A Beautiful Rainbow in a Storm of Heartbreak
Existing for the Purpose of Existing
By: carnivale
~*~
Rainbows are fascinating things. They decorate the sky like a fragile strand of beautiful, prismatic lace, their tendons stretching like warm arms across lands of lush greenery and sparkling cerulean waters, as if giving the world a peaceful hug. The auroral colors radiate light like a thousand fireflies, their tranquil, yet lambent aura blinding to the eye – yet in a comforting, sophisticated tone despite that. They can make you smile, they can make you laugh, and they can soothe your savage breasts after a rough day of stressful slumber and intoxicated mixed feelings that wrack your brain so hard it hurts to think.
Yet, do they really exist?
Is there necessarily a purpose for them to exist? What do they do, besides the fact of looking rather dainty and dressing the sky in a serene, mellow way? Are they merely just a beautiful artifact of the sky that somehow is an illusion to the onlooker? Or is there something more?
Or do they exist just for the purpose of existing?
~*~
Rainbow Dash’s heart races savagely in her chest as she plunges to the vast grassy clearing below, her stomach flipping around in her stomach as her wings make their extent flowingly out to the sides. The feathers stitched to her bones flutter maliciously in the wind, and Rainbow’s hair flows like jumbled ocean waves, framing her face just as delicately as the sun would frame Equestria. Her brain screams from the instinctive pressure bombarding her eardrums, her eyes seething as tears run dry from her sclera and soon feel like they’re beginning to shrivel like old leaves. Yet, just as heedlessly, she pushes on, her hooves making their way straight in front of her as she begins to crush the mach cone encompassing her. Her ruby eyes squint closed, and she accelerates much more than a regular pegasi’s body would allow. Then, just as suddenly, her wings give one more mighty flap, and the area around her explodes in technicolor light, her body shooting the distance of about five stallions before slowing down a notch. A brilliant, gorgeous rainbow flows out from behind her, obscuring her tail in a sheet of color and gracing the cerulean sky in tandem with Rainbow’s movements.
Rainbow screeches to a complete halt, her ferocious heart about moments away from exploding out of her tender chest. Her veins pulse with hunger for more adrenaline, but yet, she stares, her wings flapping idly by her sides as she admires her display before it’s yet to fade away.
"Yes!" she exclaims, proudly brushing her fringe away from her face. She’s sweating diminutively among her brow, yet it’s the kind of sweat you receive from your nerves haphazardly having a mind of their own. “I did it again! Another Sonic Rainboom. I’m so awesome!”
She is above to give herself a supportive pat on the back, when something immediately catches her eye.
Her sonic rainboom isn’t fading away – it’s expanding. The sky in which she hovers in is disappearing as the wake of the prismatic ring amplifies across the atmosphere. It seems like it’s creating some sort of vortex, and blinding illumination explodes from the hole the rainboom has concocted. It colors swiftly disappear, leaving just a gaping abyss in a clear sky of blue.
Rainbow’s forehead creases, and she peers down the – whatever it inherently is. It doesn’t seem totally dark, in which she hypothesized before that it is some sort of black hole that would suck you in like a strong vacuum if you got too close.
The cyan pegasus can faintly see some lush greenery, and several colorful spots of vegetation sprouting every which-way across the emerald expanse. Her eyebrows raise in curiosity, and she briefly wonders if she’s supposed to step through it.
Experimentally, she extends a hoof towards the gaping hole, and a cascade of foamy ripples flow across empty air as
soon as her hoof makes contact with the atmosphere. She yanks her hoof back on instinct, yet her mind reels with inquisitiveness as she continues to stare.
Her brain tries to thwart her into slowly backing away from the scene, as if the portal could be dangerous or be closed off forever once she emerges through it. She genuinely wants to know what’s beyond, yet she’s not sure if she should explore its depths.
She thinks.
Eventually, her curiosity gets the better of her, and cautiously, she spreads her wings and laggardly glides through the abyss.
She pops out on the other side, her heart hammering relentlessly against her ribcage that is bound to collapse anytime soon. Her head is spinning and her eyes begin to turn fuzzy around the edges, like a television station out of range. Yet she manages to control it as she finds the time to take in the world around her.
It’s so familiar to her – yet, it’s not at the same time. She’s seen skies and grass and forests before, yes, but those are not the things that seem to be bothering her. Her pivoting eyes scan her surroundings more clearly, and soon enough, they pinpoint something so familiar, yet she can’t seem to put her hoof on it quite clearly.
Then, after scanning it for some time, it comes to her in the blink of an eye.
“Hey, it’s my house!” she proclaims, a grin finding its way on her lips.
It hovers several stallion-lengths above a sodded, vacant hill that slopes down into an undergrowth of lush greenery. A brilliant rainbow pool by the cloud-home is collected and drips solemnly down upon the earth, showering it with glossy drops of color, yet not quite as they dissolve before hitting the ground. The sight makes her at ease, her heart beginning to slow to a peaceful trot in her chest.
Yet, she begins to see that it looks like it’s been tampered with. Her windows are either boarded or taped off, and the clouds don’t look as fluffy as they used to. Some patches also seem to be imploding, and Rainbow’s grin fades as her eyes zero in on the lacerations.
She forces her head to turn away, and focus on something new. Her eyes always manage to find something new – and, as if in spite of that, they pinpoint a small town with milling citizens and smiling buildings.
It isn’t too far a distance from where the hovers, and she can easily spot the doings of the town’s local ponies and what seems to be going on there. The town just looks so lively and sophisticated and so, so familiar that her frown unfurls into a smile and her tongue searches desperately for the right name.
“Proville? No, was it Bronyville? No, no… Ponyville!”
Ponyville! That’s what it is. It is starting to bother her about how she seems to be forgetting things so easily – yet she’s glad she can come up with them a few moments later.
The happenings of Ponyville seem to amuse her to a large extent, and she finds a nearby tree to settle in, continuing to appease herself with watching anything that comes hastily into view. The birds, the animals, the greenery, and of course, the ponies. She hasn’t been near ponies in so long, she can hardly remember what it feels like to be in the presence of someone else. A deep pang of longing grows in her chest, but she decides to ignore it for now.
Rainbow doesn’t know how long she’s been silently studying the bustling town until she’s suddenly snapped out of the spell by muffled sniffles radiating from just below her.
Knitting her eyebrows together in wonder, she shifts her position on the jutting branch and peers out from under the canopy, her eyes fixating on the ground below.
A familiar figure is shrouded by a curtain of leaves and underbrush, and it seems to be sitting limply by a rounded rock jutting out from the ground. The figure resembles the shape of a pony, and despite the shadows overtaking it, the color is easily distinguishable.
Rainbow doesn’t even need to wrack her brain to search for the name of the pony sitting just beneath her.
“Pinkie Pie!” she shouts.
Peculiarly, the pink pony doesn’t lift her head, nor move any part of her body in the slightest. Rainbow furrows her eyebrows and calls her name more clearly this time.
Yet, again, the pony doesn’t move.
Rainbow begins to feel rejected and annoyed, so she flares her wings and swoops down from the branch she was perched on moments before. She gracefully lands next to Pinkie, who still doesn’t even flick her ears or bat her eyelashes.
“Hey, why are you – “ Rainbow abruptly stops herself from saying something scornful when a different, desolate sound permeates her fiddling ears.
Pinkie Pie is sobbing.
Rainbow’s ruby eyes instantly soften, and she leans towards her friend hesitantly, unsure on how to react properly. Her heart begins to ache, nonetheless, like it has just been squeezed and torn to pieces, then tried to be pieced back together again on a spur of the moment.
Rainbow takes a closer peek at her friend, and her heart fissures even more, sinking deeper in her stomach, a dark, bottomless pit in its wake where her blood-pumping organ used to stand.
Pinkie’s hair has lost its normal, billowy volume, hanging dejectedly like a limp curtain and obscuring half of her drooping face. Her cerulean eyes are bloodshot, slithering fingers of red, protruding veins showing under the expanse of the white pallor of her orbs. Tear stains streak her ashen cheeks, and dark pools of desolation seem to be trapped beneath her eyelids. Her ribs are sticking out more than Rainbow remembers, and she lifts a shaky hoof to caress the still stone in front of her.
Rainbow, a choking lump lodged in her barren throat, swivels her head to find out exactly why the happiest pony in all of Ponyville is depressed over a rock.
And then she finds out.
And then she realizes.
And then she opens her mouth to speak, but all that comes out is a pathetic croaking sound that will shame her forever.
“Here Lies Rainbow Dash: Element of Loyalty, and a Dear, Dear Friend.”
“No…”
Pinkie sniffles again, a new batch of glistening tears streaming down her face, shoulders shaking heavily as she bows her head lower to the ground.
Rainbow Dash shakes her head violently, her mane lashing her stingingly in the face. Silent, unnoticed tears begin to leak from her wide eyes, and she suddenly throws her head back and screams.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
Thunder cracks overhead like bottles smashing against hardwood flooring. The first, laconic drizzles of rain beginning to drop out of the sky. A weak breeze begins to ruffle the leaves of the trees, creating a harmonious, crisp symphony that flows through the valley at a brisk pace.
Time seems to slow down for Rainbow Dash as she continues to stare at the headstone, then Pinkie, then the headstone, then back at Pinkie – then, at her hooves.
I’m dead? I’m really dead? she shrieks to herself, entire body quaking. She needs to stay calm. She needs to take a deep breath. She needs to believe.
“I-I’m so sorry, Dashie,” Pinkie sobs, her voice low and uncomprehending. “I never got t-to say a proper… a proper g-good-bye before you left. Now y-you’re gone, and… and, oh, Dashie! I miss you so, so, SO much!”
Rainbow’s voice shakes with uncontrolled tears. “No, Pinkie, no. Look, I’m right here? S-see? I’m not gone! I’m not gone, P-Pinkie!” She wants to believe it. She desperately wants to believe it, though it pains her to say such words. She adds, in a frigid whisper, “I’d never leave you.”
Pinkie sniffles again, long, and hard. “Dashie, you were my very best friend ever. I totally l-loved when we played pranks with each other! It was so, super-duper fun! B-but… now…”
“Pinkie! I’m not gone!” Lightning shoots across the sky emblazoned with a dark, depressed, gray-and-purple-hue. Pinkie is more hunched over than ever. “LOOK AT ME!” she screams as raindrops roll down her face and the lightning illuminates her features once more. “Bucking look! For pony’s sake, I'M RIGHT HERE!"
Pinkie continues to stare unblinkingly at the headstone. “Dash, when you were s-still with us, I never got to say s-something to you, that I should have mentioned at the very start.”
Rainbow can barely hear the words cross Pinkie Pie’s soaking lips. “Pinkie… please…”
“I love you, Rainbow Dash.”
“Pinkie…” Rainbow lifts her hoof and brushes away a mat of pink hair away from her friend’s face. The pink pony looks suddenly shocked, and somewhat frightened, at the unexpected movement of her mane. Rainbow locks her forelegs around Pinkie’s neck, and pulls her in a deep embrace.
Pinkie’s breath shudders against the nape of her neck. “Dashie? Are you there?”
Can she feel her presence? Does she really exist right now? Rainbow takes it for granted and presses her now-sopping body more closely against Pinkie’s, sending her mind messages to get her to feel, to let her know she exists right next to her, to let her know she’s always there for one of her best friends.
“Yes,” Rainbow breathes. “I’m here.”
Pinkie’s breath seems to catch in her throat, and Rainbow feels her leaning forward, leaning against her, like she can feel her warmth as if she is really right in front of her, giving her the most rib-crushing hug she ever can muster.
“Twilight, Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rarity all r-really miss you, too,” Pinkie whispers. A small, serene smile plays on her features. “Applejack wanted me to tell y-you that you’re the most impossible pegasus ever, yet, she wouldn’t have wanted it any other w-way.”
Rainbow chuckles. “Typical Applejack.”
“And… and… Fluttershy said Tank is doing just fine…with her. She's t-taking good care of him, you know.”
Rainbow smiles, a lone tear struggling down her cheek. “That’s my girl.”
“We all love you.”
“And I all love you too.” Rainbow buries her muzzle deeper into Pinkie’s hair. “And Pinkie, don’t stay sad for too long. Nopony likes it when you’re sad. Especially me. We need your laughter, Pinkie.”
Pinkie is silent, as if Rainbow’s words are sinking into her brain, even though she knows she can’t hear her. Rainbow’s heart drops even farther into her chest.
She can feel the tears beginning to spring in her eyes again. The storm continues to roar again, the wind battering fiercely against her body than ever before, and she feels herself beginning to slip away.
“Pinkie!” she calls over the booming thunder. She’s gliding away, yet her legs aren’t moving, and it isn’t long until Pinkie is just a mere dot in the distance. “Pinkie… wait… I love you! Wait!”
Rainbow struggles, but she keeps being lifted away by intangible, malicious hooves, being dragged into the atmosphere beyond the nooks of Ponyville. And, it isn’t long until she becomes one with the sky once more; a beautiful lace of a rainbow that doesn’t just exist for the sole purpose of existing.
