It was a splenderific day, which is to say, a rather pleasant one. The sky was green, the leaves were blue, and the sun as warm as a baked potato.
Screwball pondered that last one for a moment. For some reason, she had the oddest feeling that she’d mixed it up. Maybe it was as cold as a baked potato?
No. That couldn’t be right.
Regardless of the temperature of certain spudly-persuaded objects, she decided that it was a dreadful, terrible morning, and proceeded down the path with a smile on her face and a spring in her step.
The walk into Ponyville was always a fun one. For a pony like Screwball, a lot of things were fun—after all, what couldn’t be made fun by the addition of a wet cat, a bag of sugar, and two cases of cream-custard pies?—but there was something about the transition between wide, rolling grasslands and neatly-paved roads that made her shiver with glee.
There was always an element of randomness out in the wild, but here life was made all the richer for its more organized façade. She always got a little itch behind her right ear whenever she noticed a too-wide crack between cobblestones, the wilt of a petal at the bottom of a flowerpot, or the splatter of ice cream laying on the warm road beneath the summer sun.
The summer spud, she corrected herself, trotting past the entrance to a building colored a very pleasing shade of icterine. Sometimes, she’d jump in and out of the city limits, letting the refreshing breezes of instinctual and organized chaos splash across her face in turn.
Chaos. After all, that was what it was all about, right?
Screwball neatly sidestepped a falling plate, which smashed into the road beside her. Life was like a dance, sometimes, spinning and twirling and skipping and hopping and crawling and lying down and sleeping and drooling and waking up to eat and run and jump and play and move—
She glanced down at the plate. Its shards had fallen into the exact image of Princess Celestia’s rear end, Cutie Mark and all. She giggled. Briefly, she wondered whether Celestia had ever sat on a plate, on a date, or on a rake. That last one would probably hurt, though it would be funny.
She was staring up at a flagpole, wondering how long it would take to replace the flag with a pillowcase, when the first rush of wind hit her.
It was a curly, springy rush of wind: one that poked through her mane and tickled the inside of her ear. She looked to her left, and then to her right, wondering where it'd come from. She looked to the left, and then to the left again, and then even more to the left until she was all the way back to where she started.
Curls of gold and pink wove through the town, dancing and giggling along the cobblestone streets. Though her Master had long since disappeared, she'd managed to retain some of his Sight. She could see the way that each curl ran between a pony's legs. She could see how they blew through one ear and out the other. She watched as strands of bright cherry and deep yellow danced across the road, the air fuzzing around baskets of apples, carts holding dental supplies, or little colts holding bouncy balls.
Screwball took a little bite out of the core of her apple as she bounced her ball up and down. She was very careful not to break the skin, and made sure that the ball only ever bounced higher than her head. The little curls were everywhere, and in some places, there were more than others. She'd always wondered why the air around her was always a little fuzzier than everypony else, but usually, she was content just to let it be. After all, air didn't interrupt her with rude questions about herself, did it? At least, she didn't think it did.
She pondered that for another moment, washing the apple down with a little bit of toothpaste as she watched the two salesponies scramble to gather their wares from the cobblestone road. It seemed that, by sheer coincidence, the wheels of both carts had snapped on the axle at just the same time, throwing their contents all over the street. Off on the sidewalk, a little colt who'd been crying to his mother was suddenly distracted by a particularly green Red Delicious that had rolled right up to his hoof.
Screwball bounced the apple on the ground, threw the ball into the nearest trash can, and spread some toothpaste over her mane before tossing it to the apple vendor. He stared after her, nonplussed, as she trotted happily down the road, humming a merry tune.
Yes. This simply was an absolutely terrible day.
She felt another brush of air against the tips of her ears and looked up.
She heard the riff of an accordion playing across her nose as a guitar shrieked through the wind. Prismatic sprays of color danced across the skies, weaving red and green and even more red into a picture that was even prettier than Hearth’s Warming Eve. The curls sang, letting her smell shades of purple and bright, cheerful orange that clashed against rebellious strands of yellow. Lightning struck her eyes, the wind soaring over her mane, and the accordion yodeled again.
“Pretty,” Screwball breathed, watching Rainbow Dash complete her third loop-de-loop in a row before transition into a bob-and-weave routine.
Her green-swirled eyes followed the pegasus across the sky. Each motion was flawless—smooth, efficient, tight—yet Screwball could tell by the twitching curls that wove through Rainbow’s hair that each one was unscripted. No strings pulled this dance but the tendons of uncertainty: an instinctual blunder that wove up and down the sky like shreds of cotton candy.
Screwball licked her lips. The thought of cotton candy was making her hungry.
Still, she felt a fire in the bottom of her stomach that grew with each turn that the pegasus made through the sky. Those wings were free, flapping high above the limits of gravity or ground or gelato.
She made a little hop, and then pouted when she came right back down. Stupid gravity. She made another hop, wondering if this time would be different from the first.
Nope. Dumb stupid gravity.
Her pout deepened as she hopped again. And again. And again. She’d beaten down a little patch of grass by now, her hooves repeatedly stomping down onto the field. About thirteen failed attempts later, she stopped in place, put a hoof to her chin, and thought.
She’d been able to do this sort of thing once, she knew. She’d had her propeller hat back then, along with her Master’s magic which had filled the whole of Ponyville with lovely, prettiful curls. She’d been able to use those golden curls to fly above the streets below—they’d been so thick in the air as to be almost tangible. Or close enough, at any rate.
“Hm.” She said it aloud, just to make sure that the world knew of her bemusement, and then said it again, just to make sure that she’d been heard. “Hm. Hm? Hm…”
Hopping up and down wasn’t going to work. Dumb stupid fish-faced gravity had seen to that. She smiled even wider, clucking her tongue in irritation. Trying the same thing over and over again was akin to insanity!
But then again…
Aha!
That was it!
Screwball’s eyes brightened. “That’s it!” she exclaimed, making sure to properly conjugate her internal monologue. She knew what she had to do.
Tentatively, she made a little hop.
And then another little hop.
And then another.
This time, she stuck at it for nearly fifteen minutes, hopping up and down until she’d broken the tips of the grass stalks beneath her hooves into itsy-bitsy grass-dust. She was determined, now. She would show gravity what it was missing out on.
Just before she got to the verge of giving up and going to find something else better to do—like throwing sand into the air and counting the grains, or drinking tea without any milk—she heard it. It was the rush of the wind through her mane, and the sound of muffled laughter. The back of her neck prickled, and she turned around with a wide-eyed grin.
“Hey there.” Rainbow Dash cocked her head, giving Screwball a lopsided sort of look. “Whatcha doin’ down here?”
Screwball beamed. “Flying!” she said proudly.
Dash frowned, raised an eyebrow, and then burst out laughing. “Buddy, I don’t know what you were doing down there, but it definitely wasn’t flying. Bouncing, maybe.”
Screwball wilted. So she hadn’t been about to fly?
Maybe Dash had noticed her disappointment, or maybe she just felt friendly. In any case, she held out a hoof, smirking, and said, “I don’t think I’ve seen you around before. I’m Rainbow Dash, by the way.”
“Screwball!” Screwball took Dash’s hoof and shook it really hard. “I remember you! You were in the rainbow-thingie!”
“The rainbow what-now?” Rainbow blinked. “Oh, the Sonic Rainboom?” Her chest puffed up, and she took on a smug expression. “Yeah, I’ll admit that that was pretty awesome. I didn’t realize that so many ponies had—”
“No, not that rainbow-thingie!” Screwball shook her head. “The other one!”
“The, uh, what?” Dash gave her an owlish look before realization dawned. “Oh, y’mean the Elements.”
“Huh?”
“Elements of Harmony?” Rainbow deadpanned. “Big, rainbow-shooty things with golden jewelry and crud? Owned by me, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Twilight Sparkle?”
Screwball considered that for a moment. Yup; she knew some of those names. She’d known Rainbow Dash’s, after all. “Sounds about right! The Elements of Fartmoney!”
“Harmony.”
“Heart-moon-eye?”
“Harmony.”
“Hermione?”
“Harmony.”
“Harm-o-knee!”
Dash smacked her forehead. “Close enough. Anyways, what were you doing with all of that bouncing before? Did you really think that you’d be able to, well, fly?”
Screwball tilted her head to the side, considering that, before nodding vigorously. “Yup!” Her ears went back, though, and she pouted. She folded her hooves and stood up on her hind legs, leaning against an imaginary wall. “It should’ve worked.”
“I’m...not going to even ask how you’re doing that,” Dash muttered, eyeing Screwball’s pose up and down. It was just as well. Screwball didn’t have the time to explain the physics of hard air right now, especially now that she’d gotten it to have just the same consistency as week-old banana pudding.
“Anyways,” Dash went on, “I’m not sure why you thought you could fly—you’re just an earth pony, after all. No offense.”
Screwball nodded, standing at rapt attention.
“Only pegasi can fly. After all, we’ve got these wings. See?” Rainbow Dash flapped her wings once, moving up a few inches in the air. They were a nice shade of blue, Screwball decided.
“Then again…” Dash trailed off, tapping her hoof with her chin. “Unicorns can technically fly, with those weird spells of theirs—it’s so cheating, even if Twilight doesn’t agree—and Pinkie Pie’s got her weird flying contraption, which I still don’t really understand, so…
“But yeah,” she finished, rather lamely. “Sorry, but earth ponies can’t really fly.”
“Are you sure?” Screwball asked.
Dash nodded. “Yup.”
“Really sure?”
“Mmhm.”
“Really really sure?”
Dash blinked again, and then two more times for good measure. “Uh, yeah. I think that’s what I already said.”
Screwball leaned in close, staring deep into Rainbow Dash’s eyes. Her own green irises spiralled across the white of her cornea, spinning as she weighed Dash’s words in the back of her mind. Dash shrank back, looking more than a bit uneasy with both Screwball’s proximity and her...odd optical appearance.
Finally, Screwball sat back down. “Okie-dokes.” She raised a hind leg to scratch the back of her head.
Rainbow Dash shook her head, chuckling. “Sorry, but you remind me of a friend of mine. Her name’s—”
She cut herself off as a flicker of sadness went through Screwball’s eyes. It seemed that even Rainbow could pick up on social cues—sometimes—if given the right hints. “Aw, shucks. You still wanna fly, dontcha?”
Screwball set her leg down. She thought for a moment before nodding eagerly, her tongue hanging out of her mouth. “Yup! Yup!”
“Gosh. You’re just too much.” Rainbow Dash chuckled again before letting her face fade into a frown. “Hm...but how could an earth pony possibly—”
She blinked, and then a broad smile blossomed on her face. It stretched from ear to ear, dimpling her cheeks. “Tell you what. I can’t give you wings, but I might be able to get you something else. Something almost as good.”
“You can?”
Dash rolled her eyes at the intense look that had returned to Screwball’s swirling eyes. “Uh, yeah. I’m just awesome like that.” She frowned. “How’re you doing that eye thing? It’s kinda creeping me out.”
She flapped her wings a few more times, rising up into the air. “Wait right there!” she called down. Her voice sounded a bit tinnier with the extra elevation, as though she were speaking through a soup-can phone. “I’ll be back in a jiffy!”
“Yay, Dashbow Rain!” Screwball cheered, watching the prismatic beam of light streak across Ponyville. She waved her hooves for added effect.
True to her word, not ten seconds later—more like nine-point-three-five-seven seconds later, give or take a few millenia—Rainbow Dash appeared once more in the sky above Screwball’s purple-streaked mane. She had a smirk plastered across her face, and a horde of strings clamped tightly in her mouth.
“Deshe,” she muttered, “arf a bunsh of balloonsh. If I can tie them around ‘or waist, ‘ey should gishve enough hlift foo get shoo off he groun’.”
Although Dash’s words came out more than slightly muffled, Screwball clapped appreciatively when she’d finished. Rainbow Dash looked somewhat pleased by that, though she soon took on a more businesslike expression. She hovered a few feet closer.
“Ofkay. Nowf jusht hol’ shtill…”
With a movement like a whip, and a sound that more than resembled one, Rainbow Dash disappeared. Screwball felt a gust of wind across her back, and then below her tummy, and then around her neck. As the wind faded, she was confronted with the oddest feeling of...weightlessness.
“There we go,” Rainbow Dash said, looking over her handiwork. The balloons—over twenty or thirty of them, at Screwball’s count—bobbled happily above her head. “I knew those extra-duty Sugarcube Corner Balloons would do the trick. Now we just need to make sure that you have enough lift…”
And then Screwball felt it again, stronger: weightlessness. It was like there was an irresistible pull, pushing against her stomach and away from her back. Her eyes widened—her hooves weren’t touching the ground? She wiggled them around to make sure. Sure enough, they only managed to brush against the tops of the grass, and even then, only her hoof-tips.
“Hooray!”
“Got it!” Dash’s grin widened. “Let me give you a hoof there.”
Screwball just nodded vacantly. She was too busy flying, you’re welcome very much, to listen properly. Her stomach gave a little giggle as she watched the earth drifting farther away, putting beautiful, wonderful, spasmadorical inches between her and the ground. The yucky ground. She stuck her tongue out at it, and was surprised when she tasted a cool breeze on her tongue.
“Looks like the wind’s coming in!” Dash said. “Let’s go a little higher.” She flapped her wings—once, twice, three times—and a rush of warm air hit Screwball right below the chest.
She squealed in delight as the manufactured thermal sent her soaring into the sky, the earth growing more and more distant with each passing second. Soon, she was back up at her old elevation, with her tushy just above the top of the nearest building. Yet before she knew it, she’d moved even higher, the winds refusing to hold back as they carried her higher and higher into the sky.
Screwball held out her hooves, letting the balloons pull her ever higher as she let out a high-pitched, “Wheeeeeee!” The winds sang beneath her hooves, and for once, the curls weren’t there. They danced around her legs in tiny little pinpricks of light, but were nowhere near as thick up here as they were down there. She momentarily considered being sad about that, but then remembered she was flying, and decided that she didn’t really care.
“Wheeeeeee!”
Below her, Rainbow Dash let out a muffled cough. “Uh, Screwball? You might wanna look where you’re going.”
Screwball paused in her reverie of “whee” and looked down at her, blinking owlishly. “Huh?”
Before Dash got the chance to reply, though, Screwball got her answer.
A rush of cool air hit her back, chilling her coat and mane. She shivered, feeling droplets of moisture collecting on the back of her neck. It was like she’d been dipped into a vat of cold chocolate pudding, except—following an experimental lick—this didn’t taste like chocolate. It was just as squishy, though, and she felt it pushing against her sides as she continued to rise up into the air. To her eyes, there was nothing around her but white.
And then she burst from the haze, gasping for air, shivering with cold, and giggling like a mad hatter.
“Yeah, those can be pretty rough.” Rainbow Dash flew up a few meters until she was eye-to-eye with Screwball, her wings flapping in time with each bob of the latter’s balloons. “Clouds usually aren’t very fun to pass through, so—hey! What’re you doing?”
Screwball chewed happily on the shred of white that she’d torn off. “Cloud!” she proclaimed, taking another large chomp out of the cloud filet. It tasted like vanilla crossed with pudding—banana pudding, she realized. That was what she’d gotten wrong.
“B-but—how—you—” Dash’s jaw dropped. “But earth ponies can’t touch clouds! They can’t walk on them, can’t stand on them—so how are you eating one?”
Screwball shrugged. Extending a hoof down—and wiggling it a bit in the air, because she’d floated a bit away by this point, she poked the top of the cloud. Or tried to, anyway. Her hoof went right through.
“Okay,” Dash said skeptically. “That kinda makes sense, but then how’d you get that?”
Screwball looked down at her hooves. “Get what?”
“The cloud! The thing you were just eating! You’re not even supposed to eat those, even if you can touch ‘em.”
Screwball blinked, and looked down again. Her hooves—the conniving little criminals—were still completely bare. “What cloud?” she asked.
“I—you—I—agh!” Dash smacked herself in the forehead, only recoiling when she actually registered the impact. “Ow! That hurt! Why’d I—”
She stopped midsentence.
Screwball, having lost interest during Dash’s incoherent rant, had somehow managed to turn herself in a semi-circle while floating another fifteen feet higher into the air. She looked down, her lips parting into a slight “o” shape, and reached up to her forgotten propeller cap out of reverence.
What seemed like all of Equestria stared back at her. From this height, she could see for miles—from the dirt road out of Ponyville all the way to the Big Red Barn at Sweet Apple Acres (or, “that yummy orange place,” as she usually called it). She could see trees that looked like toothpicks, ponies that looked like ants. Off to the south, the great, dark expanse of the Everfree Forest crouched like a shadowed giant over several hundred acres of land. To the north, Canterlot Castle was just barely visible, its purple-tipped towers soaring up into the atmosphere.
Fields of green and gold painted the landscape, along with blotches of every other random color that could have fallen from an artist’s palette. Clouds bobbed across the sky below them, poofy, whispy things that swam through thermals of their own.
It was all very pretty—prettier than anything Screwball had ever seen, really—but that wasn't what had caught her eye.
No: what had caught her attention were the swirls.
They were everywhere: gold, purple, silver, and black. They wove throughout the countryside, great tendrils that flew across farmland and smaller branches that stretched into the sky. They were on every road, every street, and resembled nothing more than a great system of webs that stretched across every piece of land that existed in Equestria.
Each ant-sized pony was a piece on this magnificent board, with each life that held onto it sent vibrating with every infinitesimally small twitch sent down one line or another. It was something greater than anything Screwball had ever seen, and at the same time so much less. Each strand was thick, or thin; long, or short. They flickered like incorporeal, intangible masses, but that made them feel all the more real.
Discord—Master, Screwball corrected herself—had tried to spread chaos to every corner of Equestria. But here, above the clouds, and gifted with His Sight, she could see the truth for herself. Chaos had already spread to every corner of the land. It was a part of life, a part of being, as strong and as permanent as the heaviest chocolate monsoon.
And she could see it all.
Entropy, it seemed, was here to stay.
Her eyelashes fluttered as she took in another breath, not realizing that she was gasping in a manner reminiscent of a dying patient in a hospital bed. Rainbow Dash evidently didn't notice either, floating over to her balloon-hanging charge with a smug little grin on her face.
"It's pretty awesome, huh?" She scratched the back of her neck, wings still flapping as they kept her aloft. "More than that—it's got coolness, awesomeness, and radicalness, all wrapped up into one big excellent picture."
"Yeah..." Screwball breathed. She thought she saw a strand of Chaos flicker before her, and batted at it with a hoof.
"It just gives me chills, y'know? Every time I see it." Rainbow Dash looked over at her, her grin softening. "It reminds me of why I love flying so much in the first place."
She shook her head. "But what am I ramblin' about? I'm gonna bore you to tears with all of this namby-pamby feels crud. Those balloons are gonna run out of helium or pressure soon, so we're gonna need to use 'em while they last."
Dash gave Screwball a wink. "Whataya say? Care to take the sky for a spin?"
Screwball nodded eagerly.
In the blink of an eye, they were off.
Screwball held her hooves up in the air, the wind blowing past them as they blew through thermal after thermal. The air pushed through her mane, her hair flying every which way as they looped, spun, and looped again. She could feel the gas molecules all around them, rippling like foam at her skin with the raw energy of Chaos. Never before had she felt so alive.
They ducked past a group of clouds, Dash towing Screwball's cluster of balloons with each powerful stroke of her wings. Screwball grabbed another munchie off of a low-flying whisp; this one tasted more like white chocolate than vanilla.
It'd have to do.
"Hold on tight!"
The pair corkscrewed through the air. Screwball's lips flapped away from her teeth as the G-forces forced them back, little bits of dust and high-flying insects speeding by her face while they flew. She held on tighter—to what, she wasn't sure. The balloon strings, maybe?—as the loop shrank down until it was barely five feet in width, the ballons whipping about her head as they flew. True to their name—and the Cakes' branding—the Super Heavy-Duty Balloons held fast, unpopped.
Up they climbed, moving higher and higher into the sky. Beads of sweat formed on Screwball's brow, and her teeth chattered as the sun appeared to grow larger and larger. It was like a huge, flaming collossus: a giant orange, except one that had been skinned and then set on fire.
Screwball's brow furrowed. Momentarily, she wondered if it'd be possible to make sunjuice.
And then they stopped—
—and dove.
The wind screamed past her ears, the balloons that held her aloft smacking together in a chorus of "badoo-badunk-dadunks" above her head. Her eyes screwed up, her mouth scrunching as a bug flew into her mouth.
Crunchy!
The ground got closer, the air heating up around them by sheer friction. Rainbow Dash was just barely visible as a vague blue blob somewhere ahead of her, her flapping wings the only sign of real motion. The trees looked a lot less like matchsticks now, and a lot more like trees. Behind them, Screwball could just barely make out a trail of rainbow zig-zags mixed with grand, looping curls of purple and gold. She reached up a hoof, twirling a propeller hat that wasn't there as she prepared to pull up.
She never even needed to.
Rainbow Dash got there first, her powerful wings flapping just a degree off-center before they sent the whole mass careening off at a slightly shallower angle. On they went, speeding through the air as the ground got closer, though a little less quickly with each passing second.
Finally, Rainbow Dash cut the string behind her and went hurtling off toward the earth below. It was barely a ten-foot drop, and her pegasus skeletal system could more than take the beating, though she did leave an impressive dirt trail behind her. With her source of acceleration gone, Screwball slowed until she came to a halt, her balloons acting as drag as she slowly floated toward the ground.
Her hooves touched dirt.
"Ugh..." Dash got up out of her newly-made crater. She shook her wings to get the dirt off while jamming a hoof against her right ear to get rid of any worms that had managed to get in there.
She turned to Screwball, a spark in her eye. "So? What'd you think?"
Screwball was absolutely silent.
"Uh, Screw? Screwball?" Dash took a step forward. She raised an eyebrow. "You there? What'd you think?"
Screwball exploded.
"That was superawesomeriffic!"
"Whoa!" Dash chuckled as Screwball leapt onto her, rolling along the ground. "I'll have to remember that one for later!"
"Can we do it again? Can we? Can we? Can we?"
"Whoa, there," Dash said. She pushed Screwball off and took a moment to gather herselff. "I'm not so sure that'd be a good idea. I'm pretty darn tired after all that, and I used most of the dough I had on those balloons. I definitely don’t have enough to buy a whole ‘nother army of those things."
Screwball felt something warm and salty tearing up at the corner of her eye. She gave it an experimental lick. Toffee.
“So, yeah. Anyway, I—”
Dash stopped mid-word, her eyes fixed on the tears in Screwball’s eyes. “Aw, crud. Don’t gimme that look.”
Screwball’s mouth quivered.
“I said, cut it out!”
A little bit of snot ran down from her right nostril, and Screwball snuffled it back in.
Dash threw her hooves up in the air. “Alright, fine! We can do something else.” She snorted, hoof going up to her chin. “But what?”
Screwball brightened. “Food?”
Rainbow Dash raised her eyebrows. “Huh? You hungry?”
Screwball’s tummy rumbled. “Food!” she repeated, her head bobbing up and down.
“Hm…” Dash shrugged, a wry smile appearing on her face. “I guess I could go for a bite, myself. A pony can really work up an appetite after doing all those awesome tricks. Whatcha in the mood for?”
Screwball pondered that for a moment.
“Cloud!”
A dry chuckle escaped Dash’s throat. “I, uh, don’t think they sell those in town. Sorry.”
Screwball thought some more. Finally, a revelation hit her over the head with all of the subtlety of a lemon slice wrapped around a large, golden brick. “Pink cloud!”
“Pink cloud? What the heck is a—”
Dash paused, her eyes widening in realization. “Oooooh. I think I get it. Cotton candy?”
Screwball nodded eagerly. “Cotton candy! Can we go?”
A smirk spread across Dash’s face. “I think I’ve still got a few bits on me. C’mon—we can head over to Sugarcube Corner. I’m sure Pinkie Pie has some cotton candy that she can whip up for us.”
“Cotton candy!” Screwball cried, happily hopping down the road behind Dash’s shadow. The pegasus chuckled.
“Yeah,” she said aloud. “I think the two of you are gonna get along just fine.”
“Sure thing! Two cotton-candy-crumpets, coming right up!”
“Pinkie,” Rainbow Dash said, blinking. “I don’t know what a crumpet is, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t—”
“Go on, shoo!” Pinkie stood up behind the counter and waved them away. “Let your Auntie Pinkie work her magic. Take a seat—I’ll have these babies out in a jiffy!”
“Whatever you say, Pinks.” Dash shrugged, giving Screwball a helpless look.
They took a table right by the window. It was a bright, pretty pink thing, with a vase of flowers sitting in the middle.
“So,” Dash said after a moment. Screwball blinked and turned to face her, her attention returning from the curtain she’d been playing with. “I think I remember seeing you before, but I can’t really put my hoof on where. You live in Ponyville?”
“Yup!” Screwball grinned, closing her green-spiralled eyes and leaning back in her chair. “Right here in Ponyville.”
“Cool; cool.” Rainbow Dash crossed her hooves over her chest and leaned back as well. To an outside observer, it would be readily apparent that she was doing a very good job of trying to appear nonchalant. “So, I kinda introduced myself earlier, but I don’t think I really did it justice. Maybe you’ve heard of me—Rainbow Dash, Element of Loyalty? Creator of the legendary Sonic Rainboom, and winner of the Best Young Fliers’ Competition?”
Her eyes sparkled, and her voice became squeakier with excitement. “Not to mention a future Wonderbolt!”
Screwball thought about them for a moment. Rainbow Dash, yup. Element of Honesty— er, Loyalty—yup. She remembered her from the Big Rainbow Beam Thingy Of Doom. A colorful mane like that was pretty hard to forget, especially when it was surrounded by the white light of Harmony and Creation.
“Nope!” she finally said, grinning from ear to ear.
Dash’s jaw dropped. “N-never? C’mon—you’ve got to have heard something right?”
“Nope!”
“Hmph.” Dash pouted, leaning forward on her elbows. “I’m gonna have to make sure that Scootaloo puts out more fliers. That filly’s never gonna get a Cutie Mark in advertising unless everypony in Ponyville knows about my awesomness.”
Screwball nodded, listening intently. She wasn’t sure who this Scootaloo was, but the name made her feel even hungrier.
“So, anyway, back to you.” Dash waggled her eyebrows. “You live in Ponyville, huh? What do you do? Like, as a job, or whatever,” she added, seeing Screwball’s confused face.
Screwball halfway opened her mouth, but quickly shut it as a wave of pink filled her vision.
Glorious, beautiful pink.
“Your cotton candy’s ready!”
Screwball happily accepted her cone of Pink Cloud from the poofy pink pony that had proffered it toward her person. Out of the corner of her eye, she could just barely make out Rainbow Dash taking her own cone as well. It was a lot of cotton candy.
“Well, eat up!” Pinkie smiled down at the two of them, still balancing her tray on her head. “Let me know what you think—I think this new Cotton Candy Crumpet recipe is gonna be a big hit!”
“Will do, Pinkie Pie.” Rainbow Dash chuckled as Pinkie whirled away. “Now, lemme see if I can actually finish this thing.”
Screwball took one bite.
She was already in heaven.
Bits of soft, yummy sugar floated in her mouth, as warm as the cloud had been cold. She swished it around on her tongue, pink whisps of yummalicious goodness melting into her tongue and dancing on her tastebuds. Reluctantly, she swallowed, and looked back to take another bite.
Her teeth chomped down on empty air.
“Whoa!” Rainbow Dash stared at her, wide-eyed. “You sure ate that fast.” She herself was still nibbling on the top of her own cotton candy cone.
Screwball tried for another bite, and found—once again—nothing there but air. She pouted.
“Eh. You—hey! Don’t give me that look!” Rainbow Dash glared as Screwball’s eyes flickered over her own sugary treat. “This stuff’s mine. You ate yours already! It’s not my fault that you swallowed it in one giant gulp!"
"Hmph." Screwball crossed her arms, but soon let her hooves fall to her sides. Being hungry was hard.
"This stuff's really good, though," Dash said at last. She was over halfway done by now, with little smears of pink candy all over her face. "I'm gonna have to tell Pinkie about it."
"Yup!" Screwball beamed. "Really good!"
Her eyes were drawn up toward the other pony's mane. With all of its bright, poofy colors, Rainbow Dash's hair almost resembled cotton candy on its own, albeit rainbow cotton candy.
Dash looked up from the last shreds of her cone. She licked her lips, cleaning up a few smears of pink sitting on her mouth. "Huh? What're you looking a—"
Before she could react, Screwball was right on top of her, with a big smile on her face and her arms spread wide.
“Hug!”
Rainbow Dash let out a muffled grunt as Screwball landed on top of her. “Whoa!” she choked out, the air flying from her lungs as Screwball’s weight all but crushed her chest. “I—Screw—ball—”
“Uh-huh?” Screwball held on even harder, her hooves squeezing around Dash’s midsection like a vise. Something cracked.
“Can’t—breathe,” Dash grunted. “Geroff!”
In a flash, Screwball was back on her hooves. Her eyes were glued to the ground.
“The hay was that?” Rainbow Dash demanded. “You trying to kill me over here? Not even Pinkie hugs that hard!”
"But..." Screwball looked up into Dash's eyes. Her lip quivered a bit. "I thought we were friends."
Dash blinked at her. "Uh. And?"
"And I wanted to show you my friendly friendship!" Screwball cheered, throwing her hooves in the air. "After all, that's something that friends do, isn't it?"
Dash looked at Screwball. Screwball looked at Dash. Dash looked at Screwball.
Pinkie began hollering about some muffins that she'd left in the oven.
"Uh...sure." Dash licked her lips, keeping eye contact. "Something like that. Just, uh, don’t try to suffocate me next time, okay?"
"Yay!" Screwball clapped her hooves. "Friends!"
The look on Rainbow Dash's face softened, and she gave the other mare a small smile. "Heh. I guess we are friends, huh?" She looked up at the clock. Three-thirty.
"Oh, shoot. I have to go do my weather patrol soon." She looked back at Screwball, who was giving her a wide-eyed look of curiosity. "Y'know what, Screwball? This was actually kind of fun."
"Fun!"
"Yep; fun." Rainbow chuckled. "Maybe we can do it again sometime."
That got Screwball's attention. "Again?" she asked, spine standing straight up.
"Mmhm."
"With more balloons?"
"Probably."
"And loop-de-loops, and spinnies, and big clouds that go woosh?" Screwball thought about that for a moment before adding, "and more Pink Cloud?"
Rainbow Dash chuckled, shaking her head. "Sure, why not?" She grinned. "I'll be looking forward to it."
She held out a hoof and spit on it. "Whataya say?" she asked. "Next week, same time, same place?"
Screwball looked over the hoof curiously for a moment before holding up her hind leg and grasping Dash's front hoof with her own rear one. "Yup!"
"Awesome." Dash stood up to go, and then looked back over her shoulder. "Oh, and Screwball?"
Screwball blinked, looking at her with wide, owlish eyes. "Hm?"
Dash smirked. "You are so random."
