Rainbow Dash sat at the bar. She looked down at the cider within her mug. She couldn’t bring herself to bring the liquid across her muzzle. The lethargy of depression had taken its toll, and now she couldn’t even move. One thought had been in her mind the past month.
“Why? Why couldn’t I have saved her?” Rainbow breathed. She wasn’t even sure it was a question. For the last week it had been more declarative, and she wasn’t sure why. A tear fell into the drink; Rainbow hadn’t even noticed she was crying. She breathed it again, except now the pronoun was replaced with a proper noun: Scootaloo. She had breathed the name twenty-three times at this stool, and each time an odd feeling was in place. It felt as if both a weight had been lifted and added, but she was either heavier or lighter. She didn’t care. She wanted so badly to hold the little filly in her arms again. Another tear fell. Her head fell into the drink, ergo knocking it over and spilling it all over the bar.
“You okay?” The mare behind the bar asked. Her voice was sweet, motherly, and full. Rainbow Dash let it paddle in her conscious mind for a little until she brought up the strength to reply.
“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash lied. Another tear was shed, mixing into the beverage swimming around her cheek. “Just fine,”
“Darling, what’s wrong?” The mare asked. “You can tell me, maybe it will ease you,” Rainbow Dash didn’t want to say anything. If she did she would begin sobbing, and she didn’t want that to happen. She had too much pride. “C’mon, darling. It troubles me to see you this way.” That piqued Rainbow’s attention. Did the mare behind the counter know Rainbow Dash? She opened her eye slightly to look at the mare. She looked slightly familiar, but she didn’t know from where in her memory she was from. She didn’t bother to look. She internally debated whether or not to reply. This was a mare she probably didn’t know, and if she did, as she had a slight feeling, she lived in another city. As Scootaloo’s funeral had been held in Cloudsdale, where her biological parents had been buried. After the funeral Rainbow Dash had just walked along the streets of Cloudsdale until she came across this pygmy discotheque and decided to make an attempt at ridding herself of sobriety. At this moment she didn’t really care if she said it aloud, it just might hurt to do so. She put away that thought and ejaculated softly through her lips:
“Scootaloo’s dead.” Another tear was shed into the cold alcohol around her head.
“Excuse me?” The pudgy red-maned mare asked sympathetically. “Didn’t quite catch you,”
“Scootaloo is dead. One of her ridiculous crusading thingamabobs went awry. Now she… she…” Rainbow Dash couldn’t force the word out of her mouth a third time. But it still hit her as if she had said it. Dead. Dead, she hadn’t thought she would have to say the word soon, especially in regard to her favorite little filly.
“Aww, darling.” The cream colored mare uttered caringly. Rainbow doubted the mare had felt what she was feeling. She doubted anypony had felt what she was feeling. She had never felt more like a bag of shit that had been lit on fire, fed to a foal and then defecated out into another bag in a never-ending process, if those are the right words. Rainbow had so caught up in this thought she hadn’t noticed the mare patting her head. She looked up into furious scarlet eyes whose motherly kindness and compassion knew no boundaries. She looked into those eyes and smelt cocoa on a cold winter’s day; she saw a mother’s embrace after her filly or foal had broken a bone. She realized why she had felt familiar.
“M-Mom?” The rainbow-maned pegasus asked.
“Yes sweetie?”
“Mom!” Rainbow exclaimed in surprise. She was now questioning why Mom worked in a discotheque, and why her brightly colored mane was gone. Mom had obviously picked up on her daughter’s confusion.
“Let me explain a few things first. After your father, Spectrum, and I divorced, I got a job here, at the discotheque. After a while my mane began greying and they needed their girls to be in their tip-top shape, so obviously I needed to recolor my mane. To re-dye it the sherbet it once was too expensive, so I decided to dye it monochromatic.” Mom said. That explained a few things to Rainbow. She was still attempting to grip the happenstance on which this event would occur. I mean, seriously, running into your own mother at a discotheque. Wow. This had helped her take her mind off Scootaloo, but not completely. A saddened look overcame her at the thought again. Mom picked up on it.
“Ugh. I feel like a bad mother for doing this.” With her magic she levitated a few drinks and double shot glasses in front of her, mixing various liquids with the precision of a chemist. Mom hooved Rainbow the final result. “Drink.” Rainbow Dash balanced the double shot glass in her hoof, looked at it like she looked at everything and everypony else, then downed the oddly sweet solution. The warmth permeated all of her organs, especially her esophagus and stomach. She looked at the bar and realized there was another double shot glass, awaiting Rainbows lips. She wrapped her hoof around the pellucid glass and threw the brownish liquid into her mouth, then swallowing. The world began moving ever so slightly after a little while, like it always did when one was tipsy. She still knew about Scootaloo, meaning the alcohol was not enough.
“Can I have another, mom?”
“You sure, Dashie?”
“Yeah,”
“Well, okay then,” Mom shrugged. She began mixing the solution and them hooved her the glass. Rainbow Dash imbibed, letting the blissful spinning and ignorance of inebriation over come her. She heard the sound of Mom’s manager calling her back; apparently Mom’s shift had ended. Rainbow looked at door of the discotheque that led out into the city of Cloudsdale. Well, might as hell.
Rainbow stepped into the cool night aether of Cloudsdale. The traffic was unbearable. How was there even traffic in the clouds? She looked closely at the cars passing by. She noticed that the cars were lined with enchanted cloud materiel. Ah, that makes more sense. Rainbow had seen the cars when she was sober, but she hadn’t been thinking about in that moment. She began stepping into traffic.
“No, I don’t think this a good idea” Rainbow Dash said to herself. “Oh, yeah. Don’t listen to yourself; you’re drunk.” She stepped into traffic. The cars and vans swerved around her. The headlights were shining bright; the pavement underneath her hooves was lukewarm. ‘Twas frightening. One of the headlights came directly at her, and then there was nothing.