Calcifer.

Today, for some reason, looked more beautiful than it ever had in the history of days.

It was nearing the end of Summer.

Painted clouds swam lazily in the sky; their bodies churning, creating graceful anomalies of cumulonimbus and stratus clouds, which layered on top of each other like two brother foals wrestling in a prairie.

The boisterous beings flew miles from their creators in Cloudsdale, glided over Ponyville, and floated into the forest called Everfree, where they became free spirits.

Dark grey and angelic white mixed; precipitation stewed inside the sky lakes, Celestia's sun's ever-radiant light creasing halo rings around the outsides; making the grey seem darker, and the white seem almost holy.

Translucent rays eked in between the crevasses of the clouds, creating shining showers of light that elegantly dived to the land below, and waltzed slowly with the shadows across Equestrian lands.

The weather was a perfect masterpiece of Pegasi hooves.  An amity in the sky, between light and shade.

Best of all, the rain was to stay put inside their billowing masters, until they reached the boundaries of the forbidding forest that neighbored Ponyville.

Peace.  An unfamiliar, new kind of peace settled the town.  The air smelt faintly of roses, which the citizens of Ponyville clearly, and diligently, took note of.  The atmosphere felt acutely feather-like, as if a massive tsunami of overwhelming gentleness and love washed over the land, and embraced it.  The usual bustling of heavy working ponies dulled to soft murmur of activity.  It was a new kind of Ponyville, beyond the standards of the harmony that the town is known for.

T'was a Saturday, and by far, by all means, perfect...

*

Twilight, Fluttershy, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Spike, and Apple Jack laid on their blanket looking up, staring at the sky, making out the shapes of the clouds. They all agreed to a meet up behind Fluttershy's cottage earlier that day.  The weather was just too beautiful to not enjoy with friends.

"Oh, that cloud looks like a...a"

"A sparrow?"  Interjected AJ, completing Fluttershy's sentence.

"Yes, exactly!  A sparrow."

"I don't know, it kind of looks like a weird tube with trees coming from it's back." A certain purple mare added.

"Your looking at it all wrong Twilight."  Rainbow smirked, "Turn your head sideways a bit."

Twilight tilted her head slightly to the right.  "Well now it looks like a duck with lightning shooting out it's back."

The six ponies and dragon stared at her for a second, then broke into laughter at how ridiculous that sounded.

***

"Run, run fast Colgate run faster, it might still get me.  Oh Celestia, what is that thing?  What was that word that it said that... that... blue fire?  How was it on two legs?  It nearly killed me!  I need to get home! No!  I gotta tell everypony about this thing, THEY'RE IN DANGER! Oh dear, whats happening? Run RUN! RUN!!!"  The blue mare quickly glanced behind herself; nothing present, but nothing was always something.  The monster could still be following her.  Colgate looked forward to regain her... BAM!  The mare felt a sudden, excruciating blow to her head.  She bounced backwards.  Her vision became simultaneously blurred.  Colgate landed on her back; a large rock protruding from the ground met with the hind of her head, pounding forcefully into her fall.  She looked up and could see the bleary greens of the tree's canopy, that hung above her like a blanket of shaky emerald flakes.  The ground was hard, but soft at the same time.  She could feel a gentle breeze brushing against her coat, lulling her to sleep.  Peripheral vision was blackening.  Colgate was slipping into unconsciousness. Life somehow seemed to go in slow-motion, but at the same time things were happening so fast.  A ray of sunlight broke between two clouds, illuminating her body, warming her.  "Help..."

***

"You guys sure it wont take long?"  Twilight asked from the blanket.

"Of course you silly filly, me and Rarity here will get that lemonade mix before you can say Kalamazoo!"

"Uh huh..."

Rarity chimed in in her evermore regal accent, "Oh, don't you worry yourself darling.  Pinkie and I wont be long, it shall only be a ten minute trot."

"Okay, we'll just be around here then." The purple mare responded.

Pinkie jumped infront of Twilight, startling her a bit, "Hey, if we can can we get pink lemonade?"

Fluttershy lifted her head up and spoke softly, "There's a PINK lemonade?"

"YEAH!"

"Whats it taste like?"

"LEMONADE!"

Fluttershy became confused at her response, "What makes it pink?"

"PINKIE MAGIC!"

"Oh..."

Twilight rolled her eyes, "I'll tell you later Fluttershy.  I guess that we'll be seeing you in a little bit then."

The purple unicorn laid her head back down and shut her eyes, joining the other five in a nap.  Pinkie and Rarity left their friends sleeping on the picnic blanket while they started off towards town.

LEMON-ADE, LEMON-ADE.

SWEET AND TASTY, SWEET AND TASTY.

LEMON-ADE, LEMON-ADE.

MADE WITH LEMONS! MADE WITH SUGAR! JUST DON'T FORGET TO ADD THE WATERRRR!!!

"Pinkie, darling.  You must relax, we're here."  Rarity said, looking up at her friend hanging upside down from the top of a high lamppost.

"Hold that thought Rarity." Pinkie said before taking a deep breath in.

LLLLLLLEEEEEEEEMMMOOOONNNNNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADE!!!!!! ...yeah.

At the end of her chorus, Pinkie jumped off of the lamppost, landing next to Rarity with ease.

"How'd ya like my song?" She asked.

"It was lovely Pinkie, now where is Lemon Squeeze's stand?"

Pinkie squinted her eyes and placed her right hoof over her forehead, shifting her head from left to right smoothly, surveying the market place.

"There!" She exclaimed, pointed her hoof at a far off stand with a large lemon on the top.

"Oh dear, that's so far away."  The white unicorn moaned.

"It's okay Rarity, you just sit your whiny hindy down and I'll go get the mix!"  The pink pony exclaimed, and with that she bounced off into the crowd of unusually low toned townsponies.

"Wait..."  Rarity mumbled looking at her friend jumping up and down towards the lemonade stand.

"ARE YOU SUGGESTING THAT I'M WHINY!?"

Pinkie neared Lemon's stand.

"Hi Lemons!!!"  She yelled over to the yellow Earth colt.

"Well good afternoon Pinkie, how's it going?" Lemon responded.

Pinkie stopped infront of the booth where her friend Lemon Squeeze sold lemonade, mix and other lemon products.  Lemon Squeeze was about the same age a Pinkie, and had just moved to Ponyville about a couple of months ago.  Since then he made a lot of friends in town, he was quite a popular pony.

"I'm doing AWESOME!  How's business today?"

"Pretty steady.  Can't complain.  How's the bakery?"

"Oh, it's going well.  Mr. and Mrs. Cake are trying to make a new type of cake that Mr. Cake found the recipe for in the attic.  He says that it's his Grandmother's super secret extra yummy yum yum cake.  IT SOUNDS DELICIOUS! Doesn't it?"

Lemon chuckled a little at how Pinkie cheerily pronounced "yummy yum yum."

"That certainly does sounds delicious Pinkie Pie, maybe when Mr. and Mrs. Cake finish maybe me and you could... oh uh..."

"Could... what?" Pinkie asked quizzically, tilting her head left a bit, burrowing her brow under the other.

"Oh uh... EAT!  Yes eat some, uh, of the cake I mean, uh..."

The yellow colt stammered, trying to regain his since of vocabulary.

"Lemons... are you asking me out on a... date?"

"Oh... uh..uhmmm..."

Lemon's blue eyes shifted down in embarrassed, the yellowness in his cheeks made the blushing red seem more pungent.

Pinkie smiled at him, he looked so innocent.

"GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!"  Exclaimed a voice from beside the pink pony.  The brown colt ran right into Pinkie, knocking her down, running off back in the direction he was steering as if his life depended on it.

"Pinkie are you okay!?" Lemon exclaimed, running around his stand to get to downed pony.

Pinkie looked up to find Lemon Squeeze staring at her with a worried expression on his face.

"What happened?  Who ran into me?" She asked.

Lemon looked at the direction where the brown colt ran to, seeing that quite a few ponies were trotting the same way as well.

"It... it looked like Dr. Whooves."

Lemon helped Pinkie get up, being gentle to not hurt her in any way.

"Is he okay?  He must have been in a REALLY big... Why is everypony gathering over there?"  Pinkie said pointing to a growing crowd off to the right.

"I don't know whats going on, we should go find out."

Pinkie and her friend Lemons go off to join the crowd, hoping to enlightened why Dr. Whooves ran into Pinkie.

The crowd was growing larger and larger with exasperated ponies, most on the ground, some in the air.

"Get out of the way!  Stay away, let Big Mac through!"

Dr. Whooves was barking orders to the crowd to move, obviously being protective of his friend/assistant on Big Mac's back.

The crowd was compliant, molding a path to help get an unconscious blue pony to the hospital as quick as possible.

"What happened!?" Asked a pony in the crowd.

Big Macintosh strained underneath the weight of the pony on his back, but answered the crowd honestly, "Ah found her... under a... tree near the edge of mah... orchard."

"Is she okay?  Is she dead?"

"No... she ain't dead she's.... sleepin'"

Dr. Whooves walked besides Mac, trying to talk to Colgate, trying to wake her up, but to no avail.

"Is she gonna be okay?" Another pony in the crowd asked.

"She'll be fine if ah... get'r ta tha hospital... soon."

"THEN TROT FASTER!" Yelled the Doctor.

"If ah trot any faster than ah am right now ah might hurt her more!"  Mac retorted with a full breath.

"Somepony go get help from the hospital!" A voice hollered.

A mint unicorn green mare started galloping ahead of Mac and Dr. Whooves, towards the hospital.

"Doctor..." Colgate opened her eyes slightly, looking at Dr. Whooves.

Somehow moving, but not walking at the same time.

Dr. Whooves turned to his friend being carried by the red Earth colt.

"Colgate, are you okay?  What happened?"

"There's a..."

Colgate fell back asleep, not completing her sentence.

"Colgate!  COLGATE!!!"  The Doctor was slapping his assistant softly to try and wake her back up.

"Quit slappin' her, she's already got good sized bruze on her head."  Big Mac retorted.

Dr. Whooves noticed the injury on Colgate's head, and immediately focused on keeping up with the red colt.

His eyes started watering.  How could this be happening?

His friend was injured and he could do nothing but walk next to her.

Whoever hurt her was going to pay.