A Pegasus Is Fine, Two

Chapters

That Kind of an Atmosphere
All the Years We Shared
It Was All about Small Steps
What's Loyalty Without a Point?
That Is Only Because We Have to
Epilogue

That Kind of an Atmosphere

It had been a strange summer. And if the signs were any good, the autumn wouldn’t be any less so.

Rainbow Dash sat in the Heartmend Cafe, the only place in Ponyville that could boast of including the cutest napkins in Equestria. They had tiny hearts in them. They were pink. And, if you sniffed carefully, you could notice this slight fragrance of cinnamon emanating from them. Why do they smell like cinnamon? wondered the azure pegasus while eyeing a rackful of the things with suspicion. It felt to her that they were sneering at her. She sneered back at them, taking a sip of her drink. All it does is makes me wanna eat buns…

The empty glass hit the table as she burped loudly, which made the nearby patrons cast disapproving glances at her. Dash muttered an apology of sorts, cracking a smile that certainly did not befit the atmosphere of the cafe. The atmosphere in question was best described by the notion that nopony, Dash excluded, seemed to mind the napkins. And they were, with one exception, sitting by pairs, their gazes interlocked and mouths curved in shy smiles sprinkled with hopes, promises and, in some cases, thoughts that could only be whispered with a husky voice. Candlelight was compulsory, as was the delicate music, played by a cellist who could make the hollow wood go soft. That kind of an atmosphere.

I swear, another ten minutes and I’ll wing it. Fluttershy can reserve a table from the moon for all I care; if things get any sweeter, I'll get diabetes. Dash grabbed the glass again, emptying the rest of it in one go. The continuous flow of the sweet nectar was her only haven in the seas of commercial romance, and she wasn’t going to let go of it. “Another one, please!” she said, somewhat louder than in the last five-ish times. This stirred another annoyed reaction, not only from the nearest table, but from the three others beyond that. Dash tried her best to ignore their glares, but still saw it wise not to underline her request by knocking the table with the empty glass. The waiter came soon enough anyway, carrying what Dash could only call a life-saver.

However, before the waiter – an earth pony stallion with, yes, a bowtie with little hearts on it – set the glass ahead of the parched mare, he leaned closer in the way that waiters do when they want to express a state of mind rather than simple words. “Miss Dash? There is a certain concern that would require your attention.”

Dash blew a curl of mane out of her eyes. “No worries, pal. The pay came just last week – I got the bits.” She reached for the frosty glass with a not-so-ponderous hoof.

The waiter, to Dash’s dismay, moved the tray out of her reach. “I’m certain you do. However, that is not the issue.”

Dash looked the stallion in the eyes. “What is, then?”

He coughed. “You see, the evening is quite busy, and since this is a table of three which you have been occupying alone for the last twenty minutes…” The suggestion that followed was not said. Rather, it was written on his forehead.

Dash tapped the centre of the table with a hoof. “But it’s reserved, right?”

“Yes, but the rules of reservation say that if the table is not claimed half an hour after the appointed time–”

“It has been claimed!” said Dash, her volume escaping her by a few ticks. The cider in her wasn’t into small details.

A momentary frown visited the waiter’s brow. “Claimed by the whole group that made the reservation, it actually says.” The suggestion materialized again, with some more insistence this time.

Dash tried to think quickly, but the cider wasn’t too big on running, either. “Uhh… Hey, the table has been paid for, right? You can’t just throw out a paying customer!”

The stallion winced. “That would indeed be out of the question. I was merely going to suggest that perhaps you could settle for a table of one instead? We’ve already had to turn away customers because of the lack of appropriate tables.” He pointed with a hoof.

Dash followed with her eyes. In a quiet corner, next to a pot plant, there stood a lone table with a lone chair. It was the saddest thing she had seen all week. The idea of waiting there until Thunderlane and Fluttershy arrived made the creeps run along her spine. Still, the stallion had the edge of reasonability, a tough nut to crack anywhere. Fortunately, Dash had just the right antidote in mind: bargaining.

“Look, I’m sure the others are right about to walk in here,” she said, looking at him again. “Cut me a deal of te–fifteen minutes, okay?”

The waiter considered this with a face of one who’d rather be the one doing the selling. “Miss Dash… The rules are there for a reason.”

“Hey, you said the limit’s thirty,” said Dash quickly. “Let’s just stick to that and see where we are then, how about that?”

The waiter gave her a look. “Very well. But after–” he glanced at the watch on his wrist “–seven and a half minutes, I must ask you to change the table.”

Dash paused for a moment, giving the impression that she was seriously considering the offer. “Deal, but I’ll reserve the right to open the negotiations in the future. Now, can I get that cider?”

The waiter set the glass on the table and left at once. Over her sip, Dash watched him go, wondering if she could buy more time by demanding to see the actual rules of reserving. But what’d be the point? If Shy and Lane ain't coming in ten minutes or so, why should I be hanging here any longer either? Obviously they got something better to do than being on time. And the worst part is that I’ve a pretty good picture of what that something might be…

The whole thing still didn’t quite fit in her mind. Ever since their little ménage-á-trois had kicked in some months past, Thunderlane and Fluttershy had been acting… weirdly. After a few weeks, Dash had been positively surprised when Fluttershy had suggested that they’d replay their little threeway, this time in Fluttershy’s house. Thunderlane had been more than eager to comply. It had been an awesome afternoon, and the morning hadn’t been bad either. It was after that when things started to get tricky.

Thunderlane had stayed with Fluttershy when Dash had left, and already then she had gotten the impression that he wasn’t in it just for the brunch that Fluttershy had graciously offered to cook up. That was all fine and proper, of course: if the two got along without her as the apron, all the better for everypony, right? Heck, that was what Dash had been hoping for in the first place; to help Fluttershy get over her stiffness in what came to sex. And Thunderlane was a cool stud; he’d be a joy to have around more often.

In the next month, they had more threesome sessions than Dash cared to count, and they were all great, no, they were just amazing. Really awesome. Three people having sex had the advantage that one could always just watch and rest while the others went on, and the talk in between the rounds rarely grew stale. Three ponies naturally had more to share than just two, in every way imaginable. It came to the point where they were skipping time with their other friends, just to hang out in one of their houses, at which point Dash started feeling overworked. There was more to her world than sex, after all, even more than great sex with her best friends. There was a sky to keep clear, drills to plan, Pinkie to do pranks with. With time, their sessions had climbed up in frequency, peaked, and then started a steady drop.

At least the sessions of all three of them had. While they were spending more time together than ever, Dash had noticed that she was spending less time with Fluttershy alone than she had for… longer that she could remember. Thunderlane was always there, it seemed, when she looked back at the summer. And when he wasn’t, Fluttershy had often asked that he’d be invited, even if they weren’t planning for sex. Again, this was all fine and proper for Dash. Even the fact that Fluttershy and Thunderlane were starting to spend more and more time with just the two of them was totally acceptable, and that was the magic word – acceptable. Not awesome or amazing, just… acceptable. Totally.

I even caught them doing it, once, thought Dash while surveying the couples in the dimly lit room. The memory never seemed to grow old, even though it had happened already over a month ago. There she was, flying to Fluttershy’s, already on the door when she had heard something in the garden. A giggle, and some whispering. A moan. She had sneaked on the roof to take a peek, and had almost dropped down at the sight of it.

They were doing it among the carrots.

The carrots.

With Dash, Fluttershy wouldn’t do it on the bed if there was but one crumb of sand on the mattress. It was uncomfortable, she would say.

Dash hadn’t interrupted them or made her presence known. She hadn’t even stayed to watch, although that would’ve been easy, the way how immersed they had been in their… fun. Instead, she had just gone with Pinkie instead. They had filled a bucket with water and seen how well it stayed over Twilight’s new castle’s front door. It didn’t, really, as Spike had found out. Dash had almost managed to ignore the notion that Thunderlane had been doing stuff with Fluttershy that she had thought would be impossible. How about that.

But what did it matter, at the end of the day? It was still Thunderlane. It was still Fluttershy. And the carrots were just carrots. Heck, maybe Fluttershy’s changed? Ponies change. But how didn’t I notice it earlier?

A quiet cough by her side pulled Dash out of her thoughts. She looked up.

“Yet alone, I see,” said the waiter. There was a sense of smugness in his voice that didn't play well with Dash’s current mood. Well, really it wouldn’t have played well with any mood she might have had.

“There’s no fooling you, is there?” she asked. She tried to sip her drink again, but found it empty. The stallion flinched as the glass was pushed in front of his face in a flash. “Won’t you bring me another one, eh? We can talk business right after.”

The waiter opened his mouth.

“Rainbow!” called a familiar voice from the door. Both the waiter and Dash turned their heads, although it was only Rainbow who smiled afterwards.

“Come here, Shy!” she called back, waving with a hoof. “And you too, Lane!”

Followed by some frowned eyebrows, Fluttershy and Thunderlane made their way past another waiter by the door. After the compulsory greetings were exchanged, Dash turned a victorious look to the waiter. “The table has been claimed, by all the rules you can come up with. Now, to start off, why don’t you go fetch two buddies to the cider I just ordered? Please?”

The stallion smiled. It wasn’t a very kind smile. “Yes, miss Dash.”

“What’s up with him?” asked Thunderlane after he had gone.

Dash couldn’t help but to notice that the dark-grey pegasus had pulled his chair closer to Fluttershy’s than hers, right after the two had sat down. “Oh, we had to go over some formalities. Like why you guys were half an hour late.” There was the tiniest question mark at the end.

Thunderlane and Fluttershy looked abashed, but in a way that hinted that they were a bit proud about it. Dash made a mental note about that.

“Uhh… We just lost the sense of time,” said Thunderlane after a while, rubbing the back of his neck.

Fluttershy nodded, a faint blush glowing on her cheeks. “Yes. We definitely did.” She gave an apologetic look at Dash. “I’m really sorry, Dashie.”

“We both are,” said Thunderlane hurriedly. “It was my fault, more than anything.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” cooed Fluttershy, smoothing his mane.

Dash studied them with a rising sense of weirdness. “Yeah, whatevs. At least you’re here now.” She reached for the small table nearby, crabbing a few menus. “I leafed through these four times already, so trust me when I say that the appetizers aren’t much to look at. And the deserts gave me so many quips that I had to write down the best of them.” She offered the pink leaflets to the two.

Fluttershy accepted them, but put them on the table unopened. She exchanged a quick look with Thunderlane, who gave her the faintest of nods. Even against the cider sloshing in Dash circulatory system, she figured out that something was up.

“Dashie…” started Fluttershy. “There’s something we need to tell you.”

Dash looked at her, then at Thunderlane. The shortest fuse lighted inside her mind, only to blow up a big barrel of hasty conclusions. “Oh, hay no…” She leaned over the table, eyes wide. “Are you pregs?”

The two jumped a bit at the word. “No!” they yelped, to the general irritation of the closest table. The waiter was giving them looks, but Dash didn’t give a damn at the moment. “You sure? You’ve been doing it like mad for the past weeks.”

“I eat my herbs,” mumbled Fluttershy, red as a strawberry. Thunderlane was doing his best to look at the ceiling.

Dash’s shoulders relaxed, and the relief was audible in her sigh. She leaned back in her chair, rocking it a bit. “Yeah, of course you do… Heck, you grow the damn things. Of course you know how to use them.”

Fluttershy, still fighting with the blush, cleared her throat. “Anyway… There really is something we need to tell you.” Under the table, she squeezed Thunderlane’s hoof. He pulled his eyes from the ceiling.

“Yeah?” said Dash. With her neck hanging over her shoulders, she was oblivious to the change that took place in the other two. “You finally up for that foursome?”

Fluttershy took a deep breath. “We’re engaged.”

Dash crashed on the floor.

All the Years We Shared

The ceiling of the cafeteria had little hearts hanging from it, Dash noticed. Fancy that.

“Dash!” exclaimed Fluttershy, peering hurriedly over the table at the fallen pegasus. “Are you okay?”

Dash raised a front hoof as a sign that she could at least manage that much. In her vision, little papery hearts glimmered. Yes, they had these sparkly things sprinkled all over them, which made the candlelight really shine upon their fragile surface. Their glitter reached deep down into Dash’s soul, wherein a little filly dwelled, squeezing a ragged wonderbolt doll to her chest.

“Did you slip?” asked Thunderlane as Dash made her way up again.

Inside her, the little filly remembered that she was an adult. “No, that was all planned,” she said, painfully aware of the looks she was yet again drawing like a magnet. Shrugging them off was starting to become the game of the evening. “Must be all this glitter; it’s starting to affect my hearing, too. For a moment I thought you said you were–”

She saw their faces. A silence ensued.

“Oh.”

Fluttershy, rubbing the tablecloth between her front hooves, coughed. “You’re not… happy for us?”

Dash looked at her. Happy? For you? For getting engaged with… him? “Uhh… Sure I am! It was just, eh, ah, ih, well, whaddayacallit… unexpected?” All the years we shared. Every moment we held our breaths together, never once saying it, never, ever. And then you blurt it over dinner in the bucking Heartmend Cafe.

“We thought that you should be the first one to know,” continued Thunderlane. “After all, you’re the one who really brought us together.” Under the table, he squeezed Fluttershy's hoof ever tighter.

Dash turned her eyes to him. For a moment, she saw herself leaping over the table, toppling him on the floor while yelling at his face. Several of the night’s cider’s were rooting for the move, which made her think better of it. “That’s… good thinking,” she managed. This was… my fault? For one mad second, she pressed her hooves against the edges of the table.

The waiter arrived with the promised drinks, although he wasn't the same one who had taken the order. After dealing out the frosty goods, he proposed to take the orders for the actual food. Fluttershy and Thunderlane hurriedly picked some salads while Dash mumbled something about a pasta. For the most part, her mind balanced between the urge to fly out of the room in sonic rainbow speed and the prospect of poking herself with a fork, just to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. Ultimately, she ended up biting her tongue.

After the waiter went away with their arbitrary orders, Fluttershy looked again at Dash. “I know this may sound a bit rushed… but it also feels very right.” She glanced at Thunderlane, whose happy smile made Dash want to poke him with the fork. “We share so much in common.”

“You, most of all,” said Thunderlane. All signs hinted that he genuinely thought it would be a clever thing to say, which only fueled more Dash’s growing nausea. By now it was already close to her wingtips.

“I need some air,” said Dash abruptly. Her voice was remarkably steady. “Been sitting here too long. Need air.” She stood up. “Uhh, Shy, mind coming along? There’s this… thing I remembered. You should hear it. Now.” She knew she was losing it, losing it bad, but the thing was that at the moment, any pretense was better than the honest alternative. At least if she wanted to avoid a Scene.

Fluttershy, who had known Dash before she had learned to fly, blinked. “Of course. It wouldn’t be right, leaving you alone after the wait we made you go through.” She looked at Thunderlane. “If that’s okay?”

The stallion shrugged. “Sure, I can keep the fortress standing for a while.” He gave Fluttershy the most innocent peck conceivable.

Dash managed to look the other way just in the nick of time. Had she not, Thunderlane might have next wondered why he had a fork sticking from his hoof. You betrayed me. You stuck the first fork. You betrayed me.

The two mares exited the room, entering the young night outside. The warmest days of the summer were already well behind them, so the customers who still wished to savour its memory had dressed up warmly in the terrace outside. Dash didn’t stop there though, but rose to her wings right as she got outside and headed farther away. Fluttershy followed her on the ground, avoiding the close set tables while keeping her eyes on Dash. When she caught her at the small fence that marked the end of the Cafe, her worry was written all over her face.

“Dashie… What’s wrong?”

Dash, still floating in the air, grimaced. “You had to ask, didn’t you?”

Puzzled, Fluttershy stopped. “Is it the place? I know it’s a bit silly, but Thunderlane–”

Dash landed with a thud. “The place is an insult. He is the injury.”

Fluttershy stared. “You don’t mean that. What do you mean by that?”

“What do you think?” responded Dash with a poisonous tone. “You thought I’d be happy to see you get… to see you…” She blinked quickly a few times, averting her gaze.

Fluttershy took a step closer. “Dash, you’re not making sense.”

The magenta eyes snapped at her. There were tears blooming in their corners. “How could I be happy to lose you!” she cried.

Fluttershy froze. There was a tinge of desperation spiced with panic in her friend’s voice that she could not have imagined in her wildest dreams to hear, not from her. Not from Dashie.

“I friggin’ love you!” continued Dash, her wings opening, her face distorted by naked sorrow. “And you love me! I mean, what the hay?” She stepped forwards so quickly that Fluttershy flinched. The hooves that grabbed her shoulders squeezed her like meat hooks. “What the hay, Shy?!” Her eyes were aflame.

Fluttershy’s mouth twitched open. A series of strangled words followed, not making much sense.

Dashed pushed her. Not hard; just a sharp shove. Hardly anything to write home about. It drove Fluttershy over the edge of her world.

Around them, most tables were quiet, their occupants giving their best to show the discretion that they didn't have. Dash wiped her eyes, her heart racing in her chest, her wings stirring the cool air aimlessly. “Have a nice dinner with your… husband.” She couldn’t have put more venom in the word “backstabber”.

“Rainbow, no!” yelped Fluttershy. Too late, way too late. Dash was already speeding away. The tears falling behind her were barely visible in the dim light of the setting sun. Fluttershy was about to fly after her, but the shock, along with the knowledge that she might as well chase a lightning bolt, leashed her. For a moment, she could only stand there, staring behind the horizon.

“She’ll get over it, dear,” said an elderly voice behind her. Fluttershy turned, seeing an old mare sitting in a nearby table with an equally aged stallion. She recognized neither of them. “Young are always so hot-headed,” continued the mare, smiling empathetically. The stallion seemed to tacitly concur.

Fluttershy gave them a look and returned inside. In their table, Thunderlane was carefully studying a rackful of napkins.

“These must be the cutest napkins I’ve seen in my life,” he said as Fluttershy seated herself. “I mean, I knew the place was famous about being cute, but this is ridiculous.” Only after that did he notice that somepony was missing. “Dash really needed the air, huh?”

Fluttershy, leaning over the table against her hooves, started sobbing.

Thunderlane panicked. “Oh, hey, aaah, what is it? Hey, come now, calm down!” He smoothed the mare’s back uncertainly with a hoof, aware that their table was drawing looks again. The waiters were talking quietly by the kitchen door, looking at them, too.

“She left me,” sobbed Fluttershy into her hooves. “She just… left…” The tablecloth, spotted with hearts, crinkled under her trembling hooves.

“What was that?” asked Thunderlane, his attention disturbed by the soothing, which was by now turning into more like patting, and the waiter that trotted towards them. He could feel the situation fleeing out of his control fast. This is not what I had planned.

Suddenly, Fluttershy’s head rose. Tears ran down her cheeks. “Rainbow Dash left me.”

Thunderlane’s head turned. “Left? Like, she’s not outside anymore?”

“Yes!” bursted Fluttershy, sinking to her front legs again. “And she wouldn’t come back…”

The waiter arrived just as Thunderlane became certain that the situation couldn’t get any worse. “I’m terribly sorry to bring this up, but could we perhaps relocate you to our private cabinet?” said the stallion with a calm voice. “It seems that you are disturbing the other customers.”

“I think we were about to leave anyway,” said Thunderlane hesitantly, for he had been taught that retreat was always a valid strategical option. “Come, Fluttershy, let’s… get some more air, yes?” He helped her up, and together they moved towards the exit.

“But your orders are almost done!” said the waiter, trotting after them. Thunderlane could sense distress in his voice that was not caused by the prospect that they would miss the gourmet experience of their lives. It was more of the sort “you haven’t paid yet”. Thunderlane, practically feeling every pair of eyes in the room looking at them, produced a hoofful of bits and shoved them to the waiter along with his apologies, thanks and reprimands, all packed in a few hasty words. His only solace was that Fluttershy had already half-galloped out of the room, crying of course. It wasn’t much of a solace, but at times you just needed that silver lining, however small.

Some minutes later he found her in an alley, not far from the Cafe. She was still sobbing, but not that fervently anymore. Thunderlane approached her carefully, leafing through scores of opening lines that he usually used in these situations that shouldn’t have procedures written beforehoof in the first place. In the end, he said nothing, but only wrapped a gentle hoof around the mare’s neck as she poured her shock against the brick wall.

“I’m sorry…” she finally said, swallowing hard. Her wingtips got wet as she used them to dry her face. “I don’t know what got into me…”

He caressed her with his neck slightly tilted, recalling the conversation they had had earlier during the day. That one had ended in tears too. “It has been an emotional day,” he said quietly. “Nothing to be ashamed about.”

“But… all those ponies inside…”

“Who cares? Let them keep their stares. And their sparkling heart-things.” And my bits. All of them.

She leaned against him, resting her neck on his. Thunderlane let the silence do the soothing for a while.

“What happened?” he finally asked.

Fluttershy pressed just a bit closer to him. He remained quiet as she recounted the small scene, every line of it. However, it was the unspoken parts that he felt were the key to this particular event.

“We should’ve met in her house,” said Fluttershy with an almost normal voice. She sighed. “It would’ve been more comfortable for her.”

And maybe she wouldn’t have had so many ciders then. Gosh, why didn’t I see this coming? “She’ll work it out eventually, I’m sure,” said Thunderlane. It was only later the night that he realized that perhaps he could have rephrased that one better.

Fluttershy, after keeping quiet for a moment, pulled away from him. “I feel tired. And cold.”

“How about we hit your place, see if the bed’s any warm?” Another line that he’d later regret. Sometimes, you just fell for all of them.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said quietly. She was looking at the ground as she said that. “You should go home, too. It has been a long day.”

His comforting smile thinned down. “Oh. Okay.” A pause ensued, and he wasn't sure if that one needed filling or not. “Uhh, see you tomorrow then, right?”

“Okay,” said Fluttershy. She gave him a light kiss to the cheek. “Good night.”

“Good night,” echoed Thunderlane as she gradually disappeared along the alley. The memory of her lips faded quickly in the chilly evening.

He went into the opposite direction, but not towards his house. Instead, he headed for the other establishment that was often crowded at this hour, in this season. The Blueberry Inn, famous for it’s various berry-based drinks, stood in the opposite end of the street in relation to the Heartmend Cafe, and the contrasts didn’t end there. For starters, they didn’t have many heart-shaped things in the Inn, and scarcely anything pink either, unless you counted the stuff that some of the drinks made you see. Second, they didn’t serve food. Nopony went there when they were hungry.

Thunderlane pushed the door open, noticing how many hopeful looks turned to his direction, only to sink back to the folds of solitude and whatever they had on their finely crafted glasses. He had been expecting the reaction. He took an empty seat on the counter and said: “One Strawberry Dream, please.” He thought for a moment and added: “Make it double.”

The bartender, a middle-aged earth pony mare with the words “tell me about it” etched into her essence, began mixing the drink without hardly even looking what she was doing. Her name was Cheery. “Haven’t seen you in awhile,” she said while shaking the metallic mixer.

“Always a good sign, right?” he quipped, but without much enthusiasm. Even the best jokes lost their edge at the Blueberry Inn. Unless they came from Cheery.

“You want this with an ear?” she asked while pouring the deep-red colored liquid into a thin glass.

Thunderlane couldn’t help but to smile at that. “The strawberry will do fine.” He watched as one was carefully split against the edge of the glass. As the cocktail appeared in front of him, he couldn’t help but to recall the last time he had wondered at its silent elegance. The night then had not been very different from this one; late summer, or early autumn, with just the pinch of winter wafting in the air. It had been raining, and the moon had been full. The causa prima had been the same, too.

Rainbow. Rainbow, Rainbow, Rainbow. Always Rainbow. And now Fluttershy, too, but that was only because of Rainbow. In the end, it always came down to Rainbow. Why can’t I get over her? Why? She can get over anything, literally. He put a hoof on the wooden counter, resting his head against it. Contrary to what one might have expected, there wasn’t a large mirror behind the counter; there were none such in the whole building, not even in the toilets. Ponies generally didn’t want to look at themselves while they were in the Inn. Maybe we should. Might be a lesson there.

“You sure about that ear, Thunderlane?” asked Cheery. She could practically taste when a pony needed more than just the bottom of a glass.

“Maybe I’m not…” he said, studying his drink. The color of it reminded her of a certain mare, which wasn’t completely accidental. Is that creepy? Or just plain sad?

“Tell me all about, then,” said Cheery, taking a step closer to Thunderlane, who at the moment was the only customer on the counter.

He glanced at her. Cheery was, by all standards, a good-looking mare for her age, the exact number of which was one of the great riddles of the Inn. The few wrinkles, the light-orange mane with a hint of grey, and the compassionate blue eyes created a mix of a grandmother and distant cousin, a combination for which you could tell anything without the fear of awkward silences ensuing. Cheery was the reason the Inn existed, and the reverse wasn’t that far from the truth, either.

Thunderlane sighed. “There is this mare…”

To that, somepony might have immediately said something like: “There always is,” or even the very tasteless “I knew it”. But Cheery said nothing. That was the art of her trade: to know when to keep quiet, which was more often than not.

“...then there’s this other mare…”

To this, even an experienced listener might have added a surprised “Oh?” or at least arched an eyebrow. But Cheery was a true professional.

“...and somewhere in between, there is me,” finished Thunderlane. His eyes were lost in his drink.

At this point, Cheery saw it fit to steer the listening a bit. “Is it either/or kind of thing?”

Thunderlane gave this a thought. “More like ‘one and the other’, but with a twitch. More like ‘I just engaged with the other so I could be closer to the One’. Of course it backfired. The problem is, it backfired in the way that I hadn’t planned.”

Hearing that, even Cheery had to stifle the instinct to bring herself into the picture in the disguise of a surprised reaction. That would have been a rookie mistake, no matter how unorthodox the story was. Still, a hunch told her that something needed to be said.

“How was it supposed to go, then?”

Thunderlane didn’t answer immediately. “The best part is that I don’t even know. Maybe I had this vague idea that we’d all be closer then, or that at least I could be closer to them, that is, to Her, or maybe… maybe I was trying to make Her jealous. Maybe.” Thunderlane looked at Cheery again. “Am I scum for doing that?”

In the Blueberry Inn, questions of that ilk were gunpowder. They were also Cheery’s nightly bread. The important thing was to avoid using the pronoun “I”.

“You’re nothing you don’t want to be,” she said. That was a stock-answer: they were always a safe bet. Not universally true, but safe.

“Then maybe I want to be scum,” he said. “How could anypony mess up this badly on accident?”

Cheery could spot the signs of the game called “deny me if you dare” miles away. For those occasions, she had come up with a game of her own. It was called silence.

“I mean, I really botched this time,” continued Thunderlane, removing his front leg from the counter to better wave with it. “Now Dash is mad for Celestia knows why, and Fluttershy left home in tears. And I’m sitting in the Blueberry Inn!” He slumped in his bar chair. A few customers raised their drinks to his outburst.

It went pretty quickly to names, thought Cheery as she judged the stallion with a professional eye. And he hasn’t even touched the glass. This might demand the Big Blue One. But before she could determine that, she needed to prod deeper. That didn’t mean asking for a solution: that was not what for the Inn existed. Its function was to mentally prepare you for the part where fixing things could be considered.

“That’s what we’re for,” she said with a tone that avoided condescension at all costs. “For knowing that you’re here. We’re a lighthouse.”

Now, what she expected was a casual chuckle, a counter-quip or perhaps even a hopeful pause. What she got was: “I’ve tried everything. Denying, acceptance, self-deception… and now I drew Fluttershy right in the middle of my heartbreak that I’m just too thick to forget. I’ve ruined what ruins there were left of my hopes to get together with Rainbow and hurt Fluttershy in the process.”

This time, there weren’t any raised drinks.

Cheery decided that she had just heard a coded call for the BBO. Some would have considered her idea of coding, which was basically based on instinct refined by thirty years of experiment, rather arbitrary. She would have none it; she knew when a pony was down enough to need something more than a hoof or a kind word to pull them back. That’s when the BBO ought to kick in.

“Haven’t touched your drink yet,” she said, for facts were in general very safe things to build conversation around in the Inn.

Thunderlane payed the liquid an indifferent look. It seemed to be winking at him.

“Yearning for something stronger?” she went on casually. The nearest customers pricked their ears. They could sense the code being spoken.

Thunderlane, who was of the younger generation in what came to the Inn’s customer base, only shrugged lazily. “Don’t have bits with me. Payed all of it for food I didn’t eat.”

“Only fair that the next one’s on the house, then,” said Cheery. She produced a key from her mane and picked it up with her mouth, after which she turned and moved some of the bottles aside on the shelf behind the counter. There was a small door embedded in the wall. The lock was of the calibre that made crowbars look silly. She put the key in and turned it. There was a click. It was heard in the farthest corner of the bar, for all the other noises (which had largely consisted of various sighs) had ceased.

Even Thunderlane could feel the subtle changes in the atmosphere. He also noticed that he was suddenly the center of all the attention. “Uhh… what’s this?”

“This…” began Cheery as she carefully pulled a bottle out of the small locker. It seemed to emanate an eerie indigo glow, although depending on the way how light touched it, the shade might change from deep purple into the brightest cyan of the sky in a mere blink of an eye. “...is your drink.”

“The whole bottle?” asked Thunderlane warily.

The thought visibly made Cheery’s neck hair rise. “I’d hate to think what might happen,” she said. “No. A drop will do, but it needs to be thinned down. Your first drink should serve.” She set the bottle on the counter and bent down. When she got up, she was holding a pipet between her teeth.

Thunderlane swallowed. “You sure this is safe?”

“Most certainly maybe,” she said. “Take the top off, will you?”

He could feel the eyes burning his neck. How do I get myself into these situations? He eyed with caution the glass cork which, he could swear, had melted a bit from the sides. But how bad can it really be? It’s just some strong liquor or something. And the color could be some simple spell, or just my imagination combined with blueberry juice. She is just trying to take my mind off my worries with the show. With some hesitation, he removed the top. A faint pillar of white smoke escaped from within.

Meticulously, Cheery sucked some of the liquid into the pipet, after which she immediately closed the bottle. Next, she moved over Thunderlane’s drink, and holding her breath, let one drop fall into the glass. The carmine fought fiercely for a moment, but ultimately lost to the foreign substance. Even the strawberry, which was hardly touching the liquid, turned navy blue. It all glowed, too.

Smoke and mirrors, told Thunderlane to himself, eyeing the drink with mixed feelings. Cheery had put the pipet down; she was waiting, just like everypony else in the room was. This is silly, he decided, seized by sudden irritation. He picked up the glass, closed his eyes… and gulped it down in one go.

The room waited.

It waited for some more.

Wait…

No. Keep on waiting. It was only a burp.

“You happy, all?” asked Thunderlane finally from the room in general, turning in his chair. “Gosh, you really thought I was gonna explode or something, didn’t you?” He chuckled to himself. Then he payed more attention to their faces. “What?”

“Very interesting… Haven’t seen a reaction like that before,” said Cheery behind him.

“What?” repeated Thunderlane with some anxiety, turning to her. “I don’t feel any different.”

“You sure?”

“Yes!”

Cheery frowned deeply. “Very interesting indeed…”

Somewhere in the back, a pony chuckled. This was most unheard of in the Inn.

Thunderlane felt his blood rising. He whirled around, landing on the floor. “Somepony better tell me wh–” He saw his legs. They, and every other part of himself that he could see, was blue. Very, very blue. “Oh, buck…”

The room burst out laughing.

It Was All about Small Steps

Author's Note

Hey, you! Interested in proofing the future chapters? Even the existing ones? Let me know!

It Was All about Small Steps

In a dim living room, in a small basket, a little blanket stirred. In a moment, a pair of long, snow-white ears pricked up. An equally bleached-looking head appeared, a wide yawn cracking open its mouth like some great gash in frosty wilderness. Angel looked around in the twilight of the living room, or what of it he could see from his little fortress between the sofas. It was quiet. Like most animals occupying the lower ladders of the food chain, bunnies have a whole range of shades for silence inscribed into their backbone. On that scale, a little label called “suspicious” was blinking.

He bounced up, ears turning as he made his way by the walls to the kitchen. Still quiet. This was unusual: the yellow one should be up by now. It was autumn, and nests needed to be made, burrows to be dug, and South to be shown. Winter was coming. Nonetheless, the white, ceramic cup that had his name written on it remained as empty as his stomach. With a little humph and wrinkle of his tiny nose, Angel headed to the bedroom. The door was closed, like it had been most of the summer, for reasons Angel was thoroughly aware of, and thoroughly okay with. But some things needed to be done regardless of how many ponies were sleeping in a bed, and filling the cup that read “Angel” on it was definitely at the top of the list. Concentrating all the strength that nature had in her wisdom packed in his hind legs, Angel pushed the door.

It didn’t budge. He tried again, harder, yet to no avail. This was unheard of. In his backbone, a new light was lit: this one was called “dubious”, which was an inch higher up the ladder. He hopped outside, around the house and to the bedroom’s window. The curtains were drawn, and the sun was already over the horizon. Very curious. With some effort, he managed to jump to the windowsill. Frost had already bitten the edges of the glass, he noticed. A bunny’s paw was never made for knocking, so he used one of his little trimmed claws to tap the panel. It sounded eerily hollow.

Nothing happened for a while, so he knocked again, harder this time. The same result, or namely the lack of it, followed. The ultimate measure of scratching the glass crossed his mind, but it crashed against the memory of the time when he had tasted the couch and found out he liked it. A long talk with the yellow one had stemmed from that. However, something needed to be done, and soon: his stomach was growling. He leaned against the window, considering his options with the limited brain capacity of a pet bunny. Sure, the garden still had a few lousy carrots and other vegetables that had missed the harvest, but those weren’t even washed. Bunnies were, as a race, very fond of their routines. Living only on (washed and served) greens had that kind of an effect. This was no time to give them up.

He jumped off the sill and hopped towards the forest.

***

In her bedroom, Fluttershy lay buried in blankets. Something had knocked the door and then the window some time ago, but those things didn’t concern her. Not much did, at the moment. It shouldn’t be like this. The animals need me, the world needs me. I should’ve been up hours ago. She only dug deeper into the blankets. Despite the chilly weather, it was getting kind of hot there, so she had to keep one of the corners open to keep the air moving. From the makeshift mouth of her private cave, a touch of pink mane peeked out. Even that looked wistful.

They need me, they all need me… all except Rainbow. Rainbow doesn’t need me. She left. The blanket curled slightly tighter around the pegasus. You could almost make out the shape of her rump through it. Why did she leave me? What got her so mad? I wasn’t going to leave her. What did I do? What didn’t I do? I don’t understand… She sniffed, for the umpteenth time. Sometimes, I don’t get her at all. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t need me anymore…

Is it because of him? Did she get jealous? How could it be – she’s the one who introduced us! Without her, there wouldn’t be us. But there is… and he gets me. At least when it matters he does. The memory of the alley last night turned up, not helping at all. He didn't’ see her leave, he didn’t know. He would've been more serious had he seen that. He would’ve. But he shouldn’t have suggested sex, not then. He shouldn’t have.

She pulled the blanket away: it was getting uncomfortably humid. The chill in the room sent her shivering. I didn’t remember how cold it could be here alone. I haven’t slept alone much lately. Maybe I should – the winter is coming, I need to learn to be chilly. I need to, but I don’t want to. She lay on her side, looking at her door that she had barred with a chair. Angel must be very upset. I should get up. She got up. Before she removed the chair, a heavy noise carried from the hall. She frowned and walked there.

There was a bear in her kitchen, apparently scouring the cupboards. For somepony else, this might have set the alarms ringing. In Fluttershy, it only stirred slight bafflement. “Is something wrong?” she asked by the kitchen entrance.

The bear, looking somewhat disoriented, looked at the opposite table. In there, Angel was munching some carrots from his cup. He noticed Fluttershy’s expecting stare and swallowed. An assortment of fervent signing followed.

Fluttershy listened, or watched, without interruption. “Well, you still shouldn’t have bothered Miss bear with that. Or promised her honey without my permission.” She glanced quickly at the worried-looking bear. “Oh, of course you can have some. It’s about time you should start feasting for the winter anyway.”

The bear smiled and pulled a pot of honey out of the cupboard. For convenience's sake, she rumbled outside to eat it.

Fluttershy walked slowly to Angel, at which point the bunny prepared to make a run for it. “I’m not mad,” she said, sitting on her stomach next to him. “I should keep your food where you can reach it, anyway. As long as you learn some temperance.” And maybe you should not be the only one.

Angel smiled carefully, for that had worked for the bear.

Fluttershy watched him eat for a while, after which she went on a stroll to see how many of the last year’s burrows could still be used.

***

It was hard to tell whether his head was stuffed with bits of glass or if the world as such was in pain, pulsing like an open wound. Either way, it hurt like… like… it hurt so much that Thunderlane found it not only insurmountable but also pointless to find a suitable analogy. A hangover this bad couldn’t be shown nor told about – it could only be felt. Once in a lifetime, please. Resting under his bed, in the only place of his room that provided enough gloom, he wavered somewhere between a limbo and a coma, listening to his raspy breathing and negotiating with his muscles for the control of his body. He had no idea how he had made it this far, or even if this was the underside of his bed, but such novelties were not in the immediate interest of his survival plan. It was all about small steps now.

He wasn’t supposed to let the drinking get as far as it did, not really. After the Big Blue One, events had simply taken a course of their own, as it were. Turning blue may have played a part in it: he had felt like a new pony, free of worries and of tomorrow. Of course the tomorrow wouldn't be free of him, but that was, well, tomorrow's problem. In the end, it hadn’t been just the liquor that had gotten to him, but the flow and the mood. A night in Blueberry Inn contained enough negative energy to turn anything inside out, even itself. His little change of coat had made all the lone, melancholic souls there to realize that shared misery meant much less misery in general. It had made way too much sense.

Well, at least I’m hanging by such a thin thread that my love life can’t bother me now: we’d both fall down. He hoped that would make sense too, somehow, anyhow. He really did. Maybe Zecora could brew me an anti-love potion? Yeah, yeah, there’s something there, I just know it. I only need to–

There was the faintest of knocks on the door. In Thunderlane’s mind, boulders crashed on brick walls. He moaned painfully, shielding his ears with hooves. The effort was a stretch, but right now, his whole existence was.

There was a creak, followed by hoofsteps. “Thunderlane?” said a mare’s voice.

“Ihrm,” said Thunderlane. His tongue was operational in theory, but there were deserts that would have looked like oceans compared to this throat. He continued communicating by coughing painfully.

The mare looked under the bed and sighed at the sight. “Had your fun yesterday?”

“Lesh no talk nau,” he managed. Medals have been earned from less.

From his mother, he only earned a disapproving frown. “Do I have to ask why?”

Thunderlane shook his head, which is to say that his chin wiggled more or less in symmetry with his neck. “Plis. Not nnnnau.”

She sighed again, and her head vanished above. He saw her move back to the door, and for a moment it looked like he was allowed to shrivel back into intoxicated oblivion. But then she dropped the haymaker.

“I just came to say that Helia is on the door. She asked that you’d fly with her to the day’s practice, but I suppose I’ll say you’re sick.”

In the dusty gloom of the bed’s underside, Thunderlane’s eyes flashed open. The day’s practice. Holy bucking cow’smotheringshiiiiaaaargh–

In a showcase of super-equine willpower, he rolled on the carpet, grinding his teeth together, although even they felt like jelly. “Stahp!” he wailed, waving with his legs in a desperate attempt to draw attention as he reeled on the floor. “Mom, stahp!”

The mother stopped, for that is what mothers do when their foals call for them, even when reason would have them close the door and pretend the last five seconds didn’t ever exist. “Yes?” she asked with a glassy voice.

Thunderlane, lying on his back, drew breath. The effort had taxed his strength on the verge of mortal limits. “Thell har… I’ll cum in ten.”

“You what?”

He closed his eyes. If he was going to do this, he needed to start thinking like a pony and not like a random assortment of pulsing nerves. That included precision of enunciation.

“Th… Tell her… I’ll come.”

She turned completely around. “In that condition? You’ll die!”

If I don’t go, I wish I did. “Nonshens.”

She shook her head sadly. “Don’t be silly, Thunderlane. Try to get to bed now, and I’ll bring you some breakfast. It’s already noon, for heaven’s sake.” She turned around.

Thunderlane twitched. The situation demanded radical action. “Mom.”

Again, she stopped. When she glanced behind her, there was sharpness in her expression that so far had remained foreign to her innately soft features. “I said no.”

Thunderlane, staring at her mother upside down, focused all the seriousness he had left – and at this point it meant scraping the bottom of his soul with a steel knife – into his face. This was a mother-colt thing, and he was not ready to be left with the short end of the bond. Not now.

Seconds boiled in the air, popping in their scores. Neither would blink, although Thunderlane worried that a layer might peel off his eyeballs. And still he stared.

Finally, motherhood stood down. Some battles were not worth a victory.

“If you can make it down without rolling the stairs, I’ll pack the lunch with you,” she said calmly. “You can pick it up from the kitchen.” With that, she trotted out. Thunderlane could hear a short conversation ensuing in the hall first floor.

Okay, that was the easy part. Getting up… How hard can it be? Really?

***

In the hall, Helia waited. This was something of a second nature to her, although at times she preferred to emphasize the “second” over the “nature”. She studied the few framed photographs decorating the walls with a familiar quasi-interest of one who has seen them a dozen times before. Still she wondered why they all were about Thunderlane and his mother. And those few slightly lighter rectangular shapes on the walls were suspicious, too. A smell of unasked questions seemed to always linger heavily in this house.

Racket from the stairs drew her attention. Thunderlane was trotting down, smoothly as a sack of potatoes. Helia gasped at the sight of him.

“Oh my gosh! What happened to you? Why are you blue?”

Thunderlane showed his teeth. It took Helia a moment to recognize his smile.

“A party got out of hoof. No worries,” he said with a voice that might have belonged to a meatgrinder. At least the words sounded like they had to squeeze through one. Wobbling, he headed to the kitchen.

Helia followed him, just in case he dropped something. His mane, for example ‒ the always so handsome mohawk was now spread all over his neck.

“A party for what?” continued Helia worriedly. “The Hurricane Day? There’s months to it!”

A tortured chuckle fled him as he dragged his legs into the kitchen. In there, he noticed a big glass of water next to the packed lunch. Decimating it was an obligation.

Helia watched him gulp down a gallon of water in one go and then said: “I know it’s the last day of the season, but seriously, can you even fly?”

The glass hit the table. A sigh climbed up Thunderlane’s throat, eager to escape the devastation that was his body. That helped, he thought. With a covered grimace, he spread open his wings. “I can. Thing is, I don’t need to. All I need is to be there.” His wings folded back, for keeping them open was like pouring lemon juice over an open wound.

Helia didn’t believe his act for a second. Frankly, even a turnip would have needed more persuasion. But it was the last day of the season, and everypony knew what that meant. Ponies with broken limbs came to the practice at the end of the season. Everypony in the weather team not diagnosed with a terminal disease did, or such were the rumours.

“Okay, hero,” she said, smiling now. “Just say if you need a flank, though.” I got two for you any day of the week. Or night.

“Thanks,” he said. He picked the paper bag with his teeth and shuffled by Helia who followed suite, secretly biting her lip.

Should I go for it now? she thought. He can barely walk, and I’m not sure if his brain is in any better shape either. Is that a positive or a negative factor? Goooshh… I’m getting cold hooves again. Buck.

They got outside, and Thunderlane was grateful it was cloudy. At least he wouldn’t be completely blind. It still wouldn’t be a pretty journey, he had no illusions about that, but that didn’t matter. The last day of the season was important. It was the day when the weather team would go over the last season’s achievements, memorable moments and, most important of all, the awards. They were unofficial of course, but for the weather team they went beyond official. They were a ritual, the culmination point of all the competitive bonding that was the pulse of the team as Dash was its heart, which she was, undoubtedly, indisputably. The whole thing had been one of her first ideas when she had become the captain.

So, even with his own muscles joining in a union against him, Thunderlane went on. I could skip a normal drill and blame it on the liquor, but if I missed the awards… Dash could draw all kinds of conclusions about that. Some of them would stick, and they would stick deep. It wasn’t that Dash was keen on carrying a grudge, oh no. She’d make a skateboard out of one instead – those carried you. Maybe I can have a word with her in private. I bet she needs somepony to shout at.

Most of the team was already milling about the training yard when Helia and Thunderlane arrived there. The location of the event varied, but they always grouped here before gathering some clouds to rest on or something. Right now there was enough sun to spare, but it wouldn’t be for long when that would be a luxury. Winter was coming, right on schedule.

“Don’t overdo it,” said Helia as they melted in the small crowd. She joined quickly in a conversation, although kept glancing at Thunderlane over the heads that littered the yard.

Thunderlane looked around, but couldn’t see a glimpse of that unmistakable mane or tail. Amused expressions and semi-clever quips rained down upon him from every direction, but he didn’t have enough energy to spare for those. Weird. Usually she is the first one on the spot. He kept on looking, or squinting, this time scanning the faces around him. Under the easy smiles, he could sense a disruption. They were all waiting, which was unusual. Dash wasn’t the type to keep ponies waiting, especially not for something like the awards. And still they waited.

They waited until it was no longer a secret that they did. Smiles passed away, frowns deepened and questions gained a voice. “Where’s Dash? What's the time? What’s happening?” Anxiety spread like the flu, and soon they were all sneezing. But what really worried Thunderlane was the question “who?”. Namely, “who’s in charge”. He knew the answer, and so would they, right when the question would spring to their mind. He was the deputy captain. He would be in charge, right after someone would remember that. The problem was, he really didn’t feel like a leader at the moment. Thus began his inconspicuous shuffling out of the yard. He almost made it. It was that close.

“Hey Thunder, what gives?” said somepony. It didn’t matter who it had been, for all the eyes had instantaneously nailed at him. It didn’t take long for them to arrange into a circle, with him in the middle, cozy as a chicken in a kennel.

“You know where Dash is?”

“Did she say anything?”

“Did I win the cloud round-up? Did I?”

“What happened to your mane?”

"Why are you blue?"

Up until now, the post of the deputy captain had been rather nominal, just another medal to chase and little else. Dash did all the real work. Really, she innovated, planned and executed practically everything that happened in the team. Every now and then she’d discuss some topic with Thunderlane or some other, and that was how everypony liked it. Dash was awesome in what she did, whatever that was. She was so awesome that Thunderlane could truly appreciate her work only when he was supposed to step in and do it.

“Come on, guys!” he said, hoping that his beat-up shape and voice could incite some sympathy. “You know I know nothing you don’t! Maybe she’s sick.”

This, contrary to what Thunderlane had hoped, stirred general horror rather than calm, and he knew why only half a second after he had said it. It would take the plague to keep Dash in bed during the end of a season.

“I’ll go see her right away!” he shouted before anypony else could get the same idea. He was about to shamble away at his top speed when another voice stopped him.

“Give it a rest, Lane. I’ll go – maybe we’ll get to her before the end of the day that way.”

This got out a general laughter. Crowds, even small ones, tended to be mood-swingy.

“I’ll come with you!” called another voice. “Me too!” echoed a third one.

This wasn’t going well. Thunderlane, deep inside himself, was harboring an omen concerning the reason why Dash hadn’t showed up. That reason didn’t need to see the light of the day.

“Hey, I’m the deputy captain!” he said, turning to face the pony who had talked first. Luckily, it was Cloudchaser. I think she likes me. I think. “I’m supposed to do these kind of things, right?”

“Are you?” asked Cloudchaser, tilting her head. “Where does it say?”

Okay, maybe she used to like me. “In the rulebook. Check yourself.”

“We have a rulebook?” asked some newcomer quietly from his neighbour.

Ah, the rulebook. A great mystery of the weather team. Well, the only mystery, if you got down to it. Nopony had ever read it completely, and for most it took years to get to know that such a thing existed. Mostly it kept the table in the coffee room from wobbling. Dash always said that “the number one rule anypony in this team needs to know is ‘do it better’’, and that had been widely accepted as the sufficient, albeit vague, rule of hoof that applied to most cases. But every now and then somepony cited the rulebook, and at those times what settled the issue had nothing to do with letters. The phrase “check yourself” was the closest thing to en garde that the weather team knew about. Thunderlane’s hopes rested on the assumption that his voice carried more authority now that he could only croak.

Cloudchaser, eyeing Thunderlane suspiciously, humphed. “Yeah, methinks it also says that we don’t got all day waiting here.” Her eyes narrowed down dangerously. “Show me that you can get three feet off the ground and I’ll consent.”

A wave travelled over the audience which had instantly turned into an audience. The weather team only loved the medals because of the challenge they symbolized.

Thunderlane was starting to sweat, and this time it wasn’t cold. Buck, buck, buck, buck… Why I have to be so stupid? Do I do this on purpose? I’ll never hear the end of it if I fail now. Never. With the tiniest motion, he tried his wings. Tingling dullness passed over him, only to be followed by magnificent aching. Oh buuuuuck… Everypony was staring. Backing down would be even worse than failing. The coin was already in the air, shining like the sun itself, and he had called heads. All that was left to do was to pray. He inhaled, hoping that they wouldn’t leave him outside when he’d pass out.

“Wait!”

He breathed out, knees wobbling slightly. It had been Helia’s voice.

“We can carry him,” she continued, stepping into the circle. She spoke to them all, but directed her words at Sunchaser, whom fate had chosen to be the brains and mouth of some collective entity called the weather team that had incorporated Helia and Thunderlane as its internal opposition. It didn’t make sense to ask if any of this made any sense. That is how it worked.

“Oh yeah?” said Cloudchaser, who aimed to be the deputy captain next season. “Why bother?”

“Well, he is, the deputy captain,” said Helia, making sure not to look at Thunderlane while she spoke. “That must count for something, right? And he called dibs on talking to Dash.”

The crowd nodded its heads approvingly. If calling dibs didn’t mean anything, what did?

Cloudchaser hesitated, but tried another angle. “Well I call dibs that we race there!”

“No!” shouted Helia before somepony could catch onto that cue. “Guys, we shouldn't be barging there like a mob! It’s Dash we’re talking about: she deserves something better.” She wiped the ponies with her eyes, appealing to their shared love for Rainbow Dash. “I say we all go there and let Thunderlane see what’s up first. It’ll be proper that way.”

This seemed to gain the majority approval, mostly because it was a clean-cut plan of action that included everypony and that could be put in motion right away. Cloudchaser bit her lip a moment longer and then rolled her eyes.

“Fine. But it ain’t me carrying him.” With that, she rose to her wings, which served as a signal for the rest of team to do the same.

Helia sighed. Behind him, a voice beyond the grave said: “Thank you.” She turned around.

“Oh, don’t mention it. Now, let’s get you up.” She signed Flitter to come help her, and together they got Thunderlane airborne. He still grimaced, but there was at least a quarter of a smile mixed in with the pain.

“Why’d you do it?” he asked.

Because I couldn’t stand see you get laughed at. “‘Cause I know you pay your debts, silly,” she
said, smirking.

Make that two quarters. “Heh. Right.”

***

It didn’t take long for them to arrive at Dash’s house. After they had formed another crowd on the yard made of clouds, Thunderlane braced himself and trotted to the front door. He was carried more by his sense of self-esteem than by his legs, which still tried their best to wobble at the knees. He raised his hoof and knocked on the door. Nothing happened for a while, so he tried harder. It opened inwards without a sound. He strangled the instinct to glance back, for there were no better answers there. He stepped in.

Outside, the crowd waited, again. There was some talk about calling a doctor, but the idea never took off. Some were circling the house, trying to get a peek inside, but nopony approached the front door. A bet that Dash had set this up was circling around, and the odds were in favour. Everypony knew she was the second most earnest prankster around. Still, they waited.

Thunderlane came out.

“She isn’t here,” he said to himself, eyes looking nowhere.

“So?” cried somepony. Thunderlane looked up. His expression made the nearest ponies flinch.

“She isn’t here.”

The crowd waited.

It waited some more.

Then, as crowds love to do, it panicked.

What's Loyalty Without a Point?

Author's Note

Still looking for those proofreaders. Don't be shy! I'll reward you with clop!

What's Loyalty Without a Point?

It was not at all hard to find the old burrows: most of them had been used for years, and the ones Fluttershy couldn’t find herself were quickly shown to her by a helpful badger or a squirrel. The task was easy enough to be called routine, simple, and plain, barely more than a stroll through the woods that were bathing in all the flaming colors of the autumn. Fluttershy really wished it could be more than that – the more thinking she did, the more it fuelled the needle-like questions within her. And the answers seemed to only sharpen them more.

She removed some leaves from the mouth of another burrow and peered into the dark. Winter homes were dug deeper into the ground than the summer ones, which meant that they flooded more easily. This one seemed to be fine, although Fluttershy could catch a faint smell of something rotten creeping from underground. Probably some forgotten food. Probably, most likely. Definitely. A shudder travelled over her, forcing her to pull farther back. She could smell death, and food didn’t die.

She wondered who lay there, in the back of the hole in the ground, forgotten in the dark. A badger? A mouse? A hedgehog? Succumbed to a disease or to time? What did it matter, in the end? Nothing. In the end, nothing matters.The thought festered for a moment, and then she burned it, forced it to close, to heal. It was not a thought to let fester.

“Close this one,” she said quietly to a couple of badgers next to her. That was what mattered: closures.

The day changed into the afternoon in a painstakingly routine-like fashion, and Fluttershy swam through it without hardly a thought dedicated to it. Perhaps that’s why she never noticed the faint rustling of leaves that followed her, or the gaze that never let her out of sight. She noticed none of the intricate signs that she was being watched, but she could sense the subtle changes in the animals around her, the changes that she could read like a book. Thus it would have been wrong to say that she was surprised beyond all reason when Dash finally made her presence known.

“Hi, Shy,” said the voice behind Fluttershy. It was Dash, she was sure of it, but the greeting carried a hint of something she could not connect with Dash, not even with glue. Bitterness had no place in the palette of the Rainbow she knew.

Fluttershy turned around, unsure whether she should try to smile or let the tears spill freely. “You came back.”

Dash snorted. “Part of the job, being the Element of Loyalty and all that. Wouldn't get paid otherwise.” She thought for a moment and added: “That is, if we were paid for that.”

Fluttershy shivered. “Dashie…”

“I skipped the drill today,” said Dash, trotting around Fluttershy. Dead leaves crunched under her hooves. “I woke up just normal, ate breakfast, did some morning exercise and went over the day’s schedule. At ten, I was on the track, right as rain.” She stopped abruptly, eyeing the dull grey sky. “I got that far by telling myself, over and over again, that it’s what I have to do. That it’s what I was meant to do.”

The tears were pushing their edge over the smile on Fluttershy's face. “Dashie…”

The carmine eyes snapped at her. “Then I thought: what’s the point? If I can’t have you, what’s the point?” She turned fully to her and stepped closer. “When I lost you, I lost the point. What’s loyalty without a point? What’s anything?”

“You haven't’ lost me!” cried Fluttershy. “What makes you say that?!”

“You’re getting married!” shouted Dash, rising to the air so fast that the nearby leaves just exploded away. “That says plenty enough, don’t you think?!”

“So what?!” said Fluttershy, unfolding her own wings and flying after Dash as she glided upwards. The badgers waved at them as they gradually rose over the treetops. “You always said you don’t care about marriage!” continued Fluttershy, trying to catch up with Dash.

“I don’t,” said Dash, flying backwards above her. “But I know you do. You’re more into it than Rarity.”

Fluttershy beat the air stronger, but Dash upped her own effort a tad more, staying well away from her reach. The treetops were already well behind them.

“Rarity really only cares about weddings, not marriage as such,” said Fluttershy, panting slightly. “But it doesn’t matter! I love you! I love you from the bottom of my heart!”

Dash stopped. “Then why d’you wanna drag him between us?”

Fluttershy almost flew past her: she definitely would have if that question hadn’t struck her like a lightning bolt from a clear sky. “What… You did that first!”

Dash’s eyes grew wide. “Me?! No! I wanted to have a threesome with him! You’re the one who’s gonna put a ring on him!”

In a flash, a bright red blush bloomed all over Fluttershy’s face. It took Dash a microsecond to realize that some of it, and not that small of a part, wasn’t embarrassment, but anger. “What the hay else was I supposed to do?!” she shouted.

There was a fleeting moment when Dash forgot to fly. “Whah?”

Fluttershy, who now held the higher ground, soared closer to Dash. Some of the red on her face seemed to stain her eyes, too. “One moment we’re having fun just like always, then he smiles a bit more playfully, takes a bit longer sip of the cider, and asks if I’d take him as her ‘stallion from now ‘til eternity’! What can you say to something like that?! What would you have said?!” She poked her forehead, twice.

“Uhh…”

“You see!” exclaimed Fluttershy, her front hooves waving like a windmill in a hurricane. “I said yes before I could think, or blink, or anything! It just happened! It felt right, or not wrong, or not terribly wrong, and even if it did it was done and he was smiling like a lunatic and hugging me and then we kissed and you know how well he can kiss on a good day and I mean he was so happy and I–”

Dash started laughing hysterically. Fluttershy’s jaw dropped.

“You think that’s funny?” she yelled, flying closer to her. Dash was now floating on her back, falling towards the ground with Fluttershy staring at her from a practically vertical position, upside down. She probably wouldn't have managed it, had she actually tried it.

Dash cracked open her eyes, wiping tears with a hoof. “Look, Shy, sorry… I’m just–”

She stopped when she paid attention to her mouth. Were her corner teeth always so long? Or sharp? And since when did she have red eyes? “Uh… You feeling okay?”

“What do you think?” hissed Fluttershy. Really, she hissed, like a lizard, or a cat, or a… Oh buck, thought Dash. She stopped her idle fall and grabbed her friend from the shoulders, turning them both right way round in the process.

“Shy, snap out of it!” she blurted, shaking her gently. “You’re a pony! A pony, not a bat!”

Fluttershy blinked, and just like that, the carmine tinge was gone. Her teeth also lost their sharpness in the tide of confusion that washed over her. “What are you doing? Stop, I’m getting sick.”

Dash blew out in relief, letting go of her. “Whoah, you scared me there for a moment… Dear Celestia…”

“What are you on about?” asked Fluttershy, frowning. “Are you trying to make me forget how you laughed at me?”

Dash studied her for a moment and decided that whatever just had happened could wait another time to be mulled over. This was something Twilight should figure out someday: right now, the most reasonable thing to do was to pretend nothing had happened and pray that there weren’t any apples lying around.

“No no no,” said Dash in a conciliatory tone. “Your outburst surprised me, that’s all. Haven’t seen you like that for a while.”

Fluttershy’s shoulders slumped, and rest of her body followed quickly after. “I know… Forgive me. I didn’t mean to shout at you. But I had been holding that inside me for so long, it just had to come out at some point. But it shouldn’t have hit you.”

Dash smoothed carefully her limp front leg. “I may have an idea who it was supposed to hit…”

“I don’t know what to do!” wailed Fluttershy. “I mean, I like him, I like him very much… But I had never thought about marrying him! Or maybe I had, I can’t even say anymore…” She raised a glistening stare at her. “What should I do?”

Dump him. The words jumped up and down on Dash’s tongue, trying to push her mouth open. She didn’t know what kept it closed. That’s what I did to him a while back, kinda. Well, he wasn’t proposing, but only ‘cause he knew that would’ve been the end of it. But this ain’t about me, not totally. “Beats me,” she said finally, to the slight disappointment of both of them. “Depends, I guess. How much do you like him?”

“I don’t even know if that’s the right question,” said Fluttershy. “And even if it was, how could I tell?” Suddenly, she felt the urge to sit down, so she landed on a nearby branch.

Dash followed in suit but chose another branch. “You’ve been hanging with him pretty often lately,” she said.

Fluttershy nodded faintly, eyeing the ground. “We have… He can be very likable, and it’s true that we share much in common. It’s funny, really: I’ve known him for years, except I haven’t. It’s as if a whole new world had opened to me.”

Dash tilted her head. “So, you’re just getting along really well?”

The blush graced the wheat-yellow coat again. “Uhm… Well, like I said, he is a very good kisser, too… And not so rough as I thought a stallion would be. In bed, I mean.”

“Yeah, I got that alright,” said Dash quickly.

They both fell silent after that. Around them, it was getting dark, and the winds were turning chilly. That was the world’s way of telling that a closure of sorts should follow right about now, Fluttershy thought, but in what size and form? She only felt more lost than in the morning, and a bit more sad, too. She looked at Rainbow, wondering what she was thinking. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

Dash kept her quiet for a while, looking over the horizon. “I’m thinking this nut ain’t cracking with thinking. I’d ask from my gut, but its only grumbling.” She turned on her branch, looking helplessly at Fluttershy. “What d’you do when both the heart and the head ain’t helping?”

Fluttershy gave this a thought. “Get help?” she ventured.

“From whom?”

Another pause, but a shorter one. “Twilight?”

Dash made a face. “Ugh, pass. She knows her numbers and letters alright, but I wouldn’t trust her with this.”

“But she is now the Princess of–”

“–Friendship, yeah, but this goes beyond that, methinks,” said Dash. A lamp lit behind her eyes. “You’re on the right track, though.”

Fluttershy raised a very uncharacteristic eyebrow. “You don’t mean…”

“Oh yeah,” said Dash excitedly, jumping in the air so quickly that Fluttershy had to grab hold of the tree. “We’ll ask Cadance what to do!”

Fluttershy looked doubtful.

“Why not? It’s, like, her job, right?”

Fluttershy fidgeted, which has surprisingly hard while trying not to fall from a tree. “I know, but this is a very personal affair…”

Dash humphed. “Hey, it doesn’t need to be official or anything. She’s Twi’s babysitter, for sky’s sake! She just so happens to be the friggin’ Princess of Love, too. What’s the harm in asking?”

Fluttershy stayed quiet, averting her gaze. Dash snorted. “Fine, whatevs. A stupid idea. I’m sure you’ll figure out something better with him.”

Fluttershy gave her a look. It was Dash’s time to fidget in the air.

“Okay, that was out of the line,” she confessed, rubbing her neck. “But something needs to happen, right? Or can you just go on like this, marry him, move together, have foals–”

“Who’s talking about foals?” burst Fluttershy. Dash had to weave a string of apologies together to amend that. Still, the point stuck.

“They’ll usually follow the rings, I’ve seen,” she said carefully. “Have you thought about that?”

Fluttershy shook her head wearily.

“How would I fit in all that?” continued Dash, circling her friend. “Thunderlane’s a cool stud, but I dunno if I could live with him, even with you around, despite having you around… you see how complicated it gets?”

Fluttershy sighed. It was a heavy sigh. “I still don’t believe Cadance can help us. She is a very caring pony, and I know Twilight loves her, but… It doesn’t feel right.” She followed Dash as she swam on her back around her. “Does that make sense?”

Dash, who was a firm believer in professionalism, could also read in between the lines when it came to Fluttershy. But that still doesn’t mean I can’t write to her alone. “Okay, Shy. Okay.”

“We need to talk this through with all three of us present,” said Fluttershy, more confidently now. “That’s the right thing to do.”

Dash stopped in the air and turned upright. “My place? Yours? Not Thunderlane’s: I don’t like the looks his mother sometimes gives me.”

“Somewhere neutral,” said Fluttershy. “Somewhere where none of us feels they’re at home, or not at home. Somewhere nice.”

In Dash’s eyes, an answer shined. Some might call it a joke, but she knew better. “The Blueberry Inn.”

Fluttershy flinched. “That place? You’re serious?”

Dash’s nod was a sign of complete affirmation. “It’s the closest thing to a limbo you can get around here. If that’s not neutral, I dunno what is.”

Fluttershy hesitated. She had never been in the Inn, but had heard stories. Apparently it was the place where romanticism went to die. But that was what had lead them to this, right?

“Okay,” she said. “When?”

“Tonight.”

“So soon?”

Dash tilted her head. “You really wanna drag this on longer?”

She didn’t.

That Is Only Because We Have to

If the day’s best part was that you weren’t blue anymore, you could bet that it had been one of those days.

What does it even mean, one of “those days”? thought Thunderlane as he stared at the ceiling of his room from his bed. There were crumbs of bread on the mattress, and the curtains had been drawn to fend off the sunlight that had been sparse all day anyway. Maybe it’s another way of saying “I don’t want to talk about it”? Or “I’d rather not invent a name for it”? He threw a rubber ball in the air and watched it hit the ceiling. It hit a small round area where the paint had worn off, consumed by years and years of contact with a rapidly moving hard object. I’ve lived most of my life in this room, watching that ceiling, throwing this ball, he thought as the yellow-black toy dropped straight towards his face.

He caught it right above his nose with two hooves. Its shine was long lost, but the matt surface was still hard as rock. You could place it in between a thick door and a frame and brake the door that way, and he had, although that had been a while ago, in a different house, in a different time. In a different family.

I wonder what father is doing right now?

The question came to him just like the ball had a minute ago: straight to the face. This time, he didn’t get his hooves between in time. He blinked at the impact, and the ball fell on the floor, rolled under the bed. He bent down instinctively, trying to reach it, but it was already beyond his grasp, resting neatly against the wall. He could see it staring at him from the darkness. He snorted and pulled himself further over the bed, only to fall on his back with a groan.

“What are you doing?”

Thunderlane looked at the door. Rumble stood there, eyeing him with curious amusement. There was a small suitcase by his side.

“Hi, kiddo,” said Thunderlane, standing up. “How was camp?”

Rumble shrugged his thin shoulders. “It was cool. Swam in the lake. Learned a few tricks.” There was a faint twinkle in the purple eyes when he said that last part.

“Wanna show me?” said Thunderlane.

The little colt gave this a thought, or at least a pretty good impression of one, and nodded approvingly. “Sure. Got to unpack first though: mom’s orders.” He gave a lazy kick of his hind leg to the suitcase.

“Let me give you a hoof with that,” said Thunderlane, walking to his brother.

“Okay,” he said, smiling brightly. After Thunderlane had picked up the bag, he continued, “Seriously though: what are you doing?”

“Uh, nothing,” he said, walking to Rumble’s room. “Dad’s ball just rolled under the bed. I was trying to get it back.”

The colt rolled his purple eyes. “Duh, not that. It’s the end of the season. Shouldn’t you be on the track?”

Thunderlane entered the room farther down the corridor, put the bag on the bed and opened it. “The season’s ending was moved. Dash had… she was sick. Really sick.” He started emptying the bag. Most of it was warm clothes, but there were some more interesting items hiding there, too. “What’s this?” he said, lifting an envelope from among the woolly socks. It was sealed with pink wax.

Behind him, Rumble shuffled his legs, his aura of casual coolness suddenly shimmering. “It’s nothing, just something. Give it here.” He made an attempt to grab it. Thunderlane’s wings were faster.

“Smells sweet,” he said, holding the envelope lightly between his feathers. “Got it from mom?”

“Yeah, she sent it yesterday, but I didn’t have time to open it so I brought it here,” said Rumble quickly. He seemed to be avoiding biting his lip.

“Oh? Then why it reads ‘From Mirth’ in the back? In pink.”

Rumble froze. Only his eyelids moved, and they narrowed down dangerously. “Bro… Watch your step. Watch it.”

Thunderlane toyed with the white envelope for a few seconds longer and then handed it to his little brother, who snatched it immediately and locked it into his drawer, the same one where he kept his yellow-black rubber ball. Thunderlane raised an eyebrow at that.

“Hey, no offense.”

Rumble closed the drawer and glanced back at him, and even though he now strived to hide it, the wariness wouldn’t leave his eyes. “We’re cool. It was just something I got from… somepony.” He trotted to the bed and started unpacking the bag.

Thunderlane quietly watched him work. “Mind telling me why it’s unopened?”

“Nope.”

There was a pause.

“Why is it unopened?” asked Thunderlane.

“‘Cause I haven’t opened it,” answered Rumble flatly while shelving a book.

Thunderlane sighed. “Why haven’t you opened it, then?”

"Not the right time.” A scarf found its place on the rack.

“And that would be…?”

“I dunno. Someday. On the next Hearts and Hooves day. Maybe.” A binder full of drawings went quickly into the shelf. Rumble zapped to the suitcase, but there was no more stuff to move around. Thus he stood still. The blush was only a heartbeat away, Thunderlane could tell.

“Okay,” he said kindly. “Want to show off those new moves now?”

Rumble breathed out. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s get outside!” He rose to his wings and rushed to the corridor.

Seems like I’m not the only one with a love life in this house anymore, thought Thunderlane as he followed him. I wonder how long it will last for him? That was an ugly thought, and he knew it right before he tasted it.

“Did you go see her?” asked Rumble in the hall.

“Huh?”

“Rainbow Dash,” continued the colt. “You said she was sick. How is she?”

“She is… recovering,” said Thunderlane, flashing a short smile. Outside, the sky was as grey as ever.

“Did she break a wing?”

“No no no, nothing that serious. Just some flu, she’ll get over it quick enough.”

“Then why didn’t she come today?” asked Rumble, tilting his neck. “You always talk about how important the season’s end is for the team.”

“Hey, cut me some slack, will you? She didn’t come, end of the story. You keep your wax seal letters, I keep mine. Deal?”

All that came out a tad sharper and quicker than he had intended, and it showed in every inch of Rumble’s flinch.

“Sorry…” he muttered, looking at the grass. “I was just worried about her…”

Thunderlane smacked himself mentally a couple of times. “No, don’t be sorry. I just left my idiot gear on again. Figures.” He wrapped a brotherly hoof around Rumble, shaking him a bit. “You can punch me if you want.”

Rumble chuckled at that. “I’ll knock you over with my stunts before that!” With that, he rose a few feet above Thunderlane’s head and, after some concentration and rapid breathing, did the most mediocre aerial loop Thunderlane had ever seen. It made his chest swell with pride.

“Awesome!” he exclaimed, rubbing Rumble’s head as he landed. The colt beamed, and for a moment, everything was great. Then the hammer fell.

“Should we show that to Rainbow? I bet she’d get better in a flash!”

Thunderlane’s smile twitched. “Aaahh, no. I don’t think we should. Let her sleep it off, that’s for the best.”

“Oh, come on! You said she’d be fine in no time! Just a quick visit, please?”

“No.”

Rumble stopped jumping. “What’s wrong with you? Did you two fight again?”

Thunderlane was very quiet for a while. “What?”

The colt blinked. “Well, you know… Like the time you fought behind our house. You woke me up then.” He was now drawing circles in the ground, apparently immersed in the task. “I remember ‘cause you didn’t go to the drills for a week after that. I didn’t say anything then ‘cause mom told me not to.”

The memory sprang from the locked chest In Thunderlane’s head and splattered all over his mind, dripping repressed feelings and dark intentions. It would take him hours to clean that up properly, but in the circumstances, turning a blind eye would have to do.

“Oh, that? Nah, it was just some adult stuff. We got over it years ago, years I say. No need to dwell on the past.” He gave his best smile to go along with that. “It’s nothing like that now, anyway.”

Rumble glanced at him from amidst his circles. “But you still don’t wanna see her?”

I’d wish to see her even if that was the last thing I’d see. Or hold. Or kiss. “There’s some more… adult stuff going on between us,” said Thunderlane quietly.

The colt gave this a thought. “Like, sex?”

“Whoah whoah, where you heard that word?!” blurted Thunderlane, his ears flaming.

Rumble gave him a weird look. “Eh, where did you? Mom told me all about it. What’s the big deal?”

“What exactly did she tell you about it?”

There was a definitive sense of improvisation shining from Rumble’s face as he sought the words from a week back, before he had gone to the camp. “It’s like… hugging and kissing, but in a weird way, and you have to be smart and responsible, and the first time is really special so it needs to be with somepony special, but even if I’ve met somepony there’s no rush and anyway I can always come to talk her about it. She said that bees and flowers do it, and the school will probably tell me more about it eventually, and ‘really there’s no rush’.” After a while he added: “I never got what it actually is, though.”

“You’ll know when you’re older,” said Thunderlane with a smile.

“That’s what she said, too!”

“She would, wouldn’t she? Now, that front flip was a killer, but how about a back flip… doubled?”

And so the world moved on. It moved all the way to the late afternoon, where it took the form of a quiet evening with the family. Thunderlane, Rumble and their mother were by then leafing through the numerous photos of laughing foals, breathtaking views and, in a few cases, misplaced lens covers. For very paradoxical reasons, those were the ones that stirred the most vivid comments and explanations. Thunderlane was relaxed, as he by all rights ought to be, considering how much effort he had to have spent to get into that state where a little fuzzy but still recognizable picture of a distant rainbow wouldn’t stab a needle through his heart. It still tingled a bit, and he was sure his mother asked for another picture a tad faster than she otherwise might have.

Besides that, Thunderlane had a genuine shot of falling asleep before two o’clock that night. That is, he had right until the moment when Dash and Fluttershy appeared at the front door.

“Hello,” said Fluttershy, smiling that faint yet insanely alluring smile of hers.

“Up for a drink?” said Dash, conspicuously politely.

In a smooth, ponderous motion, Thunderlane closed the door. Dash and Fluttershy stared at it, then at one another, and Dash very nearly knocked the door again when they heard an argument erupting inside. There was a female voice, paused by what could have been Thunderlane talking, after which the female took over again. After a few fast lines had been exchanged, they heard somepony marching for the door, although even years later Dash could’ve sworn it sounded more like a platoon at the time. They took a step back right before the front door slammed open, revealing Thunderlane’s mother. She didn’t look mad; to the contrary, she looked extremely calm. Nonetheless, Dash and Fluttershy took yet another step back.

The older mare eyed them for a moment. “I understand you two wish to take my son for a drink.”

To Dash’s surprise, it was Fluttershy who answered. “Yes, we would. If that would be alright with you?”

“And why is that?” continued the mother.

“It’s kind of a private issue,” said Dash. She did her best not to flinch when the bright green eyes darted to her. “Uhh, could we talk to him now?” she said, shifting weight between her legs.

There was a pause like during which storms gather strength. When the mother spoke, her voice was satin wrapped over steel.

“A week earlier, perhaps still yesterday, I would’ve consented to your request. But I find that lately I’ve turned a blind eye too often and too easily in what comes to my son’s… affairs.”

“Yeah, the thing is that he is already a big colt–” started Dash.

“That is not the point,” cut in the mother. “For the past summer, I've witnessed him in turns fly in the hills of happiness, only to roll down with his wings clipped. One week he is drunk of bliss, the next he can’t get up from the bed. You two have turned his life into an emotional rollercoaster, and I’ve had enough of watching it from the side! Thunderlane is my son! I have just as much of a right to look after his welfare as you two combined!”

By the time she was finished, Dash and Fluttershy had pressed their flanks together, and their ears were glued to their skulls. The mother sighed deeply, and whatever was left of her steam fled along with that.

“I don’t think we have ever been introduced properly,” she said, in a somewhat warmer tone. She extended a hoof, which made the two younger mares jump a bit. “My name is Thunder Cloud.”

“F-Fluttershy,” said Fluttershy, shaking her hoof. “P-pleasure to meet you.”

“Rainbow Dash,” said Dash, barely shaking.

“My apologies for the theatricality,” said Cloud after letting go of Dash. “It shouldn't have hit you like it did.” A flash of embarrassment travelled over her face.

“Oh, it’s quite alright,” hurried Fluttershy. “We probably deserved it.”

We did? thought Dash, but managed to keep the question to herself. “Uhm, so, could we now see Thunderlane? We actually came to invite him out, to talk some things over.”

“Oh?” said Cloud, her eyes glinting. “Where were you heading?”

“To the Blueberry Inn,” said Fluttershy before Dash could stop her.

“Cheery’s place?” continued Cloud. The amazed looks of the two ponies made her add: “We go way back, she and I. For a while I even worked there, when the place was new and she needed a few favors to keep things moving.”

“That’s so interesting,” said Dash, smiling as widely as she could. “Anyway, it gets kind of crowded there in the autumn evenings, so I guess we should hurry if we want a table there…”

Cloud waved a dismissive hoof. “Oh, nonsense. The least I can do to compensate for my rudeness is to ask Cheery to give us a table in the back. Trust me, she’ll be more than happy to be able to pay back an old friend.” Without waiting a response, she turned and said: “Thunderlane! Bring my purse, we’re going out!”

“There’s really no need for that,” hurried Dash, her wing unfolding. “Your offer is very kind, but I–we think this moment should belong to just the three of us. Right, Shy?” She nudged Fluttershy with a hind leg.

“Ah, yes, that might be for the best… If you don’t mind,” she said from the cover of her mane.

Thunderlane, who had been listening around the corner with baited breath, sighed and walked to the door.

“Mother… They have a point,” he said, looking Cloud in the eyes. “We can handle this alone. I can handle this alone.”

Cloud gave her son a faint smile. “I know you can. That is how I brought you up, after all. That’s why I’m mostly coming along to see an old friend.” A sharp intake of breath from behind her drew her eyes like a magnet. “Alternatively we can talk here,” she said to Dash who had barely gotten her mouth open. “There’s tea and biscuits waiting just for that. But I’d rather use this excuse to pay a visit to Cheery, if that’s all the same to you.”

“Yes ma’am,” said Dash automatically. Fluttershy echoed something similar immediately after.

Cloud gave them a small smile too, and looked at Thunderlane again. In his eyes, a mixed combination of awe, fear, and annoyance rested.

“Now… Would you be a dear and get that purse for me? Oh, and tell Rumble he isn’t allowed to leave the house, but can stay up late to read comics or whatever he wishes to do. And make sure you forget the key of the cookie box on the table. That’ll keep him busy for the evening.”

***

This is not what I had planned, thought Dash half an hour later. Cloud had been correct about Cheery alright: she had offered them a homely little room separated from the rest of the bar, a big round table just for three of them. First drinks were on the house, too, and even Dash had to admit that that was impressive. This is a set-up, I know it in my bones. Yeah, she might be in the bar for now, talking with Cheery, but give her a split second and boom, she trots all over you. Reminds me of Spitfire on a bad day. She took a sip of the cocktail the name of which she couldn’t remember, and leaned closer to Fluttershy.

“You okay with this?” she asked.

Fluttershy bit her lip. “Well, she did get us a table, and drinks, and left us alone afterwards. How could I not be okay with that?”

Dash snorted. “Yeah, but she is still here. Gosh, I’m sure she is watching us right now, through a hole or something. And how thick are these walls, anyway?” She knocked the blank wallpaper with a hoof. It seemed to cover stone, but facts never stood a chance against a healthy dose of suspicion.

“If she comes, we can always politely ask her to leave,” reasoned Fluttershy.

Dash shuddered at the thought. “I’ll leave that to you, then.”

Thunderlane pushed past the heavy curtains that lead to the bar. Without looking at either of them, he settled with his drink on the last empty seat on the table. The quiet murmur carrying from the other room filled the space sovereignly for a moment. It was already dark outside, so a score of candles served for lighting. They were a far cry from the scented, colored type of the Heartmend Cafe: thick, white, and as bright as possible. Proper candles: efficient and functional, thought Dash. Just like this meeting is going to be.

“First things first: what’s the main problem?” she said, looking alternately at the other two. They seemed puzzled by the question, so she went on: “I mean, there’s clearly a problem here, so if we want a solution, we first have to agree what shape of a hole it should fit. Makes sense?”

“I don’t believe it works that way,” said Fluttershy carefully.

“Oh? Why’s that?” said Dash, leaning on her hoof.

“Because love is not a thing,” explained Fluttershy. “It’s many things, or what holds other things together. We don’t have a problem, we have… complications.”

Dash gave this a thought. “My way sounds easier, so let’s try that first.” She turned to Thunderlane, never minding Fluttershy’s opening mouth. “Why you wanna marry Fluttershy?”

The question hit him to the face like a brick. “Because I love her?” he managed.

Dash narrowed her eyes. “Why is there a question mark there?”

“There isn’t!”

“Prove it!” said Dash, hitting the table. “Prove that you love her so much you can’t live without her!”

Panic filled Thunderlane’s eyes.

“Dash!” cried Fluttershy. “Stop that! Can you prove that yourself? Can anypony?”

Dash looked at her, and in the eyes like furnished ice she saw a recollection of every moment they had spent together, of every fleeting touch, of every unspoken word. They all screamed at her that Fluttershy was wrong, that you could prove love like that existed, that it was something so fundamental, so true, that it went beyond knowing. But then a little voice within her whispered: But if it can’t be known, how can it be proved?

“No, Fluttershy… She… does have a point,” said Thunderlane, apparently with great difficulty. His eyes were lost in the bright golden drink, and the bare sight of his shoulders made an iron bar appear flexible. “It just so happens that I may not have been completely honest with you.”

“With the marriage?” said Fluttershy confusedly.

He nodded. “The thing is… The reason I married you… I thought, or hoped, or prayed that, that…” He swallowed hard, seized his drink and emptied it with one gulp. As the glass hit the table, he said in one go: “So I’d be closer to Rainbow because I love her so much it makes me feel wretched and scared and happy beyond sanity!”

It got very quiet after that. It got so quiet that Dash only realized that they had dwelled in the kingdom of silence after she broke it with her breathing, which she had been holding. I think we found the problem, she thought. Said with some cutting irony, that would’ve made an excellent punchline. As it was though, it only rang hollow between her temples.

“Can you ever forgive me?” asked Thunderlane from Fluttershy.

She sniffed and wiped a stray tear off her cheek. “There’s nothing to forgive. You shouldn’t ask forgiveness for what you did for love.” She sniffed again, turning her face away. “Least of all should you apologize from me. It should be the other way around, really.”

“What are you saying?” said Thunderlane. “You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s me who should–”

“I used you, too,” sobbed Fluttershy. “From the day we met in your room, months ago, and talked about models and eyes and love. You let me see that you loved Dash, no, that you adored her, and I knew right then that I shouldn’t interfere… but I did.” Under the table, her hoof sought Dash’s, and found her. She felt stiff as a plank. “You wanted to have ‘fun’ with him,” she said to Dash, “with the three of us, you wanted it so bad… So I closed my eyes and dived, never minding what my instincts told me, what my heart told me. Love is a tangle even with two ponies. With three it becomes… intangible. I knew this, but acted regardless.”

Dash stared at her shivering figure, then at her hoof that almost absentmindedly grasped hers. She fumbled for her drink, but found that it had emptied of its own initiative at some point. From the corner of her eye, she could see Thunderlane sagging even worse than Fluttershy did. Dash felt like standing in between two vortexes, and each one was pulling harder than the other. In her mind, furniture was flying around like leaves.

“Okay, time out, time out,” she said, pulling her hoof away from Fluttershy to nudge some life into Thunderlane. They both raised their eyes carefully at her. Dash exhaled, grateful for the tenuous calm. “What… are you two on about?” she said, as slowly and clearly as she could manage.

“Can’t you see?” asked Fluttershy, baffled. “We both love you so much that we pretended to love each other!”

Dash’s expression was a masterpiece. “What?!”

“Was it all a fake?” asked Thunderlane, glancing at Fluttershy, who blushed immediately.

“No!” she wailed, tears running over her face. “I could never fake moments like what we shared during the summer! That wasn’t what I meant! I meant… I mean… I don’t know…”

Thunderlane looked at her with heavy eyes. Had it all been a fake? Had he used her just to get closer to Dash? At what point had he stopped, if he had? Asking for the truthful answer was asking for more trouble than the questions themselves could ever cause, and in the end they would still be half-truths. What, then, made them any different from lies?

“The truth of the matter is that I proposed you, not Rainbow,” said Thunderlane quietly, still looking at Fluttershy, although he couldn’t help but to steal a glimpse of Dash. She had turned her face away, and Thunderlane didn’t dare even to guess what that meant. “Maybe I did it for the wrong reasons, but at the time, I didn’t have many reasons to begin with. It felt right. The words were there. I just let them go.”

Dash shook her head slowly. “I don’t get any of this. We all get along great, right?” She looked up, her face a yearbook of lost emotions. “How can it all end up in somewhere so… sad?”

“An overload of bliss?” suggested Thunderlane, smiling against all the odds. “I honestly can’t say if I should be panicking or rejoicing right now.” He chuckled shortly and tensely. Its effect on the other two, or lack of one, made him lean a bit more towards the option of flaming panic.

“You may be right,” said Fluttershy, not sobbing anymore. “Your proposal crossed the line that I had feared would wait us at the end of this. But it might’ve as well been me who took the last step, in one form or another,” she hurried to add. “This was nopony’s fault.”

“Is there fault at all?” asked Dash. “I still don’t get what exactly is up with you two.”

“Oh?” said Fluttershy, frowning. “What’s up with you, if I may ask? Why did you fly away the other night in the Cafe? Why didn’t you come to the drills today?” Abruptly, she stood up. “Why did you ever think a threesome would be a good idea?”

“Hey, I didn’t hear you complaining at the time! Or in the times after!”

“Not the sex,” hissed Fluttershy, fighting against the blush. “I meant the whole affair! Didn’t you know how Thunderlane felt about you, how he still feels about you? Or didn't you care?”

The last part tied Dash’s tongue to a knot. “Whah? I… he…” Her eyes snapped to Thunderlane. “He said he was cool with it!”

Ah, yes, the time in the showers, recalled Thunderlane. Back then they had been planning how to lull Fluttershy in bed between them. An opportunity like that could incite such self-deception, even from an otherwise stand-up stallion. In the end, he had for a while believed himself that it could be just for sex.

“I thought I would be,” he confessed. “I really did.”

“Why I get the feeling that all the arrows end up pointing at you?” said Dash. “You lied to me then, you proposed Shy: you! This is your fault!”

“Yes!” cried Thunderlane, practically jumping off his chair. “You're right! And you know what? You wanted to be right!” Memories rained down upon him like hails; glimpses of expressions, pieces of sentences; a late night in a backyard, with the words “The Best Weather Team in Equestria” sloshing in their cider-filled circulatory systems, washing away the restraints. “You remember that night?” he went on. “The night we kissed slightly longer, slightly deeper, in the moonlight? ‘The night which should never end’, I told you, but which should ‘live the day and the one after, all the way to the end all days?’”

By now his front legs were on the table, and Dash stared at him like he had turned into a changeling. She remembered that night alright. She had spent countless hours trying to forget it, but of course she’d remember it like yesterday. Well, take that as a yesterday half of which had been spent on partying, hard, but still, she remembered the ending of it clearly. It had been the third time in her life when she had said “no” and really meant it.

“S-so?” she said, eyeing him like a rabbit eyes a fox. “What about it?”

“How could you remember that and think I could be ‘cool with it’?”

“You were drunk…” muttered Dash.

“So were you,” he said, setting his front hooves on the floor. “It didn’t cloud your judgment. Something else did, the day you asked me to bed two months ago.”

“I think we all know what that was,” said Fluttershy, not unkindly. She was standing next to Thunderlane, facing Dash in her chair. They all looked at one another, and Dash got the nasty impression that she was now in the opposition.

“Oh yeah? So it’s my fault now. ‘A sex maniac mare ruins another relationship, read it all with bit and a half’, that sort of thing?” She ground her teeth together, awaiting a response. None came. “Well I ain’t buying it! It’s not my fault if I’m the only pony here who can keep their emotions in check, even if that’s only ‘cause I got the biggest libido!”

“Can you keep them in check?” asked Fluttershy, a bit less kindly. “Can you really say that with a straight face?”

Dash threw her hooves in the air. “Seems so!”

“And the thing the other night was… what exactly?” asked Thunderlane. “Mind you, we’re still awaiting an explanation about that.”

“I… That was justified! I thought you tried to push me away!”

Two pairs of eyebrows raised in unison. The sight of them whipped Dash’d tongue two gears up.

“Okay, that sounds crazy, I’ll give you that, but I had some caps under my belt and the waiter had just finished his degree on bitching and oh boy was he the top student of the class!” Now the eyebrows lowered, but way too much. “Okay okay, fine, I overreacted, but for a good reason!” She crossed her front legs over chest.

“You were so scared to be left out…” began Fluttershy.

“...That you left?” finished Thunderlane.

Dash gave that her best stammering. It wasn’t really what she had had in mind, but suddenly she couldn’t quite put a hoof on what that would have been, exactly.

“Actually, that does make sense,” continued Thunderlane. “You never give up in anything, right? You have to be the first, the best, the fastest there is. A second place is a disgrace to you. So when you thought you couldn’t win, you quit.” Right after he had finished, he knew that something was wrong. “...But you never quit, either?”

“Not unless it hurts too much to see the prize fall out of my hooves,” whispered Dash, her body suddenly all limp.

Fluttershy gasped. “You mean… I was that prize? The prize for which you’d quit the game if you lost?”

“I think we found the problem, after all,” said Dash, her voice crawling by the floor. She looked Fluttershy in the eyes. A poet would have said that the air between them shimmered from the weight of that link.

They rushed into each other’s embrace and met over the table, their wings unfolded, keeping their hind legs in the air, although even those were trying to wrap over one another.

“I love you, Shy,” sobbed Dash. “I love you so friggin’ much…”

Fluttershy, for reasons that were beyond reason, did not shed a tear, did not utter a laugh, but held her tighter than she would have held a world hanging on the precipice of damnation. A poet would have shut their mouth at the sight of them, giving room for the music, preferably to a cellist, who by all rights should have belonged to the moment, at least in Thunderlane’s mind. He wanted to hear that so bad he actually heard it, in his mind. It took him awhile to realize that what he was actually hearing didn’t stem from his fantasies, but from the bar. And the insane thing was that it really was a cello playing there. He trotted past the curtain, drawn by the charming melody and pushed by the vague thought that nopony should be witnessing two souls embracing each other like that, especially since the moment was turning even more intimate by the second. On the other side, his mother was waiting for him.

“Ah, you came just in time,” she said, signing him to come sit by the counter. “I’m sure you know Octavia. Apparently she grew bored of the selection they made her play in the Heartmend Cafe lately. Too sweet for the ears, I hear.” She said something to Cheery, and soon Thunderlane found himself with another drink before him. He let it be for now, for the music floating in the air seemed fully capable of satisfying all his needs at the moment. It was that good.

“You’d think she belonged to Canterlot, a genius like her,” said Cloud quietly, watching the grey earth pony with a raven mane. The Inn didn’t have a stage to boast, but they had cleared away some chairs in one of the corners, and the hypnotizing music, along with the graceful movements of the mare, compensated wonderfully for the lack of proper setting. She was drawing an aura around herself, a dome the breach of which would be a capital offense. “Mind you, she’ll be flying from here sooner or later. Better enjoy her while you can.”

“Maybe it’s for the best, for everypony,” said Thunderlane calmly. “All good things must come to an end. Otherwise they become ordinary, then boring, and finally we lose interest in them completely. Isn’t that what they say?”

Cloud payed a sideway glance at him. “Do you believe them?”

The music played on. For the most of the audience, it was perfect, but for a pony who stood just close enough to the curtain that lead to the room in the back, a stray moan, perhaps a tad more fervent than one might’ve expected, mixed in with the notes. Thunderlane lingered in the middle of an equilibrium composed of the heart of harmony and the forge that both gives birth to that harmony and opposes it to the very last beat. He stood on the brink of brinks, on the edge of equinity itself. And he answered:

“I believe Rumble is old enough for the serious flying practices. The camp did him good there, I can tell. I’ll take responsibility of it myself to see that he gets all the training he wants and needs. Those dreams he has about joining the Wonderbolts one day? They don’t fulfill themselves.” He seized his glass, and with the most discreet move he could muster, drew another set of heavy curtains over the passage. The cello ruled the room sovereignly once more.

Cloud waited for him to finish his long sip before she spoke. “That’d mean you’ll be spending more time at home, yes? He has school, after all, and you have the team.”

“I know. It’ll do good for us both. I haven’t spent time with him as I used to, lately.” Another sip, another pause.

At the end of it, Cloud wasn’t smiling. “It appears he met a filly in the camp,” she said, carefully watching his face.

“Did he tell you about her?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Cloud rolled her eyes. “As if he needed to. I’d say it’s quite serious. In the scale of a twelve-year-old, at least.”

“What do you want me to do about it? The topic came up earlier today, and I was handsomely denied the privilege of asking any questions. Or speaking in the wrong tone.”

She smiled at that. “We need to do nothing. These things have a tendency to settle themselves, in time. Wouldn’t you say the same?”

There was a trap there, and not a very subtle one. Thunderlane stomped on it without an ounce of remorse. “No. He may be young, but he’ll grow faster than we know, and sooner or later he’ll have his first heart-break. When that happens, we need to be there, and we need to be up to date. ‘These things’ don’t handle themselves, just like the weather doesn’t. Pretending otherwise will only get you soaked or burned.”

“So you think we should watch over him more?”

“Depends on what you mean by that. I said we need to be up to date, not on top of him. That’ll only make it worse. For now, we’ll see what he himself makes of it, and by Hearts and Hooves Day we might have a better picture of the bigger scheme of things. Or a more blurry one. All we can do is hope for the former and prepare for the latter.”

Cloud smiled some more, and emptied the rest of her glass. The last drop of it glowed with a very peculiar shade of blue. “You’re right about one thing, for sure. Children do grow faster than we know.”

Thunderlane turned towards the makeshift stage and saw that the music had stopped at some point. Octavia was having a break, drinking water while talking with a couple of stallions in the front row. From beyond the curtain, wet, sucking and squelching sounds danced into Thunderlane's ears like tiptoeing thunder.

That is only because we have to, he thought and hoped that the music would start soon enough.

Epilogue

Earlier that same day…

In the faraway land of the Crystal Empire, in the largest room of the highest tower of the castle, Shining Armor prayed for the smallest pause in existence. It was denied from him, not by an outsider, but by his sense of duty that would have him read and approve the season’s applications for the Crystal Guard before the day’s end, even if it meant staying up until the very last minute of it. Right now that was hours away, but the pile of paper on his desk was thicker than his horn was tall. Thus he worked, for there was no other way out. Not until the front door opened, at least.

“Shining Armor is not present at the moment,” he said mechanically. “Only His Majesty, the Royal Rubber Stamp, is, and he is very, very busy.”

Cadance, walking by the red carpet that led all the way to his desk, smiled sympathetically. “You know, there is no disgrace in delegating. You’d be doing the clerks a favor, really: they take great pride in their position.”

“Some things I must do personally, even if there is no practical difference in who uses this damned thing,” he said, imprinting yet another “Approved” to an application with a rubber stamp. It made a noise like tsak. “I’m the pony who's supposed to lead all these other ponies, should the need arise. Their trust must be met with something more concrete than a few minutes on some clerk's desk, even if that something is just a few minutes on my desk.” Another stamp, another dull tsak echoing in the high room. “It’s a military thing.”

Cadance shook her head, but left it at that. “Could I then perhaps steal my husband from the Rubber Stamp, even if just for a moment? I find myself in a need of advice.”

The paper on Armor’s desk suddenly lost even the shadow of interest it might’ve had for him. Armor looked up, his tired eyes suddenly regaining some of their sharpness. “Of course. What is it?”

Cadance coughed and produced an opened envelope, which she floated in front of him. “It’s from Ponyville,” she explained. “Arrived just a while ago, sent by Spike.”

“From Twilight?” he asked, pulling the letter out.

“You’d think, right? No, it’s from Rainbow Dash.” She thought something for a moment and said: “It’s better that I don’t try to explain it first. You’ll find it complicated enough as is, I believe.”

Armor gave her a look and resumed by reading, which at this point resembled breathing for him. The letter had been written with some haste, that much was clear with a glance. There weren’t many words as such, which was a shame, for there definitely was a demand for more. He finished it quickly enough, but only on the third attempt did he really get to the heart of the matter.

“Is this a prank?” he asked, looking at his wife.

Cadance shrugged. “If it is, it’s not very funny. I’d except it isn’t, based on what little I know of Rainbow’s sense of humor.”

Armor looked stunned. “So she is seriously asking guidance from you with a ménage á trois, the likes of which you usually find for a couple of bits in those stands at train stations?”

“Why she shouldn’t be asking from me?

“No, don’t take it that way… I’m wondering why she’d be asking this from anypony?”

Cadance’s frown only deepened. “Why shouldn’t she?”

“You read the letter, right?” After her nod, he continued: “It practically solves itself! A lovesick stallion who’s so afraid of rejection that he falls in love with another mare? A mare so shy that she falls for anypony who loves her more than she does herself? And finally Dash herself, who clearly has some weird hate-love relationship to Thunderlane? They should split up and continue like they used to, however that was. I’m sure Dash knows this, too.”

Cadance gave him the type of look she had hoped would be uncalled for now that they were married. “Is that it, then?”

Armor recognized that look well enough. “I suppose not?”

She sighed. “Dash clearly wrote this letter mostly for herself, to support the course of action she feels right. The depiction you just gave is how she sees it, or how she’d like to see it. The fact that she turned to me with this means that she does have genuine doubts, although they may be deep enough that she doesn't hear their call, but only sees what she wants to see.”

Armor looked at her with round eyes. “Oh.”

“I came to you with this mostly to see if you could spot that,” she said quietly, pulling the letter and envelope back to herself. “The situation itself is clearly complex enough to demand a full exposition, not a colored perspective like this. I’ll write her back with an offer for an encounter, in the case it really is advice that she seeks.” She turned away, and made it casually towards the door.

In Armor’s mind, a particularly long fuse burnt out. “Hey, wait! Were you just testing me?”

“Oh, don’t pretend you don’t like being tested,” she said over her shoulder, smiling playfully. “Keeps you sharp, doesn’t it?”

The door closed with a thud. For a moment, the room was quiet.

Tsak!

Author's Note

Okay, finished! What a blast! Thanks for the likes and the faves.