay his fears. His wife’s dreams, Luna blushed for having seen them, a small pang of regretful envy stirred within the princess at being a millennium old maiden herself. But that was another matter entirely stemming from a thousand years in lunar solitude.
Returning her mind to her sleepless subject, the lunar princess could not figure out what was it that kept the stallion awake as the hour closed on midnight. All six Elements of Harmony were nearby, surely that should give him comfort?
* * * * *
“WUB! WUB! WUB!”
The sound pulsed through the walls into the master bedroom and to the ears of the once sleeping stallion who was utterly unaware of his being observed from afar by a concerned Princess Luna. A princess who, from her far off perch high atop Canterlot, was having trouble discerning what was keeping him awake. Carrot Cake, though, was totally certain of the cause. To the best of his knowledge it was DJ PON-3’s latest release ‘Back to BASSics.’ That, and the slow degradation of the sound proofing spell Pinkie had promised that her friend Twilight would use to keep the party noise from becoming a bother throughout the rest of Sugarcube Corner.
What did baffle Carrot was how his wife could sleep through the steadily increasing Wub’ery coming from Pinkie’s loft, but she did. He had no problems with this really, annoying though it was. Pinkie Pie had been like an adopted daughter to Cup Cake and himself ever since they had agreed to take her in as an apprentice baker. It wasn’t that she didn’t have family, only that the Pie’s lived so far out of Ponyville that it was easier for Pinkie to stay here rather than walk three to four hours each way there and back again.
Eventually the party would die out, and then Carrot knew he would be able to get some more sleep. Nothing was going to happen he had told Pinkie so long as …
The twin air raid sirens of Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake now blared to shrill life. Cup Cake started from her rest and Carrot swung his legs to the floor, unwillingly shifting from easygoing surrogate father, to concerned papa and landlord. He really didn’t want to do this, but as Cup would be heading to soothe the twins, he had to be the one to bring his hoof down on the party upstairs.
The door to Pinkie’s loft was closed but the vibrations emanating from beyond it could be felt as he hooked the handle with his pastern. As the latch slipped from the striker plate the door burst open, assaulting Carrot with a solid wave of rainbow light and sound, and no an insubstantial amount of likewise colored confetti and streamers.
Up in the loft flat of Sugarcube Corner the ‘Happy Birthday Rainbow Dash/ Congratulations on being appointed Second Year Flight-Lead at the Wonderbolt Academy party’ was in full swing, and had been for several hours. It had begun exactly 3.14 seconds after the last pony; coincidentally the pony of the hour herself, Rainbow Dash, had arrived. That had been the precise moment when Pinkie had set off her party cannon to officially commence the festivities. Thankfully, Twilight’s soundproofing spell had been freshly cast and at full strength at that point.
The same could not be said of the spell at this particular moment, as the record player stopped and Pinkie Pie addressed her friends with a conundrum.
“What kind of music do you want to hear next? ‘Beat It’ by BlackGryph0n and Mist-tail Creeper (1) or do we play Neightoven’s 9th at 78rpm? Hmm?”
The sugar-pink party-mare with the poofy raspberry mane flashed the two album covers to her assembled fiends, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Twilight Sparkle, all of whom suddenly were staring awkwardly at her. Apparently oblivious in her party preoccupation, Pinkie turned, and without missing a beat, asked the amber maned, golden-yellow earth pony now standing at the top of the stairs to the loft…
“What do you think Mr. Cake?”
It was precisely at that moment that the realization hit. Pinkie Pie’s sky-blue eyes bugged out double size and her jaw dropped all the way to the floor in a manner that defied rational anatomical physics. Oddly, the sound of a brick passing through a plate glass window was heard by all present in the room, although every window in the building remained unbroken.
Before the shock still pink party hostess could recover her capacity for speech following an awkward silence, punctuated with the curious chirping of crickets. Twilight broke in, as the mulling of foals could now be heard from the floor below.
“Oh, oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Cake. I guess I got too involved in the festivities and didn’t notice the ‘Cone of Silence’ spell was fading. I’m so sorry.” The light mulberry-purple unicorn mare who sported a hot-pink and indigo double stripe in her midnight-sapphire-blue mane, apologized.
There was a whisper of a chance that it may actually have been Fluttershy that had tried so speak first. Though that did seem unlikely, as the butter-yellow pegasus was doing her best to shrink in shame behind her long pink mane, and for all intents and purposes, wishing she was a potted plant at the moment, as a tree would be too large and out of place for the room.
It didn’t take long for the rest to chime in with a veritable chorus of apologies, ranging from Applejack’s rustic and honest, “Oh gosh, Ah’m awful sorry Mr. Cake.”
To Rarity’s well stated and formally phrased, “I do most sincerely apologize Mr. Cake, and to your wife as well. I’m absolutely mortified that we allowed our little soiree to disturb you and your foals so.” The silver-gray, nearly white, unicorn went on to offer a ‘generous’ discount on a set of custom his-and-hers jumpers for the twins for the inconvenience. Generous here, everypony knew, from the amethyst maned seamstress meant ‘free.’
It was Rainbow Dash, who had finally rounded out the apologies with her statement of, “Heh, yeah. Reeally sorry ‘bout that Mr. C. oh, would you look at the time. Maybe we ought to wrap this up girls, its really late and I was going to fly to Cloudsdale tomorrow morning to see my dad.” Bowing her head low, and formal, as she did so, as befitting a proper pegasus and Wonderbolt Cadet, such that her wind ruffled red, orange, gold, green, blue, and indigo mane touched the floor.
The profusion of genuine apologetics had disarmed the ‘I’m disappointed in you Pinkie Pie for letting your party get out of control and wake the twins’ speech Carrot Cake was going to deliver. Instead a warning ‘in future’ had been issued and accepted with even more apologies as the five remaining ponies quickly set to cleaning up the party. Fluttershy had quietly slipped downstairs having kindly offered to go and sing her favorite lullaby (2) to the foals and apologize to Mrs. Cake personally.
The cleaning through with, the five friends still in the loft helped Rainbow pack up her gifts, with some mild apologies about keeping the sky-blue mare up to late despite her not having told them about needing to leave for Cloudsdale early in the morning.
Rarity’s gift had been her typical gift certificate for the Ponyville spa, though Rainbow still had hurricane-sized reservations about other ponies touching her hooves. Fluttershy, Rainbow’s oldest friend had given her a book on Tortoise care, and a sky-blue chamois with Rainbow’s own cutie mark embroidered in one corner, and bottle of Turtle-Wax for Tank. Pinkie had found a book in the Ponyville joke shop entitled, 1001 Hilarious Flights: the airborne trickster’s guide to practical jokes, by Sunny Days.(3)
Twilight’s and Applejack’s gifts though, had been the most special to the rainbow maned pegasus in some ways. Not counting the second year flight leader’s pin and notification from the Wonderbolts (Squee). Twilight had somehow gotten a hold of a copy of the latest Daring Do novel not yet in stores, and signed by the author (4), no less. Applejack had brought Rainbow a note. Not much on its own, but the fact that it was for a two-gallon barrel of Sweet Apple Acres cider, that was better than gold in Dash’s book.
The dusty-orange mare with the blonde mane and smatter of white freckles across the bridge of her muzzle had also brought the most unusual item of the evening. A small keg containing something that looked like, well, rainbow juice. The keg had been marked: McIntosh Special Reserve Zap Apple Cider. All in attendance had been somewhat surprised at the presence of the cider itself, not to mention the originator. There was definitely something odd about Applejack’s older brother, no pony could quite put her hoof on it though. The taste however, defied description.
The cool near midnight air was a boon to the blue pegasus as she circled the town, gaining altitude, climbing swiftly into the welcoming embrace of the sky. Rainbow Dash had circled the town so as to give an impression of nonchalance to her departure. She had though, made sure that she quickly gained more altitude than she knew Fluttershy was comfortable with in open skies. Once safely above the level of the night’s cloud deck the daredevil mare opened the throttle and did what she had wanted to do this night ever since the Party had come to an abrupt and silent halt. She fled.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like her friends, she loved them all dearly more than any other ponies in the entire world, save one, two if they both counted. It wasn’t as thought she wasn’t regretful about what had happened at the end of the party. Waking the twins was just plain, what was the word Spitfire had used once … unbecoming. No, Rainbow was genuinely regretful of having been in part responsible, but nor would she shoulder the whole of the blame, all had played a role in that mishap.
What tore at the rainbow-tailed blue mare had crept unnoticed to her when the music stopped. From below, the distressed wails of two foals had reached Rainbow Dash’s ears. That sound alone wasn’t what chased her through the sky that night. Chased her higher into the icy heights. There had been a voice as well. A calm caring voice soothing tears and offering comfort.
She had heard many foals crying over her life so far, and many mothers responding, both here in Ponyville, and back in Cloudsdale where she was born. She had herself saved several fearful foals and returned them to the loving hooves of their parents during her brief, ego bloated, tenure as Ponyville’s resident hero. The sounds then had never bothered her. But never had any been at this time of night, nor on this night of the year of all others.
The freezing air of the high altitude did nothing to abate the flush of heat that surged across Rainbow Dash’s body. Nor could the silence of the altitude dampen the sounds echoing in the pegasus pony’s head. The screaming and crying remained, though not like before. Now the voices had become reversed, a small voice trying to sooth the distraught cries of its parent.
Rainbow Dash felt her body clench as she let gravity’s tug finally pull her flight to a stop at the apex of her ascent. Promptly she pitched herself over in frustration, pointed her nose down, and dove. Arcing her decent slightly she sought out her target, setting her course as it came into sight.
The cloud hung heavy in the air, a free-floating mass of water vapor, a cold shower in perfect suspension of motion. Until a blue bolt with a rainbow wake burst through it.
The cold soak did Rainbow Dash some good. The clinging water drops sucked the heat from her body. The beads of moisture also served to hide the tears that now began seeping from the corners of her eyes.
Hurtling past the edge of Ponyville, the speeding blue pegasus could feel the pressure wave in front of her pressing closer as yet another cloud vanished as the lone mare shot through it, scattering wisps in her wake as she neared the mach barrier. Ahead of her a moonlit valley opened before her, and hanging low in the center, a cloud tower sat atop a private island of cumulus, a gleaming pale silver beacon in the moonlight.
Rainbow Dash knew this place well. It was her home here in Ponyville. It was also linked deeper than that. The valley was named for her dam’s dam, Serenity Sky.
Abandoning her duel with the mach barrier which her heart was no longer in, four sky-blue hooves touched down gently on the small cirrus bridge that arched over an ornamental rainbow brook near the front door, front to back left then right.
As she entered her cloud home, Rainbow Dash expertly dismounted her saddlebags, allowing them to slide from her back down one wing to pile softly on the floor near the front closet. Without missing a beat she proceeded down the three shallow steps to the oval shaped sunken living room, not stopping until she reached the small grouping of three seating cushions loosely huddled near the empty hearth. Two larger bracketed one smaller between them, a pink blanket lay neatly folded upon the larger cushion to the right of the smaller center one. The cool light that fell into the room from the high set windows above a bookcase that lined the one wall of the room highlighted the two electric blue thunderbolts that contrasted with the coral pink of the fabric.
Reaching the small open space before the hearth, Rainbow stopped and looked at the cloud formed mantle that ran above it. A picture in a hoof wrought silver frame showed a coral pink pegasus mare in partial rearing, wings spread catching the wind that played through the electric-blue hair of her mane and tail, a look of unbridled joy on her face.
With the care of reverence reserved for such a holy icon Rainbow Dash gently reached up and lifted the image from its station on the mantle, bringing a wing under it lest the sacred image fall from trembling hooves. Setting herself onto her haunches the sky-blue mare cradled the frame in her forelegs, her heart racing in cold haste as she did.
Her prize secure, Rainbow returned her gaze to the mantel, and the one remaining artifact upon it. The silver vessel stood like a prize trophy, its owner’s name beautifully etched into the mirror sheen of its religiously cleaned surface. But there was no victory to be proclaimed, the few words upon its surface read:
Firefly
Beloved Wife
&
Mother To Be
A line nearer the base gave the date Firefly’s foaling, and the date of her …
Rainbow had to look away. To read the last line was always the hardest. It was more painful than the time she’d broken her wing, more harrowing than all the taunts of ‘Rainbow Crash’ as a young filly in Cloudsdale. Her heart staggered under the weight of the final date there, etched in silver. It was her birth date, her own exact birth date, the very day she had been foaled … it was the day she had killed her mother by the very act of being born.
Rainbow Dash was not known as a pony who was known for tears, there was only one thing her friends had ever known to bring tears to her eyes, and that was laughter. For some things Rainbow considered funny, she would laugh until she couldn’t stand, let alone fly. Laugh until her wings and her sides hurt as she lay on her back, tears of pure mirthful joy streaming. Those were the only tears she’d ever shown since she was a filly in Cloudsdale.
Here though, here there were no others to see, no friends, no bullies, no rivals. It was here in the still calm of Luna’s night, in the solitude of her personal fortress, that the tears of remorse, of pain, of grief flowed from her. Propelled by great silent shuddering sobs as she looked at the image cradled in her hooves, of the mare that had given her life to give her life, as tears pelted down onto the glass over the picture. Wrapping her wings about her self Rainbow drew the picture to her chest.
From the dark of the nearby ascending stairs eyes appeared, eyes of a deep yet bright gold. Eyes that brought from within the shadows the form a light blue body with just the tiniest tinting of purple that could be noticed if one tried. As shadow gave way to the thinness of moonlight, the red, orange, gold, green, blue, and indigo strands of the mane and tail of a pegasus stallion who could only be the father of the pony who sat weeping before the mantle came into view.
Bifrost’s torn heart winced within his chest at the sight that he found himself viewing. Cold fingers of memory licked like forgotten fires within him as he approached the distraught mare that was his beloved daughter, hoof falls silenced on the soft cloud-formed floor.
Descending in silence into the sunken family room, the golden-eyed stallion seated himself on the left most of the two larger cushions before extending a wing to the trembling form beside him.
“’Rora?” he called hushedly, gently offering his presence. It was a name that he alone used. To all the world she was Rainbow Dash, descript enough. On the official foal registry though, another name appeared, Aurora (5). In full, it was Rainbow Aurora Dash, by Bifrost, out of Firefly.
The gentle call was ignored until he laid the tip of his wing on her withers. It was then she slowly turned to see him. Her face damp, eyes rich with unshed tears.
“Daddy?” The trembled word entered into air as her father stretched out his wings and brought his daughter into his embrace. For a moment they nuzzled each other in greeting, their grief, for a brief respite, put aside.
The framed picture now between them would not let the memories drift far…
His own tears came out as the young mare place her head on her father’s shoulder and let her tears again flow free, spilling onto his coat as questions old and painful reached his ears. “Why daddy? Why did she have to die? Why did she have to die because I was born? Why did I have to kill her just for foaling me?”
It was the tormenting truth of the nightmares that had plagued her nights as a filly, as a young mare on her own in Ponyville. Long before there had been a redeemed Princess of the Night who might try to aid her search for solace, those dreams had been there. It was the true nightmare that made all the campfire-story boogie mares pushovers because of its reality.
Tendrils of thought seeped into the deepest reaches of Bifrost’s soul, fishing for what answers could be found there, and found they were. In the most pained, private, and soul rending part of his life, thought closed around the hard bitter truth and brought it forth.
“’Rora?” he asked gently brushing her mane from her eyes as she lifted her head to look at him with a shallow nod of acquiescence. Her eyes, her beautiful pigeon’s blood ruby-eyes found his and pleaded for the answers that could give her the comfort she sought.
“What I’m about to tell you is something that you should have been told long ago but I never knew how to.”
“Yes.” Rainbow Dash weakly breathed her answer. The voices the polyphony in her head finally subsiding here in the embrace of her father’s loving wings.
“Rainbow Aurora Dash, you didn’t kill you mother by being born.”
What! Rainbow Dash’s mind raced thoughts tumbling over themselves. How could that be? Was Mom sick and already dying when I was foaled? Was that why she died on my birthday? Was I rescued somehow? Why couldn’t you have told me that …’
A heavy sigh from her father as he continued to speak brought her focus back from her unspoken tumult of questions.
“The truth is, you weren’t born the day your mother died.”
Wait! Excuse me. That doesn’t make sense. How could I not have …
“You died with her.”
Rainbow’s eyes were locked to her father’s as he spoke. She could see the tears of pain running from them. The fact that the whole thing suddenly made no sense what-so-ever didn’t matter. In that moment, as she looked into his soft golden eyes with her own pigeon’s blood pair reflecting back at her from them nothing mattered but four words that echoed in her head, echoed deep into the night.
You.
Died.
With.
Her.
Author's Note
Hmmm, First serious time doing A/N’s and I should start with Note 0, that should have been on the previous chapter: Bifrost is the placeholder name given to the rainbow maned stallion seen with filly RD in ‘Games Ponies Play.’ It’s also the name of the Rainbow bridge in Norse mythology that links Midgaard (earth) to Aesgaard (heaven) and was actually the seed that inspired this whole piece.
1.) Shameless Plug here. This is actually a cover of Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ done by Michelle ‘Applebloom’ Creber and Gabriel ‘Black Gryph0n’ Brown. View it here . Small apology to Miss Creber for the constructed pseudonym.
2.) Yes, this is ‘Hush now, Quiet now’, just without Sweetie Belle’s embellishment.
3.) As understood by the author to be a pen name of sorts used by Princess Celestia for purposes of anonymity when it may not be advisable or appropriate for her to use her true identity, like authoring a prank book for pegasi.
4.) According to the MLP:FiM wiki, G4 supplemental material indicates Twilight Sparkle’s mother, Twilight Velvet, is an author by profession who writes ‘adventure stories.’ It was to be the thesis here that she is actually the author of the highly successful Daring Do novels, and Twilight Sparkle’s father might actually own the publishing company. However, we now know that the books are penned by Daring herself under the Nom de Plume 'A.K. Yearling'.
5.) In the line of Pinkamena Diane Pie, it is viewed by the author that Rainbow Dash’s middle name should be Aurora, if only because of aesthetics. That and her resulting initials would be R.A.D. In all honesty Rainbow’s cannon middle name if ever revealed might be totally different. Maybe Ashleigh after RD’s VA Ashleigh Ball?
Chapter 3: Ashes
Bifrost watched his wife’s pink face contort in discomfort. She was lying on her belly on the large cushion near the hearth in the family room of their cloud tower reading. A warm pink blanket matching her coat was wrapped around her, embroidered in one corner with the twin thunderbolts that comprised her cutie mark in the same brilliant electric blue as her mane.
“Are you okay ‘Fly?” Bifrost put forth his concerns.
Firefly’s face relaxed as the pain faded and she regarded her husband and foal-sire with her brilliant pigeon’s blood ruby eyes. “If this colt of yours gets any more active I’ll be bruising through my coat.”
“You’re so sure that it’s a colt?” The rainbow maned stallion replied calmly glancing again from his own reading to look upon the love of his life.
“Yes, no filly could be this aggressively energetic.” Firefly winced again as another volley of kicks resounded within her.
“Really?” Bifrost cocked the brow above one golden eye as he waited for the internal assault on his wife to abate. “I seem to remember somepony’s mother mentioning one little filly bucking her so hard while inside her that she had bruises …”
“My mother’s coat was so dark she wouldn’t be able to tell a bruise from the rest of her hide. Ahh-ow!” Firefly cut off her husband’s smart-flanked response, only to be painfully reminded that internal bruising was quite a real thing by yet another burst of motion from the foal inside her.
Bifrost scrunched his muzzle in concern to suppress a grin that would surely have had him sleeping down stairs if ‘Fly saw it plastered across his face as his unborn foal seemed to take his side of the argument.
“I swear to all that’s right in this world that they’re going to have to bar the windows in the foaling wing at Ponyville Medical and be holding a snare-net instead of a foaling blanket when your son arrives.” The hot pink dam-to-be happily proclaimed to her foal’s sire.
Bifrost let his snout relax and just grinned at his expectant wife. She had also sworn up and down once foal inside her had gotten big enough for the movements to be felt, that she should probably give birth to their son at the Wonderbolt’s facility atop Mt. Richthofen, given it seemed the little one was bound and determined to be one even before birth. Firefly had even gone so far as to joke that their foal might just be born with a bright blue coat and gold markings matching the Wonderbolt’s flight suits.
“Alright!” declared the pink pegasus as she lurched to her hooves. The blanket she had been wrapped in sloughed to the floor revealing the bulging mid-section of the once trim young mare. “I’ve had enough. If this foal is going to calm down, I’m going to need to get some air.”
“Air?” Bifrost quipped, cocking a brow at his wife as he spoke.
“Yes, air.” Firefly shot back as she trotted up from the sunken family room into the kitchen area bound for the back veranda. “And I don’t want to hear any more about me not flying during the last month of my pregnancy.”
“No such words from this pony’s mouth.” Bifrost replied closing the book he’d been reading as he got up and followed his wife’s still shapely flank out through the kitchen. The book he had been reading was about unnatural interactions of atmospheric anomalies and the Everfree Forest, quite good actually, written by a pegasus by the name of Fujita.
Just because he’d been a top-flight athlete in weather school hadn’t stopped him from attaining an advanced degree in meteorology, egghead his flank. He was a storm formation specialist with the equestrian weather office. Ponyville it seemed was wonderfully situated roughly equidistant from both the capital at Canterlot and the main weather services offices in Cloudsdale.
It had made for a win-win when he’d married Firefly, as they’d been able to take up residence in her family’s ancestral cloud tower above the Serenity Valley just outside of town. Firefly would still be able to see her friends on a regular basis while acting as the town’s weather manager. He could easily commute to and from Canterlot or Cloudsdale as needed, though his job often had him flying all over Equestria consulting on storm formation systems or assisting in breaking up ones that had gone out of control.
Right now though he had just begun a paternity leave for three months, as Firefly entered the final stages of brooding before she foaled. It gave him at the moment, with his wife’s vehement desire to exercise her independence, time to start work on his latest thesis. But he figured that any progress might be short lived as Fly’s foaling date drew closer. Then after would come the joys of chasing an energetic flitting little colt or filly about the tower for the next two months of his leave.
The evening air that greeted the two pegasi as they reached the back cloud deck of their floating home was cooling slightly, but still heavy and warm. Bifrost took in a big lung full of the heavenly valley air, as his wife did likewise beside him. The scent of the valley meadow and late spring flowers perfumed the air with a sense of breathing life itself. It was glorious, but not so much as the look of his beautiful bulging wife, ripe with foal beside him.
Firefly looked back at him meeting his golden hued eyes with her brilliant pigeon’s blood ruby ones, glittering in the evening light full of life and passion for it. As he stood admiring his wife’s face, as if he hadn’t already committed every detail to memory, he saw the smile spreading. With a wink and a lunge she was off, plummeting over the edge of the cloud. Bifrost’s gut leapt with her, his body following a moment behind. As he caught sight of her winging out across the valley his insides unwound themselves and he soared after her.
The pair largely glided for a few lazy circuits spiraling out form the tower, the warm air buoying them, easing the need to actually exert effort in flying.
“How’s the little one doing?” Bifrost asked, passing below his wife in a lateral slide.
“Settling down.” Came Firefly’s warm reply. “I don’t know why, but the little guy prefers it when I’m airborne. It’s as if he knows I’ve been on my hooves too long, and he starts getting really restless.”
Bifrost gave a flap of his wings adding a touch of altitude before shifting back past his wife this time passing above the pregnant mare, calling to her as he did. “You figure another couple of laps and ‘he’ will let you get some rest?”
“Hmm,” Firefly mused over her response aloud. She was seriously enjoying just being in open air right now her, body being caressed by the warmth of rising thermals, the stallion of her dreams on her wing, “maybe a quick jaunt out to the edge of Sweet Apple Acres? The trees are just finishing blooming and smell so divine.”
The rainbow maned stallion chuckled; usually it was the fall cider that she considered ‘divine’ about the expansive orchards of the Apple family. He could still remember the first time he and Firefly had stayed over at the tower that would eventually become their home. His future wife had insisted on taking a weekend, a very specific weekend, in the early fall to come and visit her grandmother in Ponyville. Why? She just said it would be a surprise, and it had been.
That first morning after their arrival, Firefly had crept into the guest room he was sleeping in. Firefly’s family had some very strong feelings regarding what was ‘out of bounds’ in a relationship and ‘sleeping together’ and other related activities were, in the lingo of his family, ‘verboten’. Verboten so much if fact that Firefly’s family took oaths on the subject, oaths that were not disregarded lightly he was informed. So for her to be in his room in the tower that morning in the barest of the pre-dawn twilight nuzzling him awake, and telling him to not make a sound and follow her, he thought surely he was going to be in Tartarus by sunrise. Instead dawn had found them curled up against each other, dosing by the orchard gate of Sweet Apple Acres waiting for the opening day of ‘Cider Season’.
“If you feel up to it.” Bifrost answered as he again slid in below his wife, this time holding formation beneath her and trailing slightly. “You know the last time you were aloft too long you said it felt like you were hauling an overloaded mail satchel by the time we got back.”
“Well, I feel quite good right now.” The pink mare replied with a bubbly confidence. “And speaking of mail ponies, maybe if your son has settled down enough when we get back I might be inclined to accept a ‘special delivery’ from your ‘post’ in my ‘slot’.” Firefly punctuated the innuendo by pulling ahead of her mate slightly giving him a good view and a playful flick in the nose with her electric blue tail.
Bifrost grinned like a school colt who had just gotten his fist glimpse of ‘the heavenly gate’. Cranking his wings he rolled up over Firefly inverted and replied back. “Neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night shall keep me from seeing you breathless and satisfied.”
The pair continued to jest like the pair of young lovers they were as they flew over and through the expanse of apple trees. The rising warm air carried the scent of apple blooms to the happy couple. Yet in all something began to feel wrong to Bifrost as he kept a watchful eye on his pink and blue pony of passion, something … electric, yet cold.
A torrent of cold air dumped itself over Bifrost like a bucket of icy water, hauling him from his merry lover’s chase. Cold! The thought burned in his mid as he braked hard in mid-air, ending in a full hover. Their weaving chase had brought them to the far edge of the orchard, and as he cast a glance to the horizon above the Everfree Forest, and his merriment fell away like so many fall leaves. Thunderstorm!
There, ever further smearing itself across the sky like some nightmare belched forth out of Tartarus was the storm front. In his focus on Firefly he hadn’t seen the black clouds drifting in over the Everfree. Now though, as the first jagged fingers of lightning stabbed forth into the green forest below and the cracking growl of thunder tumbled through the sky, now was not the time to scold himself on what should have been, now he had to deal with what was here, now.
“’Fly! Storm! Fly!”
The off-purple-blue pegasus stallion watched as his mate pulled up at either his call or the roll of the thunder, and caught sight of the rising darkness above, its leading edge now curling under like a blanket being rolled upside down.
“’Frost! Storm!” came the mare’s realization as she made for her egress from the path of the vanguard edge with all the speed her pregnancy-laden body could muster.
Behind her the storm’s vanguard edge tilted unsteadily, wobbling like a wave in the air, and then broke. The rolling front turned vertical as a swirling tower of dark moisture and wind took shape.
Bifrost’s gut sank as he saw the tornado begin to tear into the far edge of the orchard behind his wife. His knowledge of storms was advanced enough to see that from the outset this was no pegasus controlled system that he might be able to buck his way into some control of and buy his wife time to escape. No this was what he had been reading about just a short while before, a monstrous rogue storm off the Everfree. A completely unnatural conjuration spawned of waves of hot and cold air and low and high moisture swirling together in an uncontrolled environment.
If the monitoring stations in Cloudsdale or Canterlot had spotted this beast forming a weather control detail would be enroute and on site in an hour or so. An hour or so though did Firefly no good at all from where they were now, the swirling column of cyclonic destruction was nearly on her, its wind shear pulling at her trying to draw her into it.
And then it stopped, vanishing as abruptly as it had begun. As if Bifrost could not believe his eyes as his heart leapt in elation, he watched the writhing tower simply dissolve into thin air freeing Firefly from its grappling wind shear, and rendering the air almost totally still.
“Frosty, let’s get out of here please.”
The spectrum tailed stallion nodded eager agreement as he formed up along side his wife.
“That was close, how are you holding up?” the concern of a worried parent and spouse stressing his words.
“Little one’s probably curled up inside me as far up as he can go, but fine. I’m really thinking I spent too much of myself.” Tears of distress and exertion were welling in the edges of her eyes as she spoke.
“Clamp my tail and I’ll kite you.”
He pumped his wings a couple of times and then swung in front of his wife allowing her to catch hold of the end of his tail in her teeth. The form was a common pegasus rescue position for situations of exhaustion. The kite-tail pony only had to assume the basic low effort ‘glide’ position and let the rescuer do the wing work.
Slowed by the additional drag of his gravid beloved, Bifrost pumped his wings harder to hold pace. He was totally certain he could get them both safely to the tower soon as he winged away from the still surging weather front now raining heavily on the earth pony orchard. A growl sounded above him drawing his attention to the cumulus ceiling overhead
Oh Buck!
Above the paired pegasi the storm churned angrily, Firefly let an alarmed ‘meep’ escape from between her lips but kept her teeth firmly clamped to the end of her husbands tail. For Bifrost realization came as well. Dreadfully he now knew why the first twister had suddenly vanished. The storm cell above him was back building, the tornado was an erratic stuttering starter, a ‘jumper’ that formed, dissipated and reformed at erratic intervals until it either broke down or stabilized.
His realization no more than complete, a dark form plunged down at the couple, like the cruel finger of some malevolent divinity.
“Hold tight Hon!” Bifrost shouted, “Work with me, I know you can. We’ve got to get to calm air above the cloud deck! Fly! Fly!”
The pair surged upwards. He was a great athlete and had logged quite a bit of time in simulated and genuine storm situations, still kiting a heavily pregnant mare while evading a twisting plunging funnel cloud was not routine by any measure. Firefly was even better in the maneuvering game, she had agility and stamina like few ponies could boast, but that was less the weight of her current burden of their unborn foal. Even with what reserves Firefly had left to help it was a fight to get around the churning vortex.
If Firefly hadn’t been pregnant the two might have opted to try and ride the twister, cycling up through the eye and out the top. Now it was simply a weaving dash to get above the storm, nothing fancy, just a raw power climb. Once they got above the level of possible debris they were home free.
Something slapped his flank hard. There was a tearing sensation from his tail. Most horribly there was the scream from Firefly, a scream only possible with her mouth wide open, not clamped hard to his tail.
He didn’t blink, he didn’t pause, he didn’t think. He just went with his gut, snapped his wings to his body pitched over hard and dove after the sound of his wife’s voice.
The tornado had pulled her in within moments of them being separated, and he charged into its grasp willingly. The winds and water drops formed a circular moving wall, a wall that he was beaten against repeatedly. Water drops pounded painfully into his eyes along with grit and ice crystals, he could barely see, and though the buffeting of the wind in his ears drowned all sound, he could hear Firefly through it all. He just had to reach her.
It was then that the claws of the beast took firm hold of him. Claws made of wind, and water, and ice flung him about like a foal’s toy. The claws of the storm wrenched his left wing from its socket, and all he could do is scream his wife’s name. All that mattered was that he get to Firefly and their foal, the storm could crawl back to Tartarus dragging him bucking, broken, and screaming so long as he made sure that the only ponies in the world that mattered were safe. And then it let him go.
Like a foal bored of its plaything the spiraling beast cast him aside and left. Biting his lower lip in pain Bifrost glided out as best he could searching the area for any sign of his beloved Firefly. Anxious moments in the falling rain seemed like torturous, tedious hours as he slowly spiraled towards the ground. He couldn’t keep himself aloft on one good wing. He couldn’t even prolong his decent very well. Finally though, he spotted a glimpse of brilliant pink and shimmering blue near the end of where the tornado’s track had torn a gaping wound into the Everfree.
The landing was hardly his best. He stumbled in the debris strewn clearing, his injured wing sagging to the ground. Even the dragging of the feathers against the uneven ground was enough to send waves of pain washing through him that nearly sent him to his knees as he approached Firefly. He bit down on his lower lip hard and kept his hooves under him.
“Firefly?” he called as he moved towards her position, “Firefly are you okay?”
“I’m … here.” His wife’s voice returned sounding strained. “I can’t … get up.”
Bifrost caught sight of the pony who was the center of his existence as he rounded the crown of an uprooted tree. She was lying beneath another tree that had snapped near its base and now lay across her like some abstraction of a mother guarding her foal.
“Are you okay?” Bifrost queried of his fallen mate as he lowered himself beside her, offering the shelter of his good wing.
“Heh …” she began, trying to keep her lightning wit to the fore, “if foaling hurts half this much …” she sucked a hard breath in through clenched teeth, “your not getting me pregnant ever again, you hear me.”
“What ever you want my beautiful mare.” Firefly laid her head against his neck, rubbing against it with a nod, as he spoke.
The storm lasted for another hour or two, until finally spent the rain abated. As the clouds began to break up, Bifrost cast an eye skyward looking for any sign of pegasi weather operators but saw none. Procedure for this kind of event was to largely attempt to contain the storm to the boundaries of the Everfree Forest. He reasoned that Firefly and he might be too far inside the forest to be spotted by one of the containment or damage assessment teams that were probably seeing to tasks on the other side of the ‘Green Line’, as the members of the weather service referred to the border of the Everfree Forest.
Through a gap in the breaking cloud silver-white moonlight spilled down into the forest, and splintered through water drops in a spider’s web, casting a rainbow of color across the two downed ponies. The two lovers looked at each other and smiled lovingly at one another, basking in a rare moonlight rainbow.
“Bifrost?”
“I’m here.” The stallion wrapped his neck over his wife’s as he spoke, nuzzling her electric blue mane.
“I … I can see her.” The pregnant mare spoke haltingly; eyes fixed into the light of the rainbow, taking on a glittering kaleidoscope of color overtop her pigeon’s blood red.
“Her?” Bifrost asked confused, he hadn’t seen any other ponies.
“Our daughter, she’s beautiful.”
“Daughter?”
“Yes. She’s in the rainbow. She’s blue like the sky and has your tail and mane. She’s beautiful.”
Bifrost was dumbstruck, for months Firefly had been calling their foal ‘him’, certain it was a colt, now … this? He was still staring at his wife when she turned her head slightly to look at him.
“But she’s alone and scared, she needs help. I’m sorry my love, I’m the only one who can reach her now. I have to help her. I have to.”
Bifrost felt something as he watched as Firefly’s brilliant ruby eyes grow dull. He felt her stand, even as her neck sagged against him. He felt her step forward, through him, into the rainbow light. He could feel her heart beating next to his, and then another, smaller, beating with a furious rate.
She doesn’t belong where she’s going yet. I have to show her the way.
Bifrost knew he had heard Firefly’s voice, and then a giggle of a small filly sounded from the stillness. He turned and looked into the spectrum of light, and saw Firefly trotting up the rainbow towards a brilliant light where a pegasus filly flitted doing back flips in the air. And then they were gone.
Bifrost blinked in the stillness of the dark what had he just seen, what had just happened? He looked back at where Firefly’s body lay next to him, her eyes open, but the life gone. He knew, deep down, he knew.
Tenderly he kissed his wife on the forehead, gently closing her eyes as he did before struggling to his hooves. He swallowed hard, his sorrow, his grief; there would be time to mourn later. Now he had one last duty to stand to.
He drew in a great breath his separated wing and torn muscles shuddering in pain. He flared his good wing and screamed. He screamed, screamed as only a stallion could. Not in grief, not in pain, but in dire warning to all that could hear it, that so long as there was breath in his body and blood in his veins no creature of this world, or the next, would lay fang nor claw upon his wife or daughter.
Firefly had once told him: Loyalty did not define the choices one made. It was defined by the choices one made, the promises one kept, and that true loyalty, like love could only live or die by one’s choices not on its own. So here now, alone, in the darkness of the Everfree Forest, Bifrost stood the last watch. His wife and child may have died here, but it was his choice that his love for them, his Loyalty to them would not. So long as he lived that Loyalty
Would
Not
Die
EVER.
Chapter 4: Spark
“Dad?”
“Daaad?”
Rainbow Dash stared into her father's golden eyes as she called to him, as he held her there in the family room of the cloud tower outside Ponyville they called home. His eyes had seemed to lose focus, like he was lost in a dream. The last words he had spoken to her before he seemed to zone out were still sinking in, slowly fading from her conscious thoughts, but she could still hear them.
…you weren’t born when your mother died. You died with her.
The words had been shocking, if only because in the emotional whirlwind of the moment they had been completely unexpected. The fact that her mother’s death and her own birth coincided exactly in date had always been a heavy burden for the young mare to bear.
It had been during cloudergarten in Cloudsdale that she could first recall having her birthday mentioned. Her teacher then, Ms. Airheart, had made a point of announcing the birthdays of the fillies and colts in the class when they happened. Prior to that she couldn’t recall even knowing the exact date.
Of course that had been only the day and month. She hadn’t really known the year of her birth until the next year when she began flight school proper. That’s when they started doing more complex subjects like math and history and the concept of the ‘the year you were born’ came into the picture. It was at that time that she had finally connected enough dots to understand the final date on her mother’s ‘trophy’ on the mantel.
She had known for a long time she was an only child, and that she only had a daddy with her, but not a mommy. Her father had told her that her that her mommy had gone to a ‘special place far away’ in order to make sure she was safe. Rainbow Dash had, consequently, thought her mother was the greatest hero in all Equestria for that. She frequently had pictured her mother off in mysterious far-flung places, doing battle with the dark forces of the world, and saving other fillies and colts in such dread locals as ‘Midnight Castle’ and such. After all, since Princess Celestia had to raise the sun and moon and rule Equestria from Canterlot, somepony had to be out there saving the world, right?
Reality has its unfortunate ways of derailing a young pony’s thoughts. It was in the weeks after Hearth Warming that reality burst in on Rainbow Dash’s shining view of her mother. It was here the notion of death entered the equation with the passing of her grand-dam, Serenity Sky. It was here that the notion of ‘died’ finally sank in and the pieces of the equation fit together, and now Rainbow knew her mother had died the day she had been born.
Except now she had been told something that supposedly changed that, but that something didn’t make sense.
“Dad?”
Rainbow Dash bumped her nose against her father’s, finally jolting the off-blue stallion from his torpor.
“Huh?” the rainbow maned stallion grunted as he blinked in surprise at the nose bump, recoiling slightly.
Rainbow Dash used the momentary surprise to slip out of her father’s wings and return her mother’s portrait to its place on the mantel. She paused a moment after setting the picture in place, her gaze falling on the silver urn next to it. Her heart flinched as it always did. The urn contained her mother’s ashes, the last physical presence of the mother she never knew.
“So,” the svelte sky-blue mare turned back to her father. The taste of a sour crabapple, bile, and salt coated her tongue, giving an unsettled edge to her words, “If I died with Mom, how am I here right now?”
Rainbow watched as her father blinked at the unexpected question, her building agitation causing her wings to flare as she awaited his answer.
“Well?” Rainbow chimed like a cracked bell. She wasn’t exactly known as the most patient of ponies and her emotions were flying so high right now that she really wasn’t in the mood to wait. “What is it? Hmm?”
Rainbow could smell ozone and ash in the air as she stared down her father, daring him to vindicate his answer that she had not been born the day her mother had died, but had somehow died with her mother and now somehow happened to be standing here waiting for him to justify what couldn’t be justified!
“’Rora, I …” Bifrost began only to be cut off by his daughter’s building storm of anger as it broke hot and wild right there before him.
“I’ll tell you what!” Rainbow fired off, the taste in her mouth now taking on a dull, bitter, coppery taste as she verbally laced into her father. “It’s a load of horse apples is what it is, a bigger pile of manure than you could get out of Applejack’s hog barn in a year! You know how I know? Because You Told Me! You told me when Grandma Serenity died. You told me what Died is. Ponies don’t come back from that. So don’t Lie to me, Dad. Don’t lie to me. I killed mom when I was born. The date on my foal registry even proves it. It’s the same as on mom’s ashes!”
Dash watched, glaring thunderbolts at her father as he sat there under the brunt of her fury as she lashed at him with her verbal storm of unfettered emotion. She watched the pained expression as she ripped into him she might as well have been pulling his beating heart out of a bloody hole in his chest with her teeth. His golden eyes flashed with pain at her words as they choked the air of the room. Air that was getting so thick it was getting hard to breathe, the smell of ash and ozone and something else was making her head spin, she wanted to puke.
“It’s fake.”
“Fake!” Rainbow screeched in indignant rage. She could taste the sulfurous tang of brimstone in her mouth. If her foal registry was a fraud her career with the Wonderbolts was finished. Her even returning to the Ponyville weather team wouldn’t even be a possibility. Her life would be over. Her innards were clenched so tight she was sure she was going to retch up all the cake and cider from the party if she said another word.
“And it’s real.”
“Huh?” Rainbow faltered at her father’s answer. At least she didn’t feel like puking anymore, but the resignation in her father’s answer didn’t stop the room from spinning. She felt hot, almost on fire, she needed air, badly. She took a wavering step forward only to collapse into her father’s wings and hooves.
For several long moments Rainbow Dash lay quietly in her fathers embrace as the rainbow maned stallion gently held her, rocking ever so gently as he stroked her own matching mane. Why did her life have to be so weird right now? She was born the day her mother died, but somehow died with her. Her foal registry was a fake, but real? She knew that when ponies died they went away and didn’t come back, yet somehow she was here.
No, Rainbow Dash conceded to herself, weird doesn’t cut it. My life has left weird and moved right on down to freaky town.
“’Rora?” her father nuzzled her after a bit as Rainbow’s breathing slowed to normal. “You feeling better my prismatic princess?”
“Mmm hmm” Rainbow murmured her response, snuggling deeper against her father’s chest as she did. She felt safe here like when she was a filly in Cloudsdale, safe from the nightmares. As long as her father was there she was safe.
Her father used a hoof to tilt her head up so she was looking at him.
“’Rora, believe me when I say that I’m telling you the truth. Believe me when I tell you that you weren’t born when your mother died, that you died with her. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, to pick up that torch and place it on the funeral pyre for you and your mother.”
Rainbow watched her father’s eyes become wet again as he spoke, his voice quiet but sure. She just lay there, head on his chest listening to his heart, his breathing. She trusted him more than any pony in the world but … she really didn’t want to ignite another outburst but the question needed asking.
“But if I’m in there.” Rainbow asked quietly as she used a wing to point to the silver memorial urn on the mantel. “How can I be here?”
“Your not there ‘Rora. You’re here.” He leaned down and gave her a kiss on the forehead to affirm his statement.
“So …” the blue mare started slowly as her father eased her back to sitting on her haunches, “how am I here, if you want me to believe I died with mom, was cremated, and somehow am still here asking the most ridiculous sounding question I’d ever thought I’d hear myself ask? I mean Pinkie Pie probably couldn’t make sense of this, and she’s …well, Pinkie Pie.”
Rainbow watched as her father got up and walked past her to stand before the mantel. She turned herself to face him as he did. He stood there for a moment seemingly lost in thought. He reached out with the tip of a wing gently touching the urn and portrait with the tip before turning back to her.
“’Rora, before I tell you any more I want you to promise me that what you’ve heard here tonight you won’t breathe a word of to another living soul, as long as I live.”
Rainbow furrowed her brow at her father’s shift from comforting and caring to ‘do your home work or no Wonderbolts show’ serious.
“You mean like ‘Pinkie Promise’?”
It was her father’s turn to halt for a moment as he rattled about for the meaning of his daughter’s statement.
“Pinkie Promise, that’s the one where your one friend seems to know all about the promise being made right?”
Rainbow nodded to the affirmative, though yeah it did seem strange that Pinkie seemed to have an unnatural awareness of any Pinkie Promise that was made. Still, she was about to begin the motions when her father placed a hoof gently on her shoulder.
“No, ‘Rora, I want You to make me a promise, not one somepony else will hold you to. I want You to look deep inside yourself, deep in your heart and make me a promise that You know You will keep, no matter what.”
Rainbow cocked her head inquisitively at her father, the weight of the look from his golden eyes felt like the weight of all the gold in Canterlot was weighing down on her soul for this decision. Some how though she let her eyes slowly close as she tried to listen to herself, to listen deep within to find the right words to hear the voice …
With all my soul this vow I make
To forever keep and never break
And if by this pact I do not abide
To me Elysium be forever denied
As her eyes slowly opened Rainbow saw the look of utter astonishment on her father’s face. She knew she had heard the words inside her, but had she actually spoken them aloud? She must have. There were tears hanging in her father’s eyes. What by Celestia’s mane had she said?
“’Rora,” her father’s voice was soft and choked with emotion, “where did you hear that from?”
“I, …” she began. This was getting eerie, for as hot as it had seemed earlier, the room now felt of a creeping cold, “I did as you told me, and I heard a voice inside me say the words. Did I say something wrong?”
“No ‘Rora, you didn’t.” Bifrost took in a big breath as he let his emotions settle. “You couldn’t, not with that promise. Only one pony has ever made that promise to me, your mother. It was on our wedding night, right before we …” he paused as the material suddenly got awkward, “you know … wedding night. It was her private vow to me that only we two shared.”
The words sank in to Rainbow’s psyche, deep. She had just, by listening the voice inside her, uttered her mother’s private unbreakable oath. She swallowed hard as she looked at her sire.
“Uh, okay Dad I’m really glad ‘n’ all,” not a word of a lie she truly was pleased with herself. The sacred nature of the promise she had just made was one she knew she would never violate out of loyalty to both parents. It was a religious moment of sorts but something still begged to be said, “but, seriously, ‘before we … wedding night’, TMI Dad, Eww.”
“It was very special to me, just like your mother.” Dash watched her dad crack a sheepish grin of mild embarrassment for mentioning the circumstances before shaking off his daughter’s admonishment with a flick of his head to resume the more serious topic at hand. “’Rora, what I’m about to tell you is known by very few ponies, all of them bound by their own private oaths not to reveal what they know.”
“Ooh, you mean like a secret society? Like the Celestiati, or the Freemanesons, or the Loyal Order of Water Buffalos?” Dash felt her eyes getting wide with interest.
Since the time she had broken her wing and Twilight had introduced her to the Daring Do novels during her convalescence, Rainbow had become an obsessive reader of them. Right now though her life seemed to be looking like one of the ardent archeological adventuremare’s exploits. Secret societies, fake foal registries, wait her dad had said that was real too, how...
“Sort of, ‘Rora. Have you ever heard of the Phoenix Foal?”
Alright, that one she knew, heck she’d just finished reading about it in the last Daring Do novel, Daring Do and the Crown of Thunder. “Yeah Dad, I’ve heard of that, It was in the last Daring Do novel, best one yet. Daring was searching for the Crown of Thunder, an old artifact from the pre-Equestrian period before Commander Hurricane was leader of the Pegasi Tribe. It’s supposed to grant the wearer the ability to control weather the same way Celestia and Luna control the Sun and Moon.”
Bifrost looked at his daughter with a sheepish look of uneasy concern that made Dash feel unsettled. “So you know about the Crown of Thunder, but what about the Phoenix Foal?”
“Not much,” the young cerulean mare had to admit, “the book didn’t go into great detail on it. Only that it’s the legend of the Phoenix Foal that mentions the crown. Why?”
“Because of your mother and you.” Her father began to piece the puzzle together for her as she sat there with him. “That’s why your foal registry isn’t quite correct, but there’s no way it could be given the circumstances. Don’t misunderstand me, it’s real, and completely beyond suspicion, but it’s inaccurate. The flight surgeon (1) at Ponyville hospital was a close friend of your mother and I. He prepared the foal registry on you as a home birth. He then had it sent to Cloudsdale, because too many ponies here in Ponyville knew about your mother not having foaled before she died.”
Rainbow wanted to say something, but could only offer a bewildered look to her father as the older stallion totted over to where the bookshelves that lined the one curve of the oval shaped room ended near the hearth. Once there he slipped a book from a shelf with the tip of his wing. Returning back to where his daughter sat on her haunches in front of his sitting cushion he laid the book down on it for her to see.
“Your mother’s literary love was old pony folklore. Pre-Equestrian Pegasi folklore to be exact.” Dash didn’t look at her sire as he kept speaking, only looking at the odd writing on the hardbound cover of the tome on the cushion at her hooves. “Bet you’d never have guessed your mother could read Ancient Pegasi, did ya?”
Rainbow looked up at her father with a mix of puzzlement and pride vying for control of her expression.
“Mom could read that?”
Bifrost nodded, a grin of pride on behalf of his late mate riding across his lips.
“Kind of odd thinking of your ‘folks as a couple of ‘egg-heads’, eh, princess?”
“Yeah,” Dash had to admit, it was weird, she’d always admired all the athletics trophies her parent’s had won, “but, your office, mom’s room here, they’re full of athletic awards and stuff.”
“Yeah, I guess you could say your mother and I were …”
“Well read.” Dash cut off her father, finishing for him, giggling at her private joke.
Her father looked at her a moment before adding his own chuckle to the mix.
“Where’d that come from?” he asked.
“Something Twilight told me once.” Dash noted for him as she let her giggling subside.
Slipping the old volume open with the brush of a wingtip, Bifrost stopped where a brilliant pink silk bookmark embroidered with the electric blue twin thunderbolts of Dash’s mother held a place in the pages. Dash looked at the bookmark for a second, then pulling her attention from the cloth heirloom looked at the page below it. A piece of parchment lay atop the page written in her mother’s script.
Rainbow Dash slammed the book shut.
“No!” she glared at her father, she could feel the bile rising in her throat again. “No way, no! Unh-uh. Not possible.”
“’Rora, why do you think I pulled you out of flight school after you got your cutie mark at flight camp? Why do you think I brought in that private weather tutor for you and sent you to that elite Griffon flight instructor?”
“I … I …” Dash struggled to choke out a reply, but that was a far as she could get. She could feel the contents of her stomach tickling the back of her throat. She could smell the smoke and ozone in the air again; taste the ash on her tongue.
“After you got your cutie mark you started manifesting other abilities, cloud-bending and weather manipulation skills that most pegasi took years to lifetimes to perfect. The Buccaneer Blaze, how many of the Wonderbolt’s can do that trick? How many could do it at nine and a half! Your mother and I were both flight prodigies of the highest order. You’ve seen the trophies and heard the stories. You. You make us both look like amateurs by comparison.”
The indigo-blue stallion paused for a moment as his daughter tremblingly brought herself to her hooves head hanging uneasily. “Do you remember what I told you after you told me what happened at summer flight camp? What I told you when everypony said you were lying about the Sonic Rainboom? I told you to I believed in you, and that I knew why, and that you needed to believe in yourself most of all. I need you to believe in this for me now, to believe in you.”
The blue mare clenched her eyes shut and flattened her ears to her head as she swallowed hard willing her stomach to hold its contents as she forced her reply. “No! It’s not possible! I’m the Element of Loyalty, and I might be the best flyer ever. But that? Never. That’s IMPOSSIBLE!”
Her rebuttal final, Rainbow Dash tottered unsteadily to the stairs that lead up to her room. The pounding of her pulse in her ears was deafening, her hide and feathers felt like they were on fire, and her hooves, even on the cool soft cloud that formed the floors and stairs of the tower felt like she was suffering from terminal laminitis or walking on burning cinders. Her gut lurched with each step up as she fought to hold her insides in place, exhaustion deepening its root in her body with every movement. From somewhere behind her, her father said something she couldn’t make out.
* * * * *
As she reached the top landing she was certain that she was more than half dead and it was probably that zap apple cider that AJ’s brother had sent to the party that was responsible.
Ugh! Do I look as bad as I feel? The tired young mare let the stray thought roll around in her head as she all but dragged herself into her bedroom. The room was, as most ponies who knew her would have pictured it, Wonderbolts paraphernalia adorning the walls, Wonderbolts bedspread atop a princess-sized cloudform bed, and of course some strategically placed prisms to bathe the room from time to time in her favorite colors. What most would have found out of place was the full-length mirror placed in one corner of the room.
Unlike some of her friends, most prominently Rarity, Rainbow wasn’t into beautifying herself for others and for the most part had nary a wardrobe to speak of. The function of the mirror was almost strictly for self-appreciation. Early morning pre-workout psych-out sessions, fresh out from under the rain-shower pose downs and preening, or just on those low impact days she wanted to grit her teeth and glare at another pony while doing wing-ups before bed.
Right now though Rainbow Dash would have slunk into her bed with not a thought even idly cast in the mirror’s direction save for a small but brilliant glimmer of the most brilliant red with the barest touch of blue that could be noticed. Deviating towards the flash of color Dash’s eyes struggled with beckoning sleep to focus on the form in front of her. Closing the distance the form in the mirror slowly resolved itself and the tired mare found herself looking into a pair of eyes. Pigeon’s blood red like her own, but the refection was not the familiar rainbow on blue she was accustomed to seeing. No the refection that looked back from the mirror was … pink.
Raising her left foreleg as she made a firm vow to Celestia, Sovereign of Sun, that if she could fly straight in the morning, she was going to personally hold a thundercloud over Big McIntosh all day for after effects of that lightning-blasted zap-apple cider. It was then that Rainbow Dash noticed her hoof, and leg, and rest of her were still blue, her mane still rainbow. (That was a color wasn’t it?)
The mare in the mirror though, was still pink, with a blue mane. Rainbow peered harder at the apparition in the mirror realization slowly coalescing in the fog of her mind. As she reached out a hoof toward the mirror she twisted slightly the apparition mirroring until Dash saw the other’s cutie mark …
Rainbow Dash’s eyes went wide in realization at the same moment her hoof made contact with the cold surface of the mirror.
“Mom?” the word fell nearly silently from the sky-blue mare’s slacked jaw, as a tear trailed from mirrored eyes.
Yes my child, I’m here. The voice swept aside the fog in Rainbow’s mind. She recognized that voice; it was the one from within her that had given her the words of the promise she had made to her father earlier though it was much stronger. She now knew it was her mother’s.
“Wh- … why … are you … here?” Rainbow Dash stammered out in near silence, her hoof not leaving the point of the mirror where it met the specter’s on the other side.
I’m here because you need me to be, because I’ve always have been, and because you need me to tell you something that you believe only I can.
“And that is?” the rainbow leaned forward and whispered into the mirror her forelock now brushing the glass.
I believe you know the answer to that now. Don’t you?
“I…I want to hear it from you.” Dash croaked inaudibly, tears now running the length of her muzzle, dropping away into the cloudy floor below.
The Sonic Rainboom is not an act of aerial prowess. It is an act of will, of magic. It is the ultimate expression of the magic of the pegasi. A feat that can only be accomplished if one possesses the will to believe it, the clarity to see it, and the tenacity to accomplish what others say you can’t. You proved this the day you were born, when you chose to live in spite of what happened, and not let the last spark of your fire vanish, and instead to make the impossible happen.
The truth is that the Sonic Rainboom is the Crown of Thunder and you, Rainbow Aurora Dash, are the Heir of the Air, the Princess of Pegasi...
You are the Phoenix Foal.
The prismatic pegasus swallowed hard as she accepted the truth to herself.
And you are my daughter.
The pink and blue hooves parted from the glass as the blue pegasus crumpled to the cloud formed floor in an unceremonious heap.
* * * * *
“Rora?” the voice came from far away deep in an echoing cave it seemed. She couldn’t find the strength to lift her head. The room lay sideways, but her father came in through the door as if nothing was wrong save his concern for her.
“Daddy,” She whimpered meekly as the elder pegasi once more gathered her into his embrace, “Tell me, tell me how I was born.”
Author's Note
1.) Equestrian medical doctor specializing in pegasi medical issues. Similar concept to modern medical specialties like thoracic surgeon, cardiologist, or a neurosurgeon.
Chapter 5: Risen
Celestia’s sun touched the horizon casting a golden hue across Equestria. For almost a thousand years the serene alicorn princess had granted harmony to her little ponies. Peaceful nights, warm days. She cared for all her subjects as if they were her own children it was said, and the ponies of Equestria revered her for that.
The golden light of the sunset shimmered off the long green grass of the mountain-backed valley. Watched by golden eyes that cared not one flick of the owner’s rainbow colored tail of Princess Celestia’s charity, compassion, devotion, integrity, and optimistic leadership. The princess of the sun was dead to him, as was the whole damned 从猴子的屁股废话 Cóng hóuzi de pìgu fèihuà (1) world.
In the slow deepening glow of sunset, as the color of the dying light moved from gold to the flickering tint of orange fire across the valley floor, the lone stallion’s eyes were drawn to a spot in the sea of grass that seemed to devour the light. Charred and black, the living lushness of the surrounding meadow seemed to shun the area. Well it should, death had touched the ground there, death and fire.
A tear slipped from the corner of the pegasus’s eye, following the trail left by its predecessors down the violet tinted blue cheek to fall away into the cloud below. She’d been so beautiful, even as she lay there in death, upon a bier of incendiary white cloud over wood. She had been bedecked in white cloth and golden armor woven of treated straw, as the old traditions she revered were observed. She had looked so peaceful as he had approached her and gently slipped the woven golden bridle around her muzzle and kissed her one last time.
Then he had touched a small white wrapped bundle secreted away beneath her left wing, unknown to most, with the tip of his. Their daughter, dead before living, Firefly had followed the lost foal into Elysium over the bridge of a moonlight rainbow.
She doesn’t belong where she’s going yet. I have to show her the way.
Those were last words he’d heard her say, though she had not spoken them. He had heard them with his soul as she left this world for another. He had turned back and walked to where a small solar mirror had been placed, covered in a white cloth. He’d drawn off the cloth and let the flame take root in the torch in the old ways, from the sky.
Firefly had believed that the Pegasi had come here from far away. Children of a great winged horse created by long forgotten beings in a place called Olympia. Cast into the heavens, and finally coming here where they established their first kingdoms among the clouds.
Her beliefs would be honored as he picked up the burning torch and approached the bier one last time, before placing it down in a ring of rainbow colored feathers collected from family and community. As the wreath began to burn, he brought his own good wing forward and drew his longest primary from it adding it to the flame. As he walked back he could hear the flames expanding, even as the assembled pegasi began to lead the other gathered ponies in the traditional pegasi funeral song ‘Wind Beneath my Wings.’
As the flames and chorus grew, the stallion’s heart had shattered and fell as he collapsed to the ground. Silently he recalled begging any and all powers that he could think of, finally cursing them all down that they might see fit slay him now. Kill him in that moment, that his body might be cast onto his wife’s pyre and he be permitted to fly along side her and their daughter in Elysium.
His pleas and vitriol went unanswered. He lived, and silently cursed them all round again for their uselessness.
As he laid there tear-soaked and hurting something reached out and touched him. He felt the cold brittle shards of his dying soul being wrapped up in a sensation of warmth. As he opened a bleary golden eye he saw a young pegasus filly, not much more than a year old resting her head against his fetlock and looking at him with sea blue eyes, on the verge of tears herself. From within those eyes something reached out with preternatural kindness, holding his soul together until he could take it back.
It was then the pyre caught full with a tremendous rush and roar of flame soaring heavenward. The little yellow filly spooked and ran back into the gathered host, pink tail streaming behind her.
That had been eight days ago.
Bifrost closed off the memories. Each beat of his heart still felt like a pouch of crushed glass inside him, but his heart kept its rhythm. It had been eight days since the funeral, eleven since the storm and the moonlight rainbow. He’d spent the first two days after that in Ponyville General before being released in time for the funeral. His eyes watched the light fade from the valley. Like it had faded from his life. His life had ended that day in the flames of the pyre, with his wife and daughter in the fire, in the valley of Serenity, the valley of death.
With a tired sigh he lifted a forehoof up examining the knot work before him. It was perfect, thirteen knots held the loop of the noose. What gods and immortals would not deign to do perhaps mortal hooves could. A moment longer he held his self made gateway from this life. Then he stretched out his hoof and let it slip over the edge of the cloud. Originally he meant for his neck to be within the loop and the other end secured up high, neither was done.
There was a moment when he had thought an eternity looking up at his wife and daughter from the wastes of Tartarus was desirable. It was the thought of his wife and daughter looking back at him from Elysium for eternity, their souls weighted with sorrow for his folly that had stayed his hoof. His wife believed in Loyalty, in choices, in Life, he had promised her and himself the night she and their daughter departed this world he would not let that Loyalty die, Ever.
He had made his decision. He would serve his torment here among the living. Until the being his wife had called Bellerophon would come for him, and slip a golden bridle around his muzzle and lead him to Elysium. Lead him back to his wife and daughter.
A rumble of thunder beckoned his attention from his misery. Once more a storm was brewing over the Everfree Forest. Loathing welled up inside him as he watched the thunderheads swell into the sky.
His career was made in storms, formation, control, and response. He had been reading about the very conditions that formed the storm that took his family just before he and Firefly had winged off on that fateful flight. He hated himself more for failing to see the monster that had been looming before them. He failed. They had died.
As the grieving stallion sneered foully at the storm-front the thunderclouds kept blooming high over the Everfree. As they bloomed, images seemed to take form from them, the light from the setting sun dyed them in whites, golds, soft blues and most prominently, hot pinks.
Bifrost’s blood chilled then boiled as one particular shape formed high over the Everfree. The image of a pegasus rearing above the storm, wings up as if to take flight. The angle of the dropping sun cast the cloud-formed pegasus in a brilliant pink while shadow left the mane and tail in a cold morbid blue. It looked like Firefly as a flash of lightning forked past the flank of the cloud, completing the illusion.
Within the blink of an eye, the pegasus stallion’s blood first froze then boiled and the tears streamed hot from his eyes as the thunder rolled past him. It was taunting him; the Tartarus spawned storm was taunting him with his wife’s death.
“Damn You!” Bifrost screamed as the sun slipped below the horizon, as he leaned over the edge of the balcony of the upper floor’s master bedroom. His fore hooves perched on the cloudy railing, the lone pegasus let loose a torrent of blasphemies of a most unintelligible nature comprising half strangled sobs and cries choked by anguish. The beast only laughed back in thunder, as the monster that was the storm sundered the image of his wife smashing her back into the darkness of the heavy rain clouds as lighting crackled like sparklers at a Wonderbolts show.
It was too much, something beyond rage shot through his body like electricity, and he screamed at the storm. Screamed like he’d never screamed before. Screamed as if he meant to to silence the thunder with his will and voice alone. But it wasn’t him alone. He could feel the heartbeats in his chest, his, hers, and another’s. Their daughter’s! He could feel her heart beating furiously as he screamed at the storm.
“DAMN YOU! GIVE HER BACK! ”
His eyes were clenched shut as he screamed his life out into the black. He saw nothing. He didn’t see the tiny white cloud emerge from the charcoal shaded clutter over the Everfree Forest. He didn’t see it loose its lightning in the same spot, not once, nor twice, but thrice, and not in succession either, in pure synchronicity. Ruby, gold and sapphire bolts that may very well have been more magic than lightning sheared through the heart of the storm and into ruins long forgotten as a shockwave shot forward from the horizon.
Bifrost never saw the wave of near solid thunder coming. He felt it though, as it crashed into him, flinging him back against the wall of the cloud tower. Pain lanced through his still tender left wing where the separation and torn muscles were still healing. The tower shook in its meteorological foundations as the pressure wave passed through it.
Yet even as the shockwave battered him into the wall he heard something, voices.
Oh Yeah! A youthful voice called out in triumph.
Impossible! Growled another one, deeper, in sincere displeasure and disbelief.
Fly Dashie! Fly! Called a third. He knew that one. It was Firefly’s.
Staggering to his feet Bifrost’s vision cleared slowly as with the ringing in his ears. In some ways, aside from the prickling of pain freshly radiating from his left wing, he felt like he’d been doused in high proof alcohol and flashed like a flambé.
Walking unsteadily into the master suite of the tower he saw the wave of force that had hit him had shaken the tower as well, enough to knock over some things most notably pictures and a light on the bedside table. Picking up and straightening the disturbed items he made his way into the hall.
The nursery for what use it would be was in a similar state of clutter as he passed by. Either way the contents would just be getting boxed up later. Maybe somepony else could use the stuff. He certainly wouldn’t need it. He remembered Firefly telling him about a pegasus here in Ponyville, who had just given birth to twin daughters, he couldn’t remember the names, Flit and Cloud-something. Maybe they’d have use for it.
Drearily the emotionally drained stallion continued down to the main floor of the tower. As expected some things had fallen here and there, but nothing serious of note until he looked into the family room. Numerous books had fallen from shelves and a few mementos from wall hooks. Most of the pictures on the one wall were canted oddly. But what struck him deepest was the bareness of the mantel.
Bifrost’s heart, what little left there was of it now, cringed in cracked glass agony as he saw the picture of his wife laying on the floor, the glass broken. Disturbing to him though that was it was nothing compared to what lay beside it. The sky-silver funerary urn that held the ashes of Firefly and their unnamed daughter lay nearby, the ashes spread out before it on the floor. More tears of grief and frustration found their way from with in Bifrost’s grinding tattered heart to again grace his golden eyes as he approached the nigh impossible scene.
Nigh impossible as the funerary urn had been sealed completely by an electro-arc technique by a pegasus silversmith after Bifrost had filled the vessel with the gray-white powdery remains of his wife and daughter. The technique drew on the innate electro-kinetic ability of some pegasi to channel electrical charge through their wings.
In aerial displays the technique was used to perform the ‘Buccaneer Blaze’ in which a flying pegasus generated an electrical flash across their wings like a strobe light. The technique took years to perfect, even for Firefly who had been among the youngest ever to train in the maneuver and she’d just perfected it before she got pregnant.
As he made his way down the steps of the sunken family room something in the fan of the spread ashes drew his attention. Something glowing. As he approached the spot the object revealed itself more to the pegasus stallion's keen vision, a tiny hoof print, glowing orange-gold in the gray-white of the ash bed.
Bifrost reached towards it with his right fore-hoof over the glowing mark … and jerked it back immediately ash he felt the searing heat against the soft underside behind the hoof proper.
“What happened here?” Bifrost wondered aloud to the emptiness of the room. Only to be answered by a muffled squeak somewhere to his right.
Something was odd in the room. He could smell it in the air as uneasy adrenaline unclouded grief dulled senses. There was ash, ozone, smoke, and something else.
His eyes scanned the floor before him, there was the fading hoof print in the ashes, no, there were four, the others already faded near cold. They opened towards where the ashes spilled from the urn, heading away from it. His eyes scanned across the to the fallen picture of his fallen wife, the glass cracked and a shard broken free of the frame. Beside it the book she had been reading that last evening. It had been placed on the mantel by some relative and never returned to the shelves. It had fallen, opening out in the process to where Firefly’s pink silk bookmark held her last place. The broken shard of glass lay across a passage; magnifying part the words below … from ashes they … of will alone … like the Phoenix.
A movement in the pile of Firefly’s comforter drew his attention. The pink blanket, like the bookmark, was embroidered with his wife’s cutie mark of twin thunderbolts in an electric blue. It too, like the book had been picked up after Firefly’s death. It had, as of earlier that morning, still been lying, neatly folded, atop the cushion Firefly had last lay upon.
Yet now it was piled haphazardly, twisted and coiled atop the cushion …
Something caught his eye derailing his thought. From beneath the cloth of the blanket a few stray hairs of the most vivid blue trailed out.
Again the cloth-covered mound shifted slightly as Bifrost, golden eyes wide, reached for the pink pile and slowly lifted the edge from the pillow.
Strands of violet and green joined those of blue, with yellow, orange, and red following. The tiny filly lay curled in her own mane and tail, swathed in rainbow, her coat as blue as the midsummer sky. Deprived of the warmth of her covering the tiny pegasus pony stretched her wings and forelegs as an immense yawn split her tiny muzzle.
Bifrost’s rump hit the floor and so would his jaw, had it not been attached to his head, at the sight of the sleeping foal. Speachless, he kept staring at her.
She’s ours, Firefly’s voice whispered in his mind. I’ve done all I can for her. Now it’s your turn. Teach her well, but know that her life is her own. She’s special beyond anypony’s dreams.
Bifrost looked at the sleeping foal as his wife’s voice faded from his mind. As the last echoes faded the filly lifted her head and turned directly to him and opened her eyes. The room was flooded with an unsurpassed light for a moment, as tears of joy rolled freely from golden eyes.
She had her mother’s eyes.
Author's Note
(1.) Cóng hóuzi de pìgu fèihuà = pronounced: Kong HOE-tze duh PEE-goo FEY-hwa. Mandarin for ‘crap from a monkey’s butt’.
The Prophesy of the Phoenix Foal
After Chaos is made still And the shadowed sire banished into cold The two who are of three shall rule briefly in harmony Until shadow divides the two for a thousand years And leaves one to rule alone Towards the end of this solitude There will be born an heir of the air A descendant of the first line They will know death before life Pass through fire and dust And from ashes they will be born Through an act of will alone To rise like the Phoenix To claim the clouds home They will crown themselves with thunder Trail a cloak of broken light And with six they bind together Unlock love from dreaded night Yet from hidden heart from darkness The shadowed sire again shall crawl Until their form from love’s light shattered But their power not lost to all A friend fallen from good graces A fellow cast from spired heights To shadow’s venomed comfort To vengeful crown in darkness gleaming bright Before all those bound Of hoof and horn and wing The one by death shall stand alone Before the dread named darkness More feared than endless night While before them be the choices Of death or for all reveal the light
Okay… Rainbow Dash thought as she reread her mother’s translation of the ancient pegasi script in the book. The two who are of three, she figured were Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. The two alicorns had defeated Discord, whom the passage simply called ‘Chaos’, by turning him to stone. That was probably the ‘stilled’ part.
Spending a thousand years as a statue didn’t exactly rate high on the list of ‘thing’s to do’ for the borderline hyperactive pegasus pony. Still there was something to the passage now that she thought about it. She knew the parts that referred to her ‘birth’, if it could even be called that. She guessed there wasn’t any other way to describe it really.
There was the part that described her connection to her closest friends, ‘with six they bind together, unlock love from endless night’. They had come together under Twilight’s guidance to reunite the Elements of Harmony, and save Princess Luna from her alter ego of ‘Nightmare Moon’. But it had been Rainbow’s first Sonic Rainboom that had connected the six long before that, coinciding with them each earning their cutie marks.
The next part, probably referred to King Sombra, and the Crystal Heart, but after that … she wasn’t sure. It seemed to suggest a destiny of sorts but … she couldn’t figure it out. Could Luna become Nightmare Moon again? Could Twilight, or one of her other friends fall to the dark side and the power of this ‘shadow’ thing? Daring Do was right, prophesies were a lot easier to read in hindsight.
Rainbow Dash looked over the passage again, gently stroking the brilliant pink silk bookmark that bore the twin thunderbolts of her mother’s cutie mark embroidered in dazzling electric-blue as she lay on her bed. The actual ancient pegasi version was probably more poetic, Dash figured, than her mother’s translation. It had been the last thing her mother had been reading the night she had died.
And I died with her … The thought trailed through the sky blue pegasus’s head as she recalled what her father had told her only a few days earlier.
What she remembered most was the ghostly image of her mother, Firefly, standing opposite her in the bedroom’s mirror affirming what Rainbow had finally realized, but couldn’t bring herself to believe until then: she was the Phoenix Foal. She was the true heir of the Pegasi royalty, the master of the Sonic Rainboom.
That was all awesome stuff, stuff she had promised her father that she would not tell a single soul about. Promised with her mother’s personal unbreakable vow. But that didn’t matter. Rainbow brushed the forelock of her rainbow colored mane out of her eyes, wiping a tear away in the process. The most important words she’d heard that night were the last ones her mother, Firefly, had said to her before Rainbow had passed out.
You are my daughter.
Author's Note
As promised here is the (re-created) "Prophesy of the Phoenix Foal".
Interestingly, I started writing this piece in my head before Season 3 Episode 13 had aired so It was a bit odd to see Rarity doing Rainbows 'destiny' as a weather pony. Until I realized what I was seeing. Rarity under the influence of Dash's 'destiny' is controlling virtually the whole of Equestria's weather, horizon to horizon. Rarity is capable of affecting even massive seasonal shifts in temperature and precipitation sunburn to flash frozen frostbite and neck deep snow in the blink of an eye. This level of power is easily on the level of Twilight's exploits, and may rival that of Celestia and Luna's control of the sun and moon.
Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this tale I've now told. Comment's and thoughts are appreciated as always, and pending the events of Season 4 ...
The Phoenix Foal will return.
Sir Barton (One Old Racehorse)
