It is a bitter, chilling Povember morning on which Celestia raises the sun. The ice and the snow glimmers in the golden light of daybreak; beside the scattering light, the world sits still, frozen beneath the crystals and clear air.
Just then, a screaming comes across the sky. “Son of a biiiiitch!” cries the pegasus careening in the new day’s air. A rainbow streak punctuates an otherwise peaceful morning and brings into being the new chaos. The rainbow ends in a fresh crater and muffled thud in a snow berm on the edge of the Everfree Forest, and in the crater lies a tangled mess of rainbow hair and huffy horse. “Uggghhh, who put all this damn snow here?”
As she kicks around the snow, the shuffles here elicit shuffles there and soon makes itself known to Rainbow Dash. She pauses for a moment, staying still, and hears the tiny shuffles on the other side of the berm. She climbs slowly and peeks up above it first her hair, then her huge eyes, and spies a small colorful insect-like winged critter.
At first, it looks to be a parasprite, with the same fuzzy body and faceted eyes. But it’s more colorful, and on a closer look, it’s more slender and in its eyes, there glows the beginnings of a soul. The meeting of eyes exchanges the hint of being betwixt the two. In a shared glimmer between their gazes, the whole of creation is communicated; the entire universe, every life lived within it, and the progression of creation, expansion, collapse, and rebirth, into perpetuity, becomes as intimate as the feel of one's own skin. Here, in the cold, in the snow, in the world that flashes for but an instant in the scope of eternity, two become as one, and through the creature as similarly as through Rainbow Dash, the universe becomes as part of them. The glory of an infinite globe of stars and the specks of dust meted out between them, the glory of life in Equestria, the glory of lives throughout the cosmos entangles in a common pegasus and a common creature, and becomes so much more for the sake of the connection.
It feels like eternity, but in this newfound respect eternity seems simultaneously infinitesimal and neverending, the plurality of time and times becoming irrelevant to the universe. To the uninvolved, though, it's a mere second and Rainbow Dash reaches out and clutches her new friend. She looks away for the first time since all creation burst forth and collapsed in on itself a trillion times, and she sees the world in new colors, in spectra that once were a mystery but now are as common as the light in which life is bathed.
She perches the creature upon her shoulder, and takes flight again in the golden sunlight, flapping her wings toward home and calling upon a breeze to carry her thence. Instead, the immutable forces of the underlying quantum field carries her homeward and it was just as she had the thought as she was home in the clouds again. With another thought, she's in bed and the sun is setting now. She sets her friend upon the nightstand and wishes it good night, and the two share another million billion millennia in just a glance, then it's to sleep whence only the most extraordinary of dreams may come.
And as quick as she had fallen asleep, the morning light invades the window again and the gold of a new day rouses Dash from yet another wondrous eternity. She glances to her nightstand and sees her friend lying peacefully, quietly, eyes closed, and wrapped in a colorful scarf.
No breath comes to or from the creature. It has satisfied it's existence, it's gone to sleep forevermore, to become one again with the universe that made it. Eternity becomes the creature, and Rainbow Dash looks upon its resting corporeal body with a slight twinge, but with more understanding and equal satisfaction in knowing its place amongst the stars.
Still, a remnant of her prior being rears and comes out in the moment, "Shit, I forgot to feed it."
It was a new day. Like the day before this one, and that one before it, and so on, the sun rose over the hills and cast its warm light across Equestria. And like the day before this one, and that one before it, and so on, Princess Twilight was up, sitting by the window, to eagerly greet the new sunrise. It was the middle of Povember, and though winter wouldn't start proper for another month, Ponyville was covered in a thick blanket of fresh, white snow.
Because of the early winter, Twilight's decision to replace her bed with one made of solid nickel and top it a solid nickel bedspread now seemed regrettable, but had made being awake for the sunrise much easier. Still, she conjured up her checklist and added 'get rid of metal bed' to the top of it.
The sun was now completely above the horizon and Ponyville was now striped with the golden light of the sun and the long shadows cast by houses. Like every morning, the sky seemed to sparkle with the magic and goodness of the idylls given to all of ponykind, and it was in that sparkle that Twilight leapt from her window to greet the dawn.
Unlike every other morning, though, she was joined in the sky by rainbow streaking across the sky on a reckless trajectory. In a blink, the streak of color dashed above Twilight and the whoosh of the air following in Rainbow's wake carved a clear path of turbulence straight to the sound of a dull thud at the edge of the Everfree Forest. At the edge of her hearing, Twilight heard the indistinct screaming of the careening pegasus. Oh Rainbow, she thought to herself, what did you do this time?
With an exaggerated hopping flap of her wings, she followed the sound over the rooftops and alleys of Ponyville. The cold air bit at her eyes and wings and hooves, but the warmth of the sun made the little nips of frosty air disappear. With a final stretch of the wings, she glided down to an obvious crater in a snow berm just at the treeline by the forest. She peered over the edge and saw hoofprints and a relatively chaotic crater, but no Rainbow Dash.
She sensed something else lingering in the air, a feeling or maybe an idea. Either way, it was too intangible and the idea of it made Twilight uncomfortable. Fortunately, the impression subsided as she trotted away from the forest. Probably just a residual superstition about the Everfree Forest, Twilight thought to herself.
She walked back into the town through an alleyway between two houses; the proximity of the roofs of the houses formed a small bridge of snow over the narrow gap, and the ground was clear enough that you could still see the grass below. Though the ground was mostly free of snow and ice, it was still frozen and the grass, too, had been frozen and it crunched under Twilight's hooves with the same consistency as a light layer of snow. She reached the front of the houses and peeked her head around the corner, where she spied a bright red cardinal perched on the railing of the stairs in front of the house. She stared quietly as the cardinal alternated between preening itself and pecking at the snow on the rail, at least until the bird flew off.
She lingered there another moment, still feeling that the bird could return at any moment. The memory of the frozen grass lingered just as well. The memory of her whole walk from the edge of the forest and on was still surprisingly vivid in her mind. Every moment therein had the clarity of having happened just a moment ago, like the past and the present happened simultaneously. As soon as it had flown away, the bird returned to its perch on the rail.
The rest of the day was a sustained blur to Twilight. She went to Sugarcube Corner, where Pinkie Pie gave her some cake cookies; they tasted just like she knew they would, but it was still a sweet diversion. Pinkie and Twilight then went to Rarity's boutique and met Applejack there. Rarity had made new scarves for everyone from a wonderful new fabric; Twilight's scarf was every bit as warm and soft as she knew it would be. Pinkie departed with Applejack to help on the farm, so Twilight bade them farewell. Rarity was about to ask Twilight to bring the last scarves to Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, but she had that same feeling Twilight had earlier; she didn't need to ask and Twilight didn't need to agree. They both knew it'd be done and the princess left. She turned toward the path of that leads to Fluttershy's cottage and she ran into Fluttershy just a moment later; Twilight gave her the scarf and with it she understood now what Rarity and Twilight understood. Twilight also gave her the scarf meant for Rainbow Dash. Fluttershy understood that it was to be brought to Rainbow, but she didn't need to go to see her, the scarf was already there.
With the day's needs met, she happened upon home. Princess Twilight bade good night to Spike and, with that, they were both asleep.
