Dripping.
The sound of water dripping, drop by drop, down the edge of the metal pipe and into the rippling puddle below.
I’m five hundred feet in the air.
Four hundred.
Three.
Where does the horizon end and the sky begin?
I don’t know. I wouldn’t know.
For me, up is down and down is up.
The ground rapidly approaches. I should spread my wings.
Or maybe not.
We’ll see.
* * * * *
“Twilight!” I shouted, banging on the window to her room on the top story of the library. I could see her in her bed through the glass, sleeping on her side and facing away from me. “It’s almost time! Get up already!” I continued to bang on her window.
The sun had just risen, and I had just finished my aerial exercises for the morning. Corkscrews, nosedives, loop-de-loops, figure eights, barrel rolls--everything and anything you can name, and things that don’t even have names. Not yet, anyways. I don’t normally get up this early, and I’m a pony who values her sleep. But today? Today was going to be special.
“Come o-o-on!” I shouted. “If you sleep any later, we’re going to miss it!” Twilight didn’t budge. The sea blue blanket covering her chest rose and fell at a steady pace, and Spike was sleeping just as soundly she was in his little bed next to hers. “You agreed to come!”
This wasn’t working. I needed Twilight for today. If she wasn’t there, everything I did so far would have gone to waste. The hours--no, days--of planning. Of practicing. Of goading and nagging Twilight into agreeing to coming. Today was the Alabaster Angel, a competition for non-professionals like me. Not major league stuff, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Twilight would see me in action.
I barged through her front door and flew up to her room, then pulled the covers out from under her arms. “Wakey, wakey!” I shouted.
Twilight grumbled, reaching for the sheets. Upon not being able to grab them, she rolled away, facing her back to me and rolling up into a fetal position. Light shined through the window, letting her hair gleam in the morning sun.
How cute. I couldn’t help but smile.
“C’mon, Twilight,” I said, gently rocking her back and forth. “It’s time to get goin’.”
Twilight scrunched her muzzle. She opened her eyes to a narrow slit, then shut them tight again. “If it’s the latest Daring Do book you want,” she said, “I told you, it’s coming on Thursday.”
“No, Twilight!” “The flight competition’s today!”
Even after all I did, Twilight did not seem very interested in the Alabaster Angel. I asked her, “Hey, wanna check out my flight competition? It’ll be totally awesome!” and she replied with a simple, “No thanks.”
“Hey, wanna check out my flight competition? There’ll be commemorative books and stuff!”
“Sorry.”
“Hey, wanna check out my flight competition? I hear Soarin’ll be signing copies of his new autobiography!”
“Ooh, I’d love to, but...”
In the end, I agreed to going to a public poetry reading with her so she’d come with me. She’s the bookish type, so I guess that it’d only be natural for her to want to go to something like this. In about a week from now, we’d be listening to something about the tortured soul of a pony born and raised in the darker parts of Manehatten. Her explanation of the event went soaring over my head, and the poems she quoted flew even higher.
For now, it didn’t matter. For now, it was just going to be me, her, and about a hundred other ponies drawing condensation trails in the sky with the tips of our wings or watching us from the ground below. That is, if we could arrive in time for it.
“Sorry, Twilight,” I said. With a heave and a grunt, I backed up by a few paces, then jumped up and down onto Twilight’s bed, bouncing her off the bed and onto the wooden ground below, where she landed with a thud.
She got the message clearly enough. Like a mother leading her sleepy child through her morning rituals, I helped Twilight, who was still half-awake and disoriented, brush her hair, eat her breakfast, and walk out the door. She told Spike to watch the library while we were gone, and the purple baby dragon gave us a salute as he sat at the table while messily eating a bowl of honey oat cereal and drinking a glass of orange juice.
The Alabaster Angel only came once a year, and luckily for me, it was just in the next town over, Fillydelphia. It’s a small place, like Ponyville. We boarded the train and arrived in Fillydelphia within a couple hours. Twilight, still tired, took a short nap on the train. I, on the other hoof, wondered if my practice would pay off. From the train, we headed straight to the Fillydelphia Oval Gardens, where the competition was being held.
The Gardens looked like a giant egg as its name suggested if you stared down at it from high above, and like the bottom half of a giant egg if you looked at it from the side. It was about the size of three Canterlot Castle Ballrooms if they were put side to side, and it had no roofing of any sort, making it perfect for today’s competition. Tall white pillars lined the entrance to the Gardens along stone walkways to the Gardens, spreading out from the Gardens in all directions like tentacles from an octopus. Between these walkways were soft grassy patches with a bunch of different kinds of flowers growing all over the place, and the sky above glowed a soft cerulean blue.
We passed through registration at the front gates--I got a number, and Twilight got an audience pass. She wouldn’t be with me with the performance. Of course not--she couldn’t fly. When we parted ways, though I caught a glimpse of her ticket. Section B, row 4, seat G. I’d know exactly where she was, even if I was flying from above. Twilight was here, and I was here. Today was going to go just perfectly.
A/N: This is the last chapter. Unfortunately, that’s what happens when you go into a fic with neither a plan nor the ability to wing it, I suppose. Sorry to disappoint, but I did say to leave your expectations at the door.
It seems so silly, really--that something as small as this would do so much damage.
It’s like a loose bolt in a bridge, I guess. One loose bolt and one garbage cart rolling over it, and you have a broken bridge and a very unhappy and filthy cart puller.
Or maybe it’s like a snowball, rolled down a hill covered with fresh snow. As it rolls down, it builds up snow, eventually bowling over some poor unsuspecting pony at the bottom.
And right now, that unsuspecting pony and cart puller is me.
Two hundred feet and falling.
I look around as my limbs and hair flop about in the brisk winds. The crowd is in shock. Some mothers are holding hooves over their kids’ eyes. Twilight’s just sitting in her seat, jaw slightly slacked open.
I messed up, and I messed up bad.
Everything was supposed to be perfect. Everything was supposed to go to according to plan. The waterworks, the pipes, the architecture, the clouds, Twilight--all carefully pieced together after weeks of brainstorming, conceptualizing, designing and redesigning, practice, testing, and--
None of it matters now.
Dripping, drop by drop. The tank is full. It’s been full for a while now, and it’s overflowing onto the grass below it.
One hundred feet and falling. I try to open my wing, and--Ow! Still can’t do that.
I look up--no, down. It’s getting too close. There’s nothing more I can do.
I close my eyes and take the plunge.
* * * * *
“...And now our next contestant, Rainbow Dash!” announced the announcer as I stepped out onto the grassy field covering the center of the stadium. It was about the size of a football stadium, but the stands went taller and in the center of the stadium sat a massive cylindrical glass water tank about thirty feet tall, slowly filling with water.
I had it set up there, of course, and it was going to be my big finisher.
The stadium was wide, and all of the seats were filled. The seats were like giant steps, going around all around the giant oval. I had it all planned out. First, I’d dazzle the crowd with a few basic tricks. Corkscrews, loops, drops, sharp turns, maybe some flying between pillars. After that, I’d spiral my way up high into the sky, leaving a rainbow cone in my wake. Then, I’d sit on a cloud, jump off, and just dive. I’d land into the tank, make a giant splash while at the same time pull off a Sonic Rainboom.
And then with the first place trophy in my hooves, I’d tell Twilight that I loved her, and she’d say that she loved me back. It’d be perfect.
I smiled, and then I looked up. Only a few clouds. Sparse winds. Bright blue sky.
I looked around. In the rafters all around me sat hundreds and hundreds of ponies of all ages cheering for me, eating their popcorn, waving their flags, excited and waiting for me to act. I couldn’t let them down. And in one certain seat to my right was a certain lavender unicorn, smiling brightly and waving a hoof back and forth in the air.
I definitely couldn’t let her down.
With that, I took off into the air. “And she’s off!” screamed the announcer over the speakers. Wind whistling through my wings, I soared above the stadium as I executed my plan. I practiced too long and too hard to fail now.
I flew high into the air. I started off with some standard tricks, with a loop into barrel roll into some other stuff, then as I captured the attention of the crowd, I started the real part of my routine. A Buccaneer Blaze immediately followed by a Captain’s Cutlass, then a Crow’s Nest for good measure. The crowd went wild, of course.
So the time to finish off my act came, and I flew up high, high above the clouds. I was going to dive down into the tank while performing a Sonic Rainboom, letting the drops turn to mist in the air and letting me make a Double Rainbow all the way across the stadium.
And then it happened.
At the top of my climb, my wing cramped up.
It was probably because I spent all that time practicing in the morning. I prepared too much, and in doing so, I flew too high. And now I’m falling.
* * * * *
Sitting on a bench, I shiver in the locker rooms as I pull a towel tight around myself, watching the other contestants carry out their ribbons and trophies and crowns. I sigh.
A knock comes at the door. “Rainbow Dash?” said a voice on the other side. It’s Twilight’s. “I’m coming in now, okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” I say gloomily.
“How’re you holding up?” she asks as she slowly walks into the room. “Feeling better?”
“Not really.” I look down at the ground. “It’s just that I was looking forward to today for so long, and I totally blew it.” I sigh. “The judges took off all the points I earned just because of that last flop. And worst of all, I didn’t get to pull off the trick I worked on for so long!”
Twilight floats a piece of paper in front of me. “Oh, don’t worry, Rainbow!” she exclaims.
“What’s this?” I take the paper.
“It’s a poster for another flying competition in Hoofington. It’s only a couple days away from here, and it starts in a few days. If we take the train there now, we should make it in time for you to register!”
I dry myself off with the towel. “But Twilight, what about your poetry thing? I thought you were looking forward to that!”
“Well, I was, but then I saw how disappointed you were with this whole Alabaster Angel thing. So I saw this and thought, hey, why not? We’d have to stay in a hotel for a few nights, but it should be fine.”
I beam. Another chance with Twilight, and I get to stay with her in the same room for a few nights?
She notices my wide smile, and returns it with one of her own. “Feeling better now?”
I chuckle. “Yup.”
