“I’m gonna hang here and read to him a bit. That little guy can never get to sleep without a good bedtime story.”

The young winter air blew across Ponyville in the dead of night, its fresh crispness having just come from Cloudsdale made its cold bite into a ponies fur just a little bit harder.

Rainbow Dash was no exception. Curled up into a tight ball and wound up in her purple dressing gown, the mare kicked anxiously in her restless slumber.

It wasn’t uncommon for Rainbow Dash to have restless nights. Being the high-octane mare that she was, if she didn’t use up all her energy in the day, she found it difficult to stay asleep at night.

At times, she would reach out across the wide expanse of her large cloud bed and snatch up her little tortoise in her hooves. The feeling of his shell against her chest, while cold, did wonders to soothe her back to sleep.

However, tonight when she reached across her bedspread, as she had done so many times before, all she grabbed was the cold air.

Her eyes snapped open. In a fleeting moment of post-waking fuzziness she drearily called out for her pet.

“Tank?”

No answer. Not even the plod of four small slow tortoise feet across the clouds or the gentle whir of an enchanted propellor was heard.

Feeling foolish, Rainbow laid her head back down in her hooves with a thump. Tank wasn’t here, of course he wasn’t.

Buried under the foot of a random old tree in the middle of Ponyville park. With nothing but the snow above him and the soil beneath him. A cold, barren dark hole.

A grave, for lack of a better word.

Rainbow rubbed her eyes before they could water. She was over it, he was hibernating. It was natural, he would come out a few months later, full of energy and raring to return to her.

Months later.

Rainbow felt her stomach twist and her breathing hitch. Being all alone for Winter, the coldest and most bitter season. She didn’t want him to be alone.

She didn’t want to be alone.

Rainbow sat up on her bed. In the darkness all she could hear was...

Nothing. Not a sound. Cloud houses don’t even creak, only serving to remind her how big and empty her home truly was.

And how small and alone she felt right now.

Rainbow clasped her hooves over her ears, she had to think of something, anything else.

She remembered something that Andrew had told her, after he have had one of this episodes. After he had cried and shouted and hollered and lashed out, he was very quiet. Unnervingly so.

He sat slumped against the outside wall on Applejack’s barn, doing nothing but thinking to himself, and how alone he was. “Hi Rainbow,” he had said to her, in a groggy yet tired, defeated voice.

They talked for a while. Mainly about how Andrew could start to move on from his old life. The life that he had been taken away from, when he said this.

“Loneliness is a sickness, that leads to death.”

The words had never sat right with Rainbow, they just didn’t add up to her. Old age, disease and war caused death, but not loneliness. It didn’t make sense.

Not until tonight at least.

She couldn’t do it anymore, she couldn’t be alone. It was eating away at her from the inside. Rainbow’s breathing faltered and her tears returned, she sniffed but she couldn’t fight the tears.

“I don’t want to be alone!” she cried into her pillow.

Rainbow Dash lay there, crying her eyes out, thoughts of forever being alone flooded her mind. Growing old with nopony to ever share her world with her. To be forever alone.

Just like Andrew.

Rainbow’s mind cleared for a moment as this thought entered. Andrew, the only one of his kind in the whole world, maybe even the whole dimension. He was more alone that Rainbow could have ever imagined.

He was truly alone. She was terrified of being alone.

Maybe they could find the solution in each other.

Rainbow’s tears stopped, and with one last sniffle, she smiled. Maybe things would turn out alright after all.

Author's Note

I'm back.