Rainbow Dash Gets Hugged by a Cloud
Rainbow Dash was lying on a cloud. It was a common thing for her to do on warm spring afternoons, or almost any afternoon for that matter. The sun was high in the sky and the light cloud cover from the weather patrol meant the nearest cloud was at least a few hundred feet away with no wind to push it past, and she sighed as she felt the warm sun on her back and her wings.
It was the perfect cloud, too. With Applejack bucking the orchards it was hard enough to find a napping spot, so the cloud had been a welcome relief. It was just shy of six feet long and four feet wide at its biggest, with a small indent in it that hid her from most of the Ponyville residents walking along beneath her.
Rainbow Dash had touched down and felt the springy, soft texture under her delicate hooves and stamped on it a few times, fluffing the cloud. She had curled up in the indent and rested her head on her front hooves, feeling the fluffy cloud gently give under her weight just enough to pull the edges right up next to her little ball. Within a few minutes, the warmth of the sun and the soft texture of the cloud had lulled her to sleep, snoring softly.
About an hour later, Rainbow Dash woke up from her nap with a yawn and a few slow blinks. With the exception of her head now propped up on a piece of the cloud acting like a pillow, her whole body was almost entirely covered by the fluffy mass of vapor. Rainbow Dash was almost immediately shocked awake and thrust her head to look underneath the cloud, thinking she had sunk and was in danger of falling out, but the cloud showed no signs of breaking underneath her.
With that out of the way, Rainbow Dash calmed down and simply pushed the vapor away with her hooves, creating little trails through the cloud’s texture as she opened up more of the cloud. Once her hole was opened, she stood on all four legs and stretched, readying herself for an entire afternoon of tricks as she made sure to stretch her legs and wings, feeling the muscles tightening. She’d been in pretty good condition the past few days from her daily flights and exercises, and she felt stronger than she’d been in a while.
After a quick stretch of the wings, Rainbow Dash gently flew off from the cloud. She started flying away, but she ended up turning back around next to the cloud. It had been a good napping place, much softer and better than the trees in Applejack’s orchard. She gently gave a few affectionate pats to the cloud, feeling it shift and roll softly under her hoof.
“I love you, cloud,” Rainbow Dash said absentmindedly, then she went to turn to fly away.
Almost without warning, Rainbow Dash felt her wings get pinned to her back. One of her front hooves was thrown out, but the other was soon pinned between Rainbow Dash and a thin layer of water vapor that pulled her backwards with surprising force. Just as soon as she felt herself jerked forwards, she jerked to a stop and her head flung into the soft cloud in front of her, landing with a pomf! on the cloud’s soft surface.
Rainbow Dash pulled her head up, noticing he indent of her flinching expression melded into the cloud. She flung her head around to examine her surroundings and noticed a thin layer of water vapor that had her wings pinned to her sides, feathers crumpled and out of place, and her arm between her stomach and the cloud. Rainbow Dash tried hitting the cloud vapor with her free hoof, but all she got was a sharp pain and a red spot in the shape of a hoof just above her cutie mark.
Rainbow Dash tried kicking the cloud, swiftly bringing her hind hooves up to the bottom of the cloud, but all she managed to feel was the cloud vapor rolling around and refusing to break up. Rainbow Dash wriggled around in the grip of the cloud until she felt her other hoof remain free. She started to slip out, but the cloud soon tightened its grip around her. It was soft and gentle and didn’t hurt her, but the force made it almost impossible for Dash to move, much less also free her wings.
“This better not be a Discord or Pinkie prank,” Rainbow Dash growled to herself.
It couldn’t be Discord; his clouds were pink. It couldn’t be Pinkie, either, since she was helping the Cakes with a large order that day and hadn’t been able to leave Sugarcube Corner. So what is going on? Rainbow Dash thought as she violently beat the cloud with her free hooves, but all she managed to do was make little dents in the vapor, which were quickly covered up by the cloud’s shifting mass.
After a while, Rainbow Dash stopped hitting the cloud. Her hooves were getting tired and she let them drop on the cloud just so she couldn’t lift their weight anymore. At least it was soft and relaxing, but Rainbow Dash could feel the cloud getting smaller and the feeling of the vapor around her midsection was growing until the cloud had wrapped another strand of vapor around her and her wings, her entire weight supported by what may have been a three foot cubed mass of water vapor.
“Somepony?” Rainbow Dash called out. “Anypony wanna help me out, here?”
Rainbow Dash looked around. A group of ponies were gathered down below, but there were no pegasi in the bunch; just a few earth ponies with a unicorn or two. A few fillies from the local schoolhouse were pointing at Rainbow Dash and laughing. Rainbow took her hooves and pushed and pushed against the cloud, but it failed to move away from her and she failed to push herself out of its grip.
She could hear the Ponyville residents below murmuring and a few others started laughing and she felt embarrassed. How could she, the fastest pegasus in all of Ponyville, be stranded in the middle of the sky by a cloud, a simple mass of vapor? And pegasi were known for their ability to manipulate weather, yet she couldn’t even kick the cloud to pieces.
There were two options Rainbow considered as she went back to bashing the cloud with her hooves. Either she could get Twilight to come and teleport her out of the cloud or she needed another pegasus. The first seemed the easiest but she couldn’t move to get across Ponyville to the library where Twilight was, much less down to the door or a window to knock on it. Another pegasus could easily reach her, but most of them knew Rainbow Dash as the fastest pegasus and as an Element of Harmony, and the shame that could bring with it was almost unbearable.
There was Fluttershy. She was a pegasus, and likely wouldn’t make fun of her. But there was still the matter of getting over there.
Rainbow Dash put her hooves squarely on the cloud, tested it to make sure it wouldn’t give way, and heaved. She felt as though her body was being stretched out from the cloud’s grip on her, but she could also feel the tiniest bit of movement of her body going past the cloud. She stopped for a minute and noticed the cloud was a little bit below her. A few more pushes and her wings would be free.
With renewed vigor, Rainbow Dash pushed and pushed on the cloud, feeling her body stretch and stretch and the cloud’s grip tighten on her. Even so, she could feel her wings slowly getting free of the cloud’s grip. One, two, three pushes and the cloud was putting another line of vapor around her, pulling her closer into the cloud’s soft embrace, but her wings were almost free. Kicking the cloud one more time, Rainbow Dash suddenly felt her wings expand to their full size, relishing the freedom from the cloud’s grip.
Her wings now free from the cloud, Rainbow Dash managed to turn herself around and started flapping her wings. Faster and faster she flapped, but the cloud refused to let go. Rainbow Dash couldn’t even get up to high speed. She felt an extra weight impeding her agility and her speed, the cloud’s shape suddenly turning into the least aerodynamic thing Rainbow Dash could think of.
It took her almost three times as long as it normally did to reach Fluttershy’s house at the edge of Ponyville. Her wings were tired and she ended up knocking on the door by swinging her hooves at the wood. She couldn’t touch the ground with the cloud keeping her suspended, and it had gotten harder since the cloud wasn’t naturally a fog cloud and even as she sat still the cloud started to gently float upwards, trying to get back to its usual height as it put another tendril of vapor around her.
Fluttershy came out soon after Rainbow Dash knocked on the door. For a moment, with Rainbow Dash floating upwards, the yellow pegasus couldn’t see the rainbow-maned pegasus staring at her with an irritated expression on her face.
“Fluttershy,” Rainbow called. “I’m up here.”
Fluttershy looked up and smiled. “Oh, hello, Rainbow Dash. How are you today? How come you came around here?”
“I would be better if this cloud wasn’t hanging on to me,” Rainbow Dash said, pointing at the four tendrils of water vapor around her midsection.
“Oh? How did that happen?”
“I don’t know! I just found a spot to nap and when I woke up to fly away the cloud wrapped around me. I only just barely managed to free my hooves and wings not long ago to fly myself over here.”
Fluttershy ‘hmm’ed thoughtfully. “Does it hurt?”
“No, but it’s soft and resists my attempts to push it off.”
Fluttershy flew up to Rainbow Dash, still floating upwards, and gently poked the cloud. Rainbow Dash was surprised when the cloud stopped floating and even more so when Fluttershy started gently petting it.
The petting seemed to have an effect. Slowly, the tendrils of water vapor started loosening from around Rainbow Dash, and soon she was slowly set down by the cloud and dropped on the floor. The cloud no longer displayed the strings of water vapor that had wrapped around Rainbow dash earlier. It wasn’t long before Fluttershy hugged the cloud for a few seconds, nuzzling it, before letting it go without it grabbing onto her. It wasn’t long before the cloud floated back up into the sky as if nothing had happened and started moving away as a group of pegasi started bringing a gust of wind by.
“How’d you get it to release me?” Rainbow Dash asked as she watched the cloud float away. “And how come it grabbed me in the first place?”
“I don’t know the answer to either of those questions,” Fluttershy replied. “All I know is that sometimes all it takes to change things is a little kindness.”
Rainbow Dash groaned. “That’s your answer for everything!”
“Well, it worked, didn’t it?”
Rainbow Dash sighed. She couldn’t argue.
