“What’s it like to fly?”
“Yeah.”
Rainbow Dash gave Applejack a funny look.
“Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” Applejack said. “It just looks like you’re having so much fun up there. What’s it like looking down and seeing everything turn into a model as you get higher?”
“Gee,” Dash replied, “I don’t know. I don’t really think about that when I’m up there.”
“Well, what do you think of when you’re up there?”
“Don’t you have trees to buck?”
“They can wait. I’m interested in your answer.”
“Okay, fine. If you’re gonna make me get all think-y philosopho-babbley, fine.”
She paused.
“I’m waiting.”
“I don’t think about flying much when I’m flying.”
“Well, what do you think about?”
“Death.”
Applejack drew back. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Well, what happens if you stop flapping your wings? You fall. If you fall from high enough, you die. Every pegasi learns that when they’re young. There’s a certain height you can fly to, and above that not even all the magic in the world can save you from death if you free-fall down.”
“But you wouldn’t free-fall.”
Dash shrugged.
“You wouldn’t though.” Applejack scrunched up her nose until Dash chuckled. “Not funny. You haven’t thought about that, right?”
“No. I’ve thought about it. I think everypony with wings thinks about it at one point or another. What would happen if I flew as high as I could and just snapped my wings shut.”
“I think I need to go back to bucking trees.”
“You asked. And I haven’t actually considered doing it. Don’t worry.” Dash paused. Her eyes turned to the sky above the sweet apple trees of her friend’s farm that always seemed to smell best at the end of the day, above the patchwork layer of clouds and the melting mid-evening sun. “It’s just something you think about. What if.”
“Well, don’t. It’s scary.”
“Flying is scary.”
“You’re scared of flying?”
“Of course not.” In a whisper, Rainbow Dash added, “I’m scared of dying.”
“Then why do you always fly so darn fast?” Applejack’s voice grew heavy. “You darn near snapped your neck trying to fly between my trees today.”
“Is that why you’re all eggheady? Because of that? It totally is, isn’t it.”
“No.”
“It is.”
“No.”
“It is~”
“Shut up.”
Dash smirked. “I’m sorry for almost killing your favorite tree, okay? I was totally under control.”
“Of course. That’s why you crashed.”
“Of course,” Dash mimicked. “Now I know what not to do. I’m better for it.”
“Still scared me half to death when you tried to go through the last row of trees with your eyes closed.”
“I didn’t want to see myself crash.”
Applejack looked up. “You knew you were gonna crash?”
“Yup. If I can feel the air pulling up on my secondaries, I’m either in an uncontrollable nosedive or I’m trying to stop myself and can’t. So I knew I was gonna crash.”
“How far ahead did you know?”
“Eh.” Dash shrugged. “The second to last row of trees. When I started screaming.”
For the first time since they had sat down beneath the apple tree to watch the sky together, Applejack smiled. “You screamed like a filly on her first Nightmare Night.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“Did not.”
“Right. You just saw my pretty face in the sunset and couldn’t help yourself.”
“It’s not like that.”
“I’m sure--”
“No,” Rainbow Dash cut Applejack off, “it’s really not like that. That bugs me a lot, when ponies think like the earth shrinks and all the ponies turn into ants. It’s not like that at all.”
“Oh?”
"Once your hooves leave the ground, the whole world contained by gravity kinda loses relevance. It gets less real the higher you get. Then nothing is real at all."
"Where does that happen?" Applejack asked.
"About the same height as the kill-line."
"I should smack you. You are an evil pony for saying that just to get a rise out of me."
"Get a riseout of you?"
Applejack hit her. By the time they stopped laughing, the sun had dipped a little bit more.
Without provocation, Rainbow Dash asked, “Have you ever gone up to a really high ledge and had the sudden urge to jump?”
Applejack was too lost in the clouds to respond.
“I think it’s like that. Only you don’t have to be on top of a cliff to get the feeling, because you can flap your wings for a minute and you’ll be the perfect altitude for it. You don’t even have to go up that far, if you can go sideways fast enough.” On the inside of her hind leg, a scar only mostly covered by blue fur burned at her words. “There’s a lot of ways to die, if you think about it hard enough.”
“So, where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
“The limit. The point of no return.”
“Oh.” Dash’s eyes scoured the sky for a moment. “You see that big cloud right there? Shaped like a bell?” Applejack nodded. “There’s a little cloud right next to it. You see it?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the spot.”
Applejack stared, like she was looking at a guillotine. “Right there.”
“Yep.”
Applejack held up her hoof. “It’s so small. I could hide it with an apple seed, if I held it up to my face.”
“You could hide the entire world behind a grain of rice if you wanted to. It’s all about perspective.”
“Perspective.”
“Yup.”
Applejack moved her hoof in and out, screwing one eye shut, then the other. “Just a little tiny cloud floating in the sky. Like nothing at all.”
Mhmm.”
“And if you just shut your wings up nice and tight.” Her voice stopped.
“That’s why you keep flapping. Because you’re scared to die. You keep going even if the air gets cold and you start hurting. Because you’re more scared of dying than you are of hurting.”
“Pain’s a pretty powerful thing. You’ve been laid up in the ER a few times after rough falls bellyachin’ for the doctor to pull the plug out of sheer boredom.”
“That was one time,” Dash hissed and grew silent. “Pain’s powerful. But pain’s familiar. Everypony knows pain. It’s universal. You can’t go through life and not know what pain feels like.”
“But is death familiar too? You can just stop flapping at any time you wanted.” Applejack’s eyes turned back to the little cloud next to the white bell-shape. “Get up there nice and high and stop flapping.”
“I don’t think so. At least, I’m not familiar with it. My parents died young. Death runs in the family, I guess.” Dash chuckled. “I was at both of their funerals. And yet, I don’t think I know what death is.”
“Oh?” Applejack replied.
“They were there, and then they were gone. There was no drawn-out death. Just there, then, boop. I was searching for coffins. Like that.” She clapped her hooves together. “And it’s the same thing for professional fliers, too. You either hurt yourself, retire, or die. The first two aren’t fatal, though the jury’s out on retirement. And the last is sudden.”
“If you’re above the cloud,” Applejack said.
“Death for a culture situated hundreds of feet above the ground is usually a short and violent thing. I know ponies who’ve just dropped. Not many, but a few.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s what I’m used to. Quick. Violent. Deep down, I think the reason we fly at all is to look down and realize how close we are to falling. Some wise old bat of a pegasus told my junior flight class, ‘There’s no flying, only falling at the wrong angle’. I liked that old guy.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He died. Then he fell out of his cloud home.”
“Why you gotta talk about death so much?”
"Applejack, the poor guy died. IT's not like he can keep flapping his wings after he dies. Because he's dead."
Rainbow Dash started to laugh, but the seriousness of Applejack’s tone compelled her to relent. “Like I said, it’s what I’m used to. You know the Buccaneer Blaze? Total knock-off of a death spiral. Half of my tricks can’t be pulled out of after a certain point without risk of death. It’s everywhere. Death is a shopping cart with a rusty wheel. Death is a small hole in a gas pipe. Death is a cramp twenty five minutes after you finish eating.”
“Death isn’t exactly an appealing part of life.”
Maybe that’s why I have such a hard time being this thoughtful-y. I’m so terrified of a quick and fatal fall. You’re there one minute. And then.” She paused. “If you’re high enough.”
“If you’re almost high enough--”
“That would be a total drag!” Rainbow Dash laughed. “You’d be cooped up for months, years, waiting and waiting for your bones to heal. If they heal. You’d have to get therapy. You would never fly again. You would lose your national identity, because you’d never be able to visit your capital city. Think of the humiliation,” she laughed. “A ground-bound pegasus.”
“That’s not nice.”
“It’s observationalist,” Rainbow Dash replied matter-of-factly. “It’s a pride thing. A lot more prevalent in the older pegasus clans. You want to show off your three-dimensionality. You want to show how good you are. You want to fit in. You can’t do that if your wings are big floppy broken hood ornaments."
Rainbow Dash cleared her throat. “That’s why I made sure to build my cloud home above that cloud.”
“Dash--”
“So if it were to get hit by a storm--”
“Dash, stop--”
“Or if something happened--”
“Shut it shut it shut it--”
Dash stopped, relaxing into Applejack’s side. Her gaze was as far off as the little cloud.
“If it happens,” Rainbow said, at last.
“If it happens.”
“I hope I’m high enough.”
Applejack picked up an apple core from the ground beside her and smooshed it against Rainbow Dash’s cheek.
“I hope you’re not.”