Of Storms in Sky and Heart
“So, basically,” the cerulean mare began, her forehooves twisting about as she leaned forward. A splash of red was growing steadily on her face, clashing with a lock of her tangled rainbow mane.
“I sorta-kinda love you,” she blurted in a rush.
She took a deep breath, as if she had flown a marathon under the watchful eye of every single Wonderbolt. In fact, she had not moved from her spot on the library floor in two hours, a feat hardly imaginable for the energetic pegasus. Around her was a puddle of rain that had dripped off her coat and collected during her wait.
Twilight blinked at her, head cocking to one side as her brows furrowed together. “Huh?”
Their eyes, purple and desperate crimson, reflected the flickering candlelight that bathed the room. like the glow of a hundred stranded fireflies within the tree of literature.
“I-I know it’s sudden,” Rainbow Dash said as she finally broke contact to look at the worn floor below. “But I’ve been.... I....” Her voice lessened, almost fading in its entirety as the constant assault of raindrops on the the leafy roof threatened to drown her out. She took another swallow of the humid air and tried again. “Twilight Sparkle, I really like you, and I want to—”
A soft hoof touched her mouth, shushing her words. “What are you thinking?” Twilight demanded, not with the soft parlance of one enamoured, but with the stern voice of authority. “It’s five in the morning, raining cats and diamond dogs, and I have a lot of studying to do and you have come in here to... confess?”
Rainbow took a half-step back, eyes widening as her mind tried to connect the dots and cut through Twilight’s words to find what she sought: tenderness, friendship.
The alicorn lashed out with pessimism.”You love me? Really, Dash?” She shook her head. “I don’t want to be mean or anything, you’re still my friend, but now’s not the time for one of your pranks. Tell Pinkie or whomever that it’s off and that I don’t find it funny at all.”
Lower lip quivering, Rainbow searched the room with a frantic gaze. There had to be something wrong. Twilight couldn’t seriously be so... so mean.... Did she really think that all her accumulated feelings, all her love, were a prank? She swallowed hard, her dry throat slicing at her like the blunt edge of a dull blade as something else trickled into her mind.
One glance at Twilight confirmed it.
Sadness was hiding beneath the thick glare of authority, like a muddy film of droplets that were collecting into a wealth of tears. Twilight knew it wasn’t a joke. She was being nice. She was letting Rainbow off in the easiest way: rejecting her off-hoof and letting the brash pegasus keep her precious dignity.
Rainbow laughed. The hollow, thin noise cried out silently in the vast library. It soon died off, her throat constricting as the last peal of laughter was choked into a sob. The books themselves seemed to shun her, their myriads of spines turned to her as Twilight faced away. “Y-you’re right. It was just a joke...” Rainbow said.
“Oh, all right. Okay,” the alicorn said with a hollow register before completing her turn. Tail limp behind her, Twilight took a few steps toward the far end of the room. “You can let yourself out? Go get some sleep. And try to keep out of the rain... you’ll catch a cold.”
She moved on, no longer facing her friend, constantly keeping her face averted and hiding her expression behind a mask of her own lavender mane until she began climbing the steps to her room. Thump after thump sounded out, like a hammer nailing Rainbow’s coffin shut.
The door to Twilight’s room closed with a click. One of the nearby candles flickered and died.
Wisps of sulfur-smelling smoke curled around the stagnant air, flirting with Rainbow Dash as they spread their intoxicating aroma. She followed the smoky trails and watched as they faded into obscurity, surrendering to the night. She felt like doing the same.
Moving on stiff limbs, she turned around and headed to the exit. From the tiny hole in the door, she could see the muted forms of the buildings across the street, dashed and broken by the torrential downfall. The deformed shapes became vaguely clearer as she opened the door and allowed a gust of wind to tear at her. Clasping her eyes shut against the wall of water and the slippery wind that ruffled her mane and coat, Rainbow pushed until she was outside, barely protected by the tiny overhang of the library entrance.
“Now what,” she muttered under her breath, the words snatched away as the wind turned on itself. Why did she have to pick such a cruddy night? Heck, she was the one to fix the storm up; she had no excuses not to avoid it.
Grunting, she moved away from the skeletal building, random sights coming in sharp contrast between the slits of her eyes with each flash of light. The branches of the tree being bent against the wind; a hundred leaves being ripped off in one fell swoop to fly away like a sheet of wet blades; a distant spark as a spiderweb of lightning decorated the sky above the Everfree.
She had to get home, and soon. She blinked as a cascade of rain fell on her, the tiny stinging darts of water stabbing at her coat and robbing her of whatever heat she had had. When she was with Twilight, all she had was heat. An inexhaustible furnace of passion that burned in the most intimate parts of her body and soul. Now, she had nothing but a wet coat and a mane that would horrify Rarity were she here to see it.
Her wings snapped out and, almost immediately, she felt their toned muscles grow taut against the pull of the wind, almost threatening to tear themselves off her body.
With a savage growl, the mare pushed herself off, kicking all four legs into the ground and jumping half a dozen metres into the air.
The deluge was worse as she gained height. The soft but constant shower of rain she had faced below became a barrage of liquid needles that ran straight through her coat to stab at her skin.
Squaring her jaw against the pain of the constant lacerations, the drab, rainbow-maned mare beat her wings again and again, fighting against the onslaught of wind that whipped around with the temperament of an underfed parasprite.
A cold shiver crawled across her skin and fresh tears joined the rainfall, slipping through the air and reflecting what little orange light was sneaking through the barrier of clouds above. This was hard, perhaps the hardest, most arduous flight in her life; not because of the strain on her muscles or the pain that every breath caused to ripple in her rib cage, but because of the weight in her chest. Like a stone overturned, her heart was dragging her down, making every motion slow and forced. The lithe mare felt like she weighed more than the world around her.
She had to climb. She had to escape it all.
Twilight didn’t want her, she thought with one beat.
She was stupid to even think that it would work, she reasoned with the next.
Her world was collapsing around her, breaking apart like the thousands of individual drops that had once formed a solid body, but were now plunging to their demise.
She had to keep climbing, she had to move on, to shed away the things hurting her. She had to learn and live and be alive.
Gasping for air to feed the burning furnace of her lungs, Rainbow Dash reached the bottom-most layer of clouds. As she slipped in, the mare’s world became one of swirling dark forms, punctuated by drifts of wall-like humidity and brilliant flashes of lighting that cut through the mass.
It became like her mind: a funnel of dark torment that whirled about buffeting thoughts and wind, while a tiny glimmer of multi-chromatic hope pushed up. There was a brighter light ahead.
Squinting against the ever-present drafts, Rainbow Dash was surprised to see the darkness above her disintegrate, being replaced by a pearlescent sheen of dark blue, studded with pinpricks of pure, white light.
Fresh, thin air raced into her, rejuvenating the muscles that seconds ago were screaming for rest and peace. Now, she floated upwards, spinning in a slow pirouette while a thousand droplets of water peeled off her coat.
She was free.
The storm was below her, the sky around, and only the stars, unreachable and lofty, were above. Her vision filled with the field above her, so close in its distance, as if she could beat her wings and envelope herself in the caress of their warmth.
The sky was shifting. It was always shifting, just as she was always moving, from day to night, changing from one form to another. Tendrils of beaming light slashed across the opaque wall above, colouring it in blues and oranges and faint greens that banished the stars back into their realm of darkness.
It was a new day. Dawn was arriving as it always had and always would. The storm below her was abating, its final peels of thunder were weak and shallow, as if the energy and vigour it had displayed was running out.
No, it wasn’t only a new day, she realised. It was a new chance. A new moment in time in which to live. Everything was time and she was only along for the ride. Events were moving around her, huge and powerful and unstoppable, from the rising of the new sun to the dissipation of the storm. There was nothing she could do. She was one mare with one life to live. The dawn had arrived, and finally, Rainbow Dash was beginning to understand.
Light was being shed through her soul.
Author's Note
I just wanted/needed to practice my scene writing a tad. And there are lots of storms. And Sorren said that he wrote prettier than I did so I got mad and spent a lot of a night writing this until I was too tired, went to bed and forgot about it.
Edited by:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_86hYr6EtqRWFU1X8MfKsb66trHI0o75NmvkWHdKoRI/edit?usp=drive_web]The Misfits
Of Storms in Sky and Heart
“I love you,” the alicorn uttered, her hoof reaching out with the most tender of cares to touch the object of her affections.
The book shuddered on its shelf as she touched its bound spine and pushed it in.
Her horn aglow, the mare pulled out a novel and looked out over her shoulder, seeing the room for what her mind wanted it to be; a myriad of bound friends sat, waiting for her to uncover their secrets and to bask in their knowledge. Yes, this was her true love. This was what she was made for.
This was a distraction.
Lightning and thunder raged just outside the thin panes of glass securing her home, flashing white light on the walls and casting the books in an eerie glow. The sound followed, a low growl that paled in comparison to the roaring that was being stifled by her logical mind.
Her hoof shivered, held up to take another step towards the shadowy confines of her reading room. Behind her, the book so firmly grasped in her magic, fell, tumbling to the ground as its pages fluttered through the air, like a butterfly crashing to the ground, followed by the thump of a fatal boot.
Twilight Sparkle, the mare of mares, the Element of Magic, one of the most powerful creatures in all the land, yelped like a little filly. Panting and casting her sight from one shadowed corner to the next, the grown mare allowed time to pass as her thoughts collected themselves. “Come on, calm down, calm down and think.”
It had started when Rainbow left. The door had creaked open and the hiss of rain assaulting the pavement filled her home and the darkness of her mind. That only lasted a moment before the young pegasus trotted out, groaning as the water enveloped her. The door slammed shut. A shiver ran through the house and then all was still. All except Twilight.
She sighed, the sound akin to the growl of an angry timberwolf as it escaped her. Casting her gaze to the floor, Twilight watched the wretched, deformed shape of her book, its covers twisted open and many of its pages torn out of the binding. It was like her; given wings but unable to fly; loved but unable to love back; filled with knowledge but utterly useless when it came time to apply it.
Her hoof struck out and slammed against the book, giving it flight once more as it arced across the room and crashed into the centre pillar. The reverberation was minuscule, but still the alicorn felt it rock through her bones, and her heart swelled with a surge of adrenalin.
“Stupid,” she said just as another bolt of thunder crashed outside.
“Stupid!” she cried, her voice breaking for the first time in decades.
“So, stupid,” she repeated as a whisper.
Turning, she looked to the walls of books. Knowledge bound and held together by paper and the stroke of a pen. A million pages of words and thoughts etched for the pleasure and meditation of any that opened the covers. All of them were set in neat rows, unblemished by childish hooves, untouched by dust. Worthless.
Tendrils of magic lashed across the air like whips that pierced into the spines of the volumes and became bards, anchoring into their leather and paper backs. With a banshee’s shriek, Twilight tore her power back, catapulting the books into the air where the sharp-edged tendrils dissected them without remorse.
Thunder struck again, illuminating a rain of paper crumbles and floating squares where words of wisdom once were recently perched. The tendrils receded with a murmur. Twilight sat in the room’s centre.
Her mind caught up. Visions of her friends in a time when confusion didn’t exist. Rainbow Dash was a friend. The love that blossomed between them. Like bits and pieces of a poem read in inconsequential order, her life hailed down around her, falling into place as she connected one piece of prose to another.
“Oh, Celestia,” she whispered.
Words and letters drizzled by, touching her and accumulating on her statue-like form as they piled up on her back and head. She blinked, knowing vaguely that time had past but having no real care as to how much and what she had done in it.
Around her, like a corona of lost thoughts, was a halo of destroyed literature. Pages torn apart by the razor-sharp edge of her own magic, pieces of wood torn from off shelves, the bindings and covers of her favourite novels, hardly legible with the gashes running through their words.
One hoofstep at a time, Twilight marched out of her cocoon of destruction, paper sliding off her coat as she moved. It was over, for what it was worth.
Back to a normal life.
She froze mid-step, the world around her going quiet once more as the echo of her hoof-falls died down. Only the dust stirred through the air, dancing in the shafts of new sunlight pouring through the westward windows.
Normal? She’d just mope around, work hard but avoid all confrontation. Trot around like a moving repository of knowledge and magic, a tool for other ponies?
No, not again. She had been through too much to stay the same.
Sure, things didn’t have to move quickly. And she didn’t have to run out into the path of the lightning bolt. But she could not simply allow her life to stagnate around her.
She had to talk to Rainbow Dash.
In a blink the mare was out the door. Cool air collected in her lungs and sent a shiver coursing along her spine as she blinked away the after image of her distraught library and took in a fresh view.
Ponyville was a mess. Branches and leaves and stray pieces of waste had been blown about by the storm. Some windows had been smashed open and an entire tree lay uprooted near the town square, its branches curving upwards like the hand of a creature nearing death.
Rain still misted in the air, speckling her visage and body with a blanket of cold humidity that forced her to squint as she breathed in the thick morning air.
Still, the damn sun was out in full force, illuminating everything in bright shades and forcing even the darkest shadows to retreat into unseen corners.
Standing in the middle of it all, not ten paces from her doorway, was Rainbow Dash.
Long multichromatic stands of hair were plastered to her head and falling down around her in sensuous waves. Her eyes, half-lidded and reddened by tears, stared forwards, like a pair of knives ready to carve into the soul of any who dared to meet them. She was wet all over, but silent, her chest moving up and down in an even rhythm as she fought off exhaustion.
She didn’t looked like a mare. She was a goddess that had fought with the storm, and had won.
The mare blinked, a slick of multichromatic hair sliding over her eyes.
“Hey,” she said.
Twilight’s body rocked back, reeling from an unknown force as her mind click empty. There she was, beautiful in agony as pain and suffering flowed through her cerulean body. But she wasn’t kneeled over, she wasn’t weak. Rainbow’s back was straight, her countenance was direct and ready, and the soggy wetness was making her heavy, but she had the power to keep standing.
“Hi?”
“So, um, about before,” Dash said, finally averting her gaze to one of the puddles collecting at the base of the library tree. “I was thinking...”
“Yes?”
Her gaze shifted again, piercing into Twilight’s like the tip of a lightning bolt spearing the unprotected earth. Sparks flew. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to still be friends. We only have a little in common, I know. And we’re really different. But still, I want to be your friend, even if you don’t want to be any more than that.”
Twilight set her jaw then worked it soundlessly, an uncommon gesture as she fought back a wave of nausea and tears.
“Rainbow, what’s it like, being you?”
Rainbow blinked back, an eyebrow arching up for a moment before she spoke a single toneless “Uh.” Then, huffing, she answered, “It’s okay, I guess. I mean, sometimes it’s not the easiest thing. There’s not that much to think of. I move with the wind and would move on, but then there’s you guys. I can’t just leave my friends behind.”
She looked up, where the storm clouds were still marring the sky. “There are things I want. To become a Wonderbolt, to be with my friends, to have ponies know who I am. But there are lots of things that are more important than all that. I like fun, I like adventure, and I love it when things are new, refreshing and bright, like me.”
“I see, maybe.” Absentmindedly, she removed a piece of paper that had caught in her mane, like an insect in a web. “It sounds as if you’re life’s... interesting.”
“Well, yeah, it is sometimes.”
“I... see?” Twilight paused, an inkling of red clashing with the lavender of her coat. She looked bruised. “Dash, I-I can’t tell you the things you want to hear, because I’m not that mare. I’m not even the mare that I want to be, yet. I’ve never... I don’t.... Give me some time, okay?”
She turned and looked into the darkness of her home, pierced by light but swimming in shadow. Soon the sun would clear it all out.
The early beams touched the circle of torn books and a tear creeped up to her eye as she saw the devastation she had wrought.
All for naught.
Maybe.
“Lunch!” Twilight blurted out over her shoulder. “We’ll talk over lunch, later, today. Also, get a shower. You smell like a wet dog.”
Author's Note
The End, Kiddies!
Edited by:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_86hYr6EtqRWFU1X8MfKsb66trHI0o75NmvkWHdKoRI/edit?usp=drive_web]The Misfits
