The Art of Falling

A gust came in through Rainbow Dash’s hospital room window, gently upsetting the curtains. It passed along her bed and rustled the sheets and pulled at the pages of her book bed and her mane and rushed into, through, and up her feathers. She absentmindedly flapped her wings into the breeze. It had been a long time since she had flown. A whole week, at least. Pegasus wings weren’t meant to stay out of the air for so long. Even if she went only a day without flying, which she never did except when complying with another of Applejack’s dumb dares, they’d start flapping on their own, no matter what she was doing. In bed. In the shower. While playing horseshoes. Made a hassle of everything. Applejack thought it was funny. Rainbow Dash didn’t.

Dash ignored the wind and kept reading her book, which she held in unbandaged hooves. The last of her bandages been off for a full day now. Her hooves seemed healed. She had taken a few practice trips around the hospital already, including one just that morning with the doctor. They had walked all the way to the hospital entrance together. Her hooves still ached a little while she held up the book, but Dash had never let something as measly as a sore fetlock come between her and a good book. And it was a good book. One of the best—Daring Do and the Dastardly Drafty Door. She had read it before, but she figured, like a good trick, any Daring Do novel was worth doing over and over. Just not in front of ponies. And usually while lying down. The analogy was admittedly pretty thin.

She wasn’t alone in the room. Fluttershy sat in a chair by the bed, knitting or sewing or something else equally lame. Rainbow Dash didn’t mind. It could be nice sometimes when other ponies just sat back and acknowledged her as the most awesome pony in the room by not trying (and then obviously failing and embarrassing themselves in front of everypony) to do something as cool as what she was doing.

Fluttershy didn’t say anything to her, and Rainbow Dash didn’t say anything to Fluttershy. Rainbow thought they were both okay with that, though. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. It was more like the kind of silence where both ponies aren’t talking because they don’t have anything they need to say, and they just like knowing the other pony is nearby. All of her friends had been coming by all week, and they had all been like this. Well, they didn’t all knit or sew, but every visit had felt the same. It felt like they were all in on some big secret, like they all knew something now that no one else knew, and it was something they never needed to say out loud. Saying it out loud might have even spoiled it. So they went back to doing all the same things they had done before, but none of those things were really the same, because now they did them knowing this new thing that they didn’t have to say. Rainbow Dash didn’t even think about it. She just knew that she had awesome friends who could do even awesomer things with their tongues, tongues they had all agreed they would readily begin to take advantage of together on a regular (and probably scheduled, if Twilight had any say) basis as soon as she got out of the hospital, and that was more than enough for her. Coming up with a name for it wouldn’t make any difference, so why call it anything? They were friends, and that was that.

The door opened and the doctor walked in. He wheeled a stretcher behind him, on which lay an earth pony stallion with a plunger sticking out of one ear and a pained expression on his face that denoted very serious inner contemplation of his life’s circumstances and the choices he had made that had brought those circumstances about. Dash thought it looked familiar.

“Hey, doc!” Dash said.

The doctor stopped when he noticed her. “What are you doing here?”

“Reading with Fluttershy.” She held up her book.

Fluttershy smiled and waved.

The stallion on the stretcher waved back.

“Please try not to move,” the doctor told him before turning back to Rainbow Dash. “No, what are you still doing here?”

“Uh…” Dash held her book up again. “I’m still reading with Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy smiled and waved again.

The stallion on the stretcher didn’t wave back.

Fluttershy looked disappointed.

The doctor did, too. “But you were discharged hours ago!”

That was news to Rainbow Dash. “I was? When?”

“This morning! Why did you think I walked you all the way to the lobby?”

“Excercise?”

The doctor groaned and turned around and pushed the stallion on the stretcher back out the door. “We’ll find you another room. And you,” he said, glancing back at Dash. “Get out.”

Dash looked at Fluttershy. “Huh.”

Fluttershy giggled, but stifled her mouth with a hoof and became more serious. “I think we should go. I don’t want to make him mad. He was really nice.”

“Yeah,” Dash said, already rolling out of the bed and landing on her hooves. Her ankles stung with the tiniest bit of pain, but she just stretched and yawned.

Fluttershy made the bed and helped her gather her things, which wasn’t much, and they went out the door. Rainbow didn’t look back, and the door closed behind them. She had already promised herself and her friends that she wouldn’t see that room again anytime soon.

They went through the hospital, to the front lobby, and then after a quick discussion with and apology to the receptionist, they went out the door.

Rainbow Dash stepped out into sunlight. The first thing she noticed was that it was warm. The second thing she noticed was that there was a lot of sky. Like, a lot of sky. Sky was big. She had forgotten how crazy big it was. Looking at it, her wings twitched and tail swished and her heart thumped and she knew that she could fly anywhere at all anytime at all. And she could, and would, fly through it all in the fastest, most incredible, and sexiest way possible. She crouched down, ready to launch herself into the air for the first time in a week. But she paused mid-crouch and looked to Fluttershy first.

Fluttershy nudged her shoulder. “Go ahead.”

Rainbow Dash kissed her on the cheek and let her lips linger and said, “Thank you.”

Fluttershy nodded and smiled.

Rainbow Dash grinned and spread her wings wide in a pose as dramatic as it was (she was certain) breathtaking. Ponies nearby probably gasped. They almost certainly gasped.

A single susurrus, resounding beat of her wings so strong it sent leaves and flowers and loose grass every way around her, and Rainbow Dash was already high and away.