For most pegasi, the gentle flurry of snowflakes would have been seen as an art form. The little crystals didn't seem to fall so much as drift in a vaguely downward direction, softly caressed by the smallest of breezes. There was just enough crisp cold in the air to allow snow at all, not so much a bite as a nudge against the flanks: the promise that while winter was coming, in spite of all previous evidence, it would be possible to enjoy it. Ponies could caper about in such a snowfall, spirits boosted by the promise of the season and a deliberate blackout of all the memories which had come from the previous editions. Within the peaceful composition, it was possible to dream of winter as simply being a place to host what was coming up, approaching fast, as if the season would end at the same moment the holiday did, with spring a mere Wrap-Up behind. And for Rainbow, it was exactly like being inside a musical snow globe.
Shaken.
Tossed.
No control.
No way --
She glared at the holiday traffic on the streets beneath her. Not one of the ponies comprising it took any notice. This offended her on several levels, none of which she cared to think about.
Oh, they had noticed her efforts, some of them. Praise had drifted up from those streets, as ephemeral and fleeting as the flakes themselves, scant moments of very temporary attention paid towards the weather and, with one -- possibly two -- not that it mattered, anyway -- there might have even been the briefest of expressed thoughts regarding the effort required to create it.
Not that such actually came out as being complimentary.
"So how long do you think she overslept before doing this?"
"This time of year? With the Sun being raised so late? If she's even still here, then I'll give you even odds she's still in bed and this just blew in from the Everfree on its own!" And a giggle. "Or the rest of the weather team decided to do it all without her -- again..."
And they would trot on, laughing to themselves while continuing to take no notice of Rainbow's steaming form hovering above them.
It was unfair on so many levels. She'd gotten up on time with the rest of the team, labored for hours before that too-late Sun-raising in order to create the conditions which all those ponies were so quick to mostly overlook. And if they did notice? Using it as an excuse to mock her, after nearly a year and a half spent as a Bearer and all the things she'd personally done -- well, done with the others, but it wasn't as if that mattered to any of those ponies either -- to keep Ponyville and the realm safe?
It was offensive. Or would have been on pretty much any other day. But on this one... there was another sound which had Rainbow's attention, and it was far more irritating than any stupid commentary on her well-earned rest ever could have been. There were multiple sources of that sound: some stable, some traveling, a few flying through the air around her. None of that truly mattered, because at this point in the season, it seemed to come from everywhere. All the time. It never stopped.
Rainbow had investigated earmuffs. Plugs. Pillows piled all around her west-tilted body. (From her bedroom, it was west.) Tried to jam forehooves into ears during a hover and found that whatever idiot had designed pony anatomy (well, idiot after excepting the otherwise-perfection of her own sleek form) just hadn't figured on the need for a perfect seal. None of it did anything. The sound leaked through every time, somehow becoming magnified as it merrily bounced off each ineffective barrier, and it was happening right now and again and forever...
"We three tribes together
Huddled in the cold
Soul-bereft, the weather
Our stories end untold..."
Hearth's Warming Eve carols.
Rainbow hated them.
It was funny. She'd never realized just how much she hated them until this year. Oh, last year, there had been signs, as she'd been in Ponyville the whole time, and the settled zone seemed to have an unnaturally high percentage of spontaneous (and horrible) singers. Totally unlike Cloudsdale, which was filled with professionals and --
-- anyway, carols. They sucked. All of them. And Rainbow was the only pony on the continent who had figured that out. Trapped in Ponyville again with sound which could no longer be classified as 'music' and really needed to be switched into 'imitation goat bleating' coming from absolutely everywhere with no way out...
She wanted to flee. Head for the upper atmosphere, let the air thin out until it no longer carried sound at all, and the fact that it wouldn't be carrying oxygen either didn't seem to matter just now. Get outside the settled zone, head for fringe or wild, and the roars of cold-hungered monsters would at least provide variety, perhaps turn the perpetual illusion that the music was ripping her apart into reality. Or there was even the Diamond Dog warren to consider: surely she could find an entrance from the air -- except that when she considered what rebounds off enclosed tunnels might do to the cacophony...
Rainbow wanted to get away from it. All of it. And she couldn't.
It was exactly like being inside a musical snow globe. Right down to the invisible walls.
She had failed at several methods of distracting herself, all of which were the stupid carols' fault. Currently, Rainbow was failing at shopping.
Hearth's Warming Eve was the traditional gift-giving holiday in Equestria. It supposedly represented the pact which had been formed between the pony races once the Accords had been reached: we will give to each other freely, without threat or contract or obligation. We give of ourselves from ourselves, with no expectation of repayment or reciprocation born from oppression, orders, or demand. We give with no thought of seeing anything come back -- which makes it all the more precious when it does. They are gifts of welcome, and we pledge to always welcome each other...
Which, Rainbow decided, almost sounded fine until somepony made the mistake of setting it to music.
Shopping for gifts... Rainbow had a system. Typically, she would wander from store to store, looking over the various wares while considering how some of the best pieces might look within her own home. Every so often, she would make a small purchase (or a moderate one, or something truly spectacular) for herself because shopping was hard work and she clearly needed to be rewarded after doing so much of it. As for picking out presents for others... well, as she wandered, her subconscious was -- taking notes. All the time. Every wing flap past a store display was practically equivalent to six of Twilight's submissions to the Equestrian Magic Society and so deserved at least that much in compensation coming back.
Rainbow would just browse around all of Ponyville (and generally beyond, but it had just been Ponyville this year), making sure she was personally properly gifted for the holiday since presents of welcome sent from oneself to oneself showed a healthy level of self-acceptance and besides, she had to make sure she was covered in case a few of the several hundred hints she'd casually dropped with her friends, stuff along the lines of "You know, I just don't have a blanket which goes with my curtains any more," didn't get through. She wouldn't be thinking about buying things for anypony else -- not deliberately. Thinking was overrated. Instinct was the way to go. And that was what her subconscious would be doing: using every passive observation she made while weighing them against the things she'd sort of almost listened to during the year, until it all came together in a flash of instinct which told her exactly what everypony on her list should be getting. It could take weeks to bring that moment of insight together, along with a dozen self-intended full saddlebags -- but the process always worked out in the end.
(The fact that Rainbow's instincts generally kicked in about two hours before all of Cloudsdale's stores closed, on the night before the holiday itself, and always seemed to lead her towards the very last objects on the near-empty shelves, things coated in thick dust from years of still being rejected by ponies possessed by the heart of desperation... that was just bonus points. She could imagine the horror if her instincts had pointed her towards something which was out of stock, and always being directed towards the available just showed how truly brilliant her process was.)
But today -- or tonight, really: Sun-lowering was far too early... empty saddlebags. If any ideas were sinking into her brain, she couldn't feel them moving. Or hear them, because the stupid carols were drowning them out.
Barnyard Bargains was reasonably crowded. The store kept extended hours during the last week before the holiday (and there were but seven days to go now, seven endless days until the soundtrack of the winter would return to something which didn't make her want to hit everything around her with well-earned lightning), and it spread out the traffic a little.
Additionally, some ponies had already -- well, Ponyville was --
-- anyway, Rainbow could make her way down the aisles on hoof without bumping too many flanks, although she still felt far more confined than she was generally comfortable with. Collisions with rear-towed carts... somewhat more of a problem. Getting into the air would have solved most of it, but Mr. Rich generally asked pegasi to stay on the floor while in his shops, mostly because of complaints from other customers who felt that the ability to get that in-demand gift via swooping it out of somepony else's cart often offended, and 'land-swooper' was just about the last thing a pegasus wanted to hear around the anniversary of the Accords anyway. Rainbow cooperated, even when it made her fume all the faster and her tail flicked items off shelves without notice or care.
She looked at a grouping of scatterprisms and tried to picture how they would look if she hung them off her fountains and let them refract the light. The image wouldn't come.
"We are all ponies in the end
every heartbeat sounds a possible friend..."
It was so stupid. Mr. Rich had gramophones all over the shop, at least one on each aisle. Multiple employees scrambled about, trying to keep them wound and roughly in time with each other, which at best meant the syllables from the Perfume section arrived a breath after those from Jewelry. The same songs playing every year, from the same performers, in the same order, and somehow nopony had ever noticed that the meter in the current lines was totally off.
"The meter is totally off," Rainbow muttered, then wondered how she even knew what that meant...
...oh, right. Lyra screaming at Pinkie during one of their arguments, the dumb one which they had at least ten times a year about the delicacy of composition and performance versus whatever the Tartarus it was that Pinkie's clash of instruments kept breaking in with. That was how she knew, watching from overhead while Lyra abandoned her post in the open-air market to chase Pinkie out of the town square again, with the latter's cymbals banging all the way.
It was still a stupid thing to know.
She briefly glanced to the north. From here, it was north.
"Which meter?" asked a curious voice from behind her -- one which changed register twice in three syllables. Bon-Bon's allergies were acting up again.
Rainbow didn't bother glancing back. "Shouldn't you be in your shop?" It wasn't as if candy wasn't a perfect last-minute gift, which was why Rainbow was generally sure to pick up some for herself.
"Caramel has it," Bon-Bon said. There was a faint note of worry in that statement: Caramel liked to give things to anypony he took an interest in -- which meant that any behind-the-counter flirting came with an increasing expense in free-to-him samples. "I've got to hurry back, but we're out of taffy coloring and I can't find anything in this mess..." (This made Rainbow glance around in surprise: sure enough, she was in the appropriate aisle. So now along with everything else, the stupid music was hitting her eyes. If it went after her sense of direction, that would justify attack.) "Do you see any?"
"No," Rainbow said without looking and shuffled forward, hooves dragging from the added agony of being confined to ground with the music pressing against her coat.
Bon-Bon, apparently for lack of anything better to do, followed her. "So which meter?"
"On Ponies United," Rainbow grumped as two shoppers slipped by them. "It's like every other line doesn't match every other -- other line. And ponies have been singing it that way for centuries and nopony's noticed, bothered to try fixing it, anything, and Mr. Rich just keeps playing it all the time from those dumb gramophones where the timing doesn't match and the words just chase each other around and around and around and -- what's that called, anyway? I know there's a name for it, but I can't think of the thing with all this dumb music going --"
"A round," Bon-Bon answered.
"I just said that."
"I know," Bon-Bon replied with what seemed to be a rather odd patience for a very stupid practical joke. "That's what it's called."
"...yeah, very funny," an even-more-irritated Rainbow shot back. "Why hasn't anypony fixed it? Or better yet, stopped singing it forever, just like all the other stupid --"
"-- Lyra noticed," Bon-Bon said. "She says all anypony can do is try to slip past it as best they can. She just steps up her tempo a little on that one."
"But why not fix it?" Rainbow demanded, and shuffled forward a little more. Several glints of light harshly hit her eyes, and she welcomed them because it proved the prisms wouldn't have worked anyway.
"It's traditional."
Instantly, "Traditions are stupid."
"Sorry?"
"Somepony writes and sings something the wrong way, it's a mistake," Rainbow explained. "Somepony else sings that thing without fixing it, it's a habit. Two generations or more do it, and then it's tradition and nopony can ever fix it because if they do, it's the worst thing ever! Because you can't break tradition!" It was actually sort of nice to feel her volume increasing, even if it couldn't entirely block out the dumb out-of-meter carol. "And nopony can ever say why! Tradition isn't law -- it's worse! You can change laws! Carols are tradition, being off-meter is tradition, getting stuck in the store and having to stay on the ground while stupid off-meter carols keep going around and around and around in your head is tradition...!"
The last word had soared in the way she could not, become a full-fledged shout which took over the entire aisle and echoed through most of the store, excepting the ongoing scrum in the hotly-contested Toys section. And it still did nothing to block the off-meter carol. Only one pony could sing that dumb carol correctly, or at least make her laugh with how it came out, and she tried to hear that voice instead of the idiot singing in a dozen distorted ways from all the stupid gramophones, but it wouldn't come and --
"-- Rainbow?"
Huffily, "What?"
"...are you okay?"
"Yeah," Rainbow lied. "I'm fine." Why did the shop suddenly feel so confining? A bubble inside a bubble...
She could almost hear Bon-Bon frown -- along with the effort required to push it away. "Actually, I'm surprised you're here," the candy shop proprietor carefully said. "If you're going to make --"
Rainbow took off. There were shouts all around her, accompanied by the sounds of pony bodies desperately unhitching from carts before diving spread-griffoned over the exposed tops.
"I'm just going to the exit!" Rainbow shouted. "I'm leaving, okay? I don't want any of this stupid -- oh, Mr. Rich... right... I didn't find what I needed, I just want to get to the door and -- get out of everypony's way. I..."
The carol chased her all the way out. Twelve times over.
She could feel the snow brushing against her mane. White on red, white on green, none of it flashing into steam on contact.
Maybe if she fumed harder.
None of the stores had anything good for anypony at all. She was proving it. But the open-air market in the town square... it was keeping hours under Moon, and maybe there would be something there to take her mind off -- how stupid all the enclosed stores were. She decided to fly in that direction.
Of course, that would put her at risk of the gangs.
Music had a life of its own, but it only expressed that life through the possession of objects and ponies. For objects... some shop owners had put gramophones outside their shops, endlessly playing (between crank rewinds, anyway) in the false belief that it would get everypony into a holiday spending spirit instead of the one where... well, there were certain wondrous advantages to being a pegasus, ones Rainbow truly wished the other two races could get to experience. And then there was the fact that whipping up a wind to subtly knock a needle off the record just wasn't that subtle at all.
(Honestly, the shop owners had no reason to yell at her as loudly as they had. It wasn't as if anypony of sanity wouldn't have done the same thing, which currently seemed to mean just Rainbow.)
But at least the inanimate could theoretically be dealt with, even if doing so in the most satisfactory way would have the Weather Bureau investigating a totally-unscheduled and highly-accurate outburst of thundersnow. Ponies were more complicated, especially when it came to finding alternatives to sending lightning through them. Ponies formed gangs.
It was the fully accurate term for a wandering group of carolers and the best one anypony had ever used, even if she'd just silently come up with it a second ago and nopony had heard it yet. (If she said it aloud twice, it would probably become tradition.) Gangs extorted you. They harassed, threatened violence unless you paid them off and once you did -- they kept right on coming back to get more bits, recycling the threats along the way. And that was carolers all over. They sang at you until you donated to their chosen charity, which was probably just themselves. And once they'd discovered they could get bits out of you -- they would continue trying to do so.
Rainbow could probably escape, at least now that she'd found the actual need to. But there was only so far she could go before hitting the edge of the glass...
...and the sounds of the first gang reached her.
The music was both more and less offensive than usual. 'More' was because there were three distinct attempts within the failed effort to blend into an effective chorus, and only one had any idea what it was doing. The second voice was far too touched by accent to match with the others, while the third treated the lyrics as a fortress to besiege and whoever broke through first had won. It was a collective lack of style Rainbow had some familiarity with, having been effectively (and in the end, literally) lassoed by Applejack into attending the parent-torturing school festival, which her friend had brought her to in the name of spreading the pain around. To flee from this gang was not an act of sanity from the only pony who currently qualified, but a deed born from simple common sense, and much of the street emptied out as the trio advanced.
It was less offensive because she knew the source, and often mistakenly believed herself immune to it. Besides, they listened to her, as much as they listened to anypony. (Generally for about five seconds before carefully forgetting anything important and rushing off to their next mistake.) With adults... they were bound by tradition and would just keep on going no matter what she did, at least for those things which stopped short of blizzards and tornadoes and completely coincidental low-level electrocution. For fillies, especially those who kept trying the new no matter how many times it failed... maybe she could get them to stop.
Rainbow landed in front of them. There was plenty of space available for doing so. No other ponies were willing to get within ten body lengths,
"Squirt," she politely greeted Scootaloo. Then, "Other squirt," to Sweetie Belle, and "Farm squirt," for Apple Bloom, just so they wouldn't feel left out.
"Hi, Rainbow!" Scootaloo beamed. "We're singing!"
Sweetie Belle blushed and tried to hide behind her own mane, at a success rate of 0.0001% Fluttershy.
"I heard," Rainbow carefully offered while doing her best not to think about the reason-destroying mix she'd just heard having been described as 'singing'. "Is it for a mark?" Not that anypony other than her even had a chance of talking them out of any part of the Crusade and Rainbow had a few oddly-misplaced worries about her own chances, but...
"Naw," Apple Bloom sighed. (Sweetie blushed harder.) "We've gotta school assignment. Holiday pageant practice. An' we kinda figured we might get a few bits towards..." Her face twisted as she tried to work through the unfamiliar word. "Re-pair-ing-shun?"
"Reparations," Scootaloo crossly corrected, visibly irritated by the thought that other ponies would see the incidental (and often total) damages inflicted by the Crusade as something which required compensation. "We haven't even gotten a tenth-bit, though. Everypony just keeps leaving. Like they can't appreciate good music!"
Not that carols were 'good music', but when compared what the Crusaders usually produced... Rainbow tried not to sigh. Well, there was no point to talking them out of a school assignment: she was sure she could do it by giving them any other direction to race off in, but she didn't want to see the squirts flunk. "Better get back to it, then."
Scootaloo eagerly nodded -- then took a long, pointed look at Rainbow's saddlebags.
Oh.
Well, she'd set herself up, hadn't she? "...one," Rainbow slowly said. Surely she could keep herself from bolting that long. "I'll head-flip you something -- after one. But then I've got stuff to do."
Besides, they might go home after they were done. (West. From here, west.)
Scootaloo and Apple Bloom beamed. (Beneath the white coat, Sweetie had turned fire-red.) And then the not-singing began.
It made Rainbow long for Barnyard Bargains: at least there, the lack of synchronicity could be blamed on mechanical failure. Here, there was too much accent, too little ability, a total lack of rehearsal or caring about what that gap would do to the results -- and the only one who could sing was afraid to in public, even for an audience of one. The unicorn fllly's clear notes were half-whispered, almost entirely drowned out. The purest sound in the mix, something which almost made the carol tolerable and that would have been a miracle in itself -- but a miracle blocked by happily-belted travesty.
Rainbow, desperate for any degree of escape, focused her attention towards two-toned mane and white horn. Pitching her voice carefully, "Pick it up a little, Sweetie Belle."
The notes vanished, replacement words in full whisper. "...I can't..."
"I'm paying," Rainbow forced a smile. "What am I paying for?"
"...a -- chorus?"
"A performance," Rainbow corrected as the other two continued their relentless assault on hammer, stirrup, anvil, and rationality. "Let's hear one."
Sweetie shrank into her own withers. The other two got louder.
"Come on," Rainbow gently encouraged. "It's just you and me here, right? Nopony else is listening." Absolutely true: all the other adults had retreated out of what they saw as range, and Sweetie's friends were too wrapped up in their own ongoing travesty. "Nopony's going to say anything or criticize. Just -- let it out."
The little tremble in Sweetie's knees slowly departed, one joint at a time. When it left the fourth, the filly looked up at Rainbow, winced once, forced her mouth open -- and sang.
The notes were clear. They nearly blocked out the other two at the first moment of expression. The second breath made the other two Crusaders aurally vanish. The third took over the world.
Music sounded in that little part of Ponyville, with Rainbow the only one who cared to hear. Music became part of her, resounded deep within her, threatened to make tradition into something which almost made sense again, reached out towards those invisible walls and she could feel the cracks forming, the blockade being brought down by a siege of memory as everything she could no longer reach came towards her and it was almost enough to just stand there and remember...
Sweetie sang, and Rainbow remembered other songs, ones which became closer with every perfect note, along with the pony who had sung them. Sweetie sang, and distances were crossed. Sweetie sang, and the ground beneath Rainbow's hooves shifted towards vapor. And in the glow of the holiday illumination from the stores and prisms which were no longer offensive at all, there seemed to be a flare of light building on the filly's flanks --
"-- Sweetie!"
"Huh?"
The music stopped. The wall doubled in solidity. Wingbeats retreated to where Rainbow could no longer hear them. And dumb ground was far too cold against her hooves.
"You're out of harmony!" Scootaloo crossly insisted. "You don't sound anything like us! How are we supposed to form a chorus if we don't mirror each other?"
The blush all came back at once.
"Oh, right..." Sweetie muttered. "Sorry..."
The next effort matched the other two as precisely as possible, which probably wasn't the reason some of the lights in neighboring stores went out and no longer produced the reflection against the unicorn filly's coat, if it had ever truly been there at all.
In the end, Rainbow paid over five bits just to escape. And then, having seen (from that supposedly-safe distance) that she both had money and was willing to turn it over in the name of getting away, the other gangs closed in...
It was late by the time she reached the market. It had taken almost no time to lose the first group. Multiplying that figure by the ridiculous follow-up number had accumulated duration in a hurry.
Virtually all of the stands had been broken down: Applejack's space stood empty, with cart tracks leading away through the snow. Daisy was putting away the last of her unsold wares, a little smile on her face as she prepared to take the scant remaining blooms back to her greenhouse. Snowflake hadn't even bothered setting up his tent at all: he had been taken on earlier in the moon for an extended dam survey shift, checking for cold-induced cracks. Other ponies were home already, having a meal or wrapping gifts and doing both with --
-- and there were still carols, for Lyra had remained at her post.
The unicorn typically set up near the fountain. During most of the year, she played original compositions, trying songs out before selling the best-received ones to touring performers. The bits she received in head-flipped payment for her public concerts... she just used that to gauge reaction, and apparently had some kind of sliding scale as to how much the professionals should be charged based on what had accumulated in her instrument case. Most of the money she gathered from the market was supposedly donated to -- something: Rainbow wasn't sure just what and didn't really care right now. The point was that just about everypony had gone home or was well on the way there, the snow was still drifting down and nopony had properly thanked Rainbow for her part in that all day, everything Rainbow did was overlooked, unlike Lyra, who got bits tossed to her for what was seen as another form of art, one with ponies who actually appreciated it and said so in some form, even when that supposed art was expressed as carols, and they said it to somepony who had a place to go and a pony to be with and was still in this stupid spot playing the same dumb holiday music she played every single year because it was traditional.
Rainbow approached, the last pony to do so. It put her facing south. From here, it was more to the south.
Lyra looked up at the sound of hoofsteps. The golden eyes focused on Rainbow, while the music completely failed to stop. Green forehooves gently worked against the strings.
"Play something else," Rainbow softly said.
Lyra blinked. Winter In The Darklands vanished. Alone Together took its place.
"Something else," Rainbow harshly whispered, for only one pony was allowed to lead in Alone Together and Lyra wasn't him. She stepped closer.
Another blink, and then a smooth transition into We Three Tribes.
"Something else." Closer still.
Lyra stopped, and for a moment, Rainbow considered herself to have won.
Quietly, the soft-spoken tones which so often came when the performer was forced to switch back into words, "I don't know what you want, Rainbow."
"Something. Else."
"If you'd just make a specific request..." Lyra helplessly suggested. "I can play any of the standards --"
-- Rainbow's left forehoof stomped. Snow scattered. "No! No more standards! No more dumb carols! Play anything else, anything at all, anything from spring or summer or autumn, the starting line music for the Running, that's fine, I only hear that once a year, anything but all these dumb -- just -- something else!"
A slow blink was followed by something too close to a whisper. "How about -- the Cloudsdale city anthem?" With a little smile, "I can play you home --"
Rainbow's right forehoof instinctively slashed out.
The lyre landed six body lengths away. Three strings broke, and their death knell sounded the final music of the night.
Slowly, Lyra got up. She was a little taller than Rainbow, something the pegasus had lost track of: Lyra's postures seldom approached pony-standard and it was something which made her size difficult to judge. She was also unusually solid for a unicorn: not bulky, but built a little heavier than the standard.
She was also angry. That took an extra second to recognize, because Rainbow hadn't really seen it before, not directed at her. And didn't care.
"Explain," Lyra softly said. "Now."
"No more carols," Rainbow hissed. "Just go home, Lyra, go home already, you can go home and you're out here in the dumb snow instead, I'm doing you a favor. Go home and -- go."
But there were still carols. With the lyre silenced, Rainbow could hear them. From the stores, from the gangs, from ponies who simply felt they had to burst into spontaneous song. So many. Too many, even with so many ponies already -- and what remained echoed inside the walls, the sound building and building with nowhere to go. Just like --
"-- they don't understand," Rainbow muttered. "They have to shut up, they should all just --"
"-- Rainbow," Lyra quietly pushed in, "either you're going to explain yourself, or we are going to have a fight, and then neither of us is going home tonight --"
And then there was nothing left but the music Rainbow could no longer stand to hear.
"-- SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP ABOUT HOME! YOU DON'T APPRECIATE -- YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND -- YOU --!"
She didn't stop screaming. There was more to come, too much more, none of which she'd wanted to acknowledge, think about, do anything except resist the instinct, the one which kept making her face west and north and south and every other direction she couldn't go. But the rest of it was lost in the light, the sudden flare of corona around Lyra's horn as the unicorn's field surged through the market, radiating out for five body lengths past Rainbow's lashing tail and pawing hooves, and where the glow crossed --
-- there were no more carols.
There also were no screams, not that reached her own ears. The words died as they emerged, no vibration moving up through her skull, no sound of her own breath or heartbeat. The furious rear-back double stomp landing of Lyra's forehooves displaced snow, and that was all they did. Clouds of breath indicated life, movement showed purpose. But within the glow, that was all there was.
Every unicorn had a personal spell, a trick, something born from the core of their personality, never taught and always mastered. Lyra's was hardly ever used, only brought out during arguments which couldn't be allowed to go on any longer, or if Pinkie's total lack of musical stylings pushed that local unwilling audience over the edge...
Lyra's lips moved, the shifts carefully exaggerated to the point where Rainbow saw the silent words.
'Just shut up? Done.'
They stood within the death of sound. Lyra stared at her, body still again. Waited.
And Rainbow's tail... slowed. Stopped lashing.
There were no more carols. There was no more cheer around her, happiness she couldn't take full part in or even feel. But there was still a tug, precious instinct insisting that she not only face south, but fly that way, fly -- until she hit the wall.
Her head dipped. The first tear fell, and she had no strength left for denying it.
The field winked out. Music crashed back in, but it didn't seem important.
"Rainbow?"
"Just go home, Lyra..." Rainbow whispered. "Somepony... somepony should get to go home..."
Lyra's corona came up again at the partial level, surrounded the damaged instrument and brought it in front of her scrutinizing gaze.
She shrugged, let it float to the rim of the fountain. "You're..." struggling for words "...not usually still around at this time of year, are you? I think last year was the first time I've ever seen you in Ponyville this close to the holiday. And you're still here..." Lyra blinked. "It's the Bearers -- isn't it?"
"I..." was some residual part of the spell still going, to make her voice so soft? "...if something happens... it has to be six of us... with Discord, Spike tried, but the little guy isn't up to it yet. If it's only five... nothing happens. I thought about it last year, I thought maybe -- I could skip just once, they'd understand, but then we found out that it doesn't work without me and my whole body still knows that..."
Her hooves scraped at the snow and found no vapor there.
"South," Rainbow quietly said. "From here, home is south."
Lyra's eyes closed, and stayed that way for seven audible breaths.
"From here," the unicorn gently replied, "home is west. And north, east, south... maybe even moving towards me. I'm not sure, because I can't see it. But I know where to go... and eventually, I'll be there."
"That sounds dumb," Rainbow said, which was the only way of admitting her lack of understanding available.
Lyra managed a smile. "Home," she said, "is wherever Bon-Bon is."
Which Rainbow got. "But she's right here in Ponyville," she said. "Home is where my parents are -- and Cloudsdale is gallops and gallops away. Too far for getting back in a hurry if something happened. So I can't go. I can't ever go again, not as long as I'm Loyalty. And -- it's my family, and they were -- first. But with work, they can't come here..."
It produced a sigh from Lyra. "Torn between loyalties."
It's how Discord got me. The first year -- not so bad, or at least she'd been able to pretend it was so. But -- after the breakout from the stone shell... Luna had visited them all in their nightscapes, eventually pronounced them restored, but....
The bonds of family. The bonds of friendship. She could only choose one. Forever. And the Elements had made that no choice at all.
"Yeah," Rainbow said. "Do you -- do you ever... does anypony else ever feel like that?"
"I don't know."
Rainbow looked up. Blinked. "You don't...?"
There was a tiny smile on Lyra's face, and there was no mirth in it. "Bon-Bon is my family," she said. "Nopony else. But I'm a... special case. What about the others?"
"Others?" Not quite following.
"The other Bearers. Which way are their homes from here?"
"Rarity's northwest," Rainbow instinctively began -- then stopped. "That's friends, Lyra. They're not my parents."
Lyra took two hoofsteps back, settled her body down to the rim of the fountain. Her corona dipped into the instrument case, fetched three replacement strings. The laborious micro-adjustment process began, and threatened to continue for some time. "You've fought together," she said, not looking towards Rainbow at all. "Nearly died together, a couple of times. And you're all still together. Not blood-tied... but that's not what makes a family. They're not your --" and even to Rainbow's ears, the pause felt odd "-- parents. But... I think they're your family."
Nopony left in the market now: Daisy had fled at the first decibel increase. Nopony at all but them.
"I..." Rainbow forced a breath. "I still want to go south. I'm -- always going to want to fly south."
"I know," Lyra said, gaze fixed on her instrument. "Go northwest."
Rainbow turned.
"You have an interesting voice, do you know that?" came from behind her. "Sort of -- edged. Have you ever tried singing?"
"Not really. It's... usually stupid."
"Think about it."
Rainbow was staying low. Unfortunately, it let the music reach her, but... there was no helping that. There was no help for a lot of things.
She could feel Cloudsdale, on that instinctive level. The pull would always be there, especially at this time of year, and there would never be any way to cancel it out. But if she focused...
Did the others feel it? Rarity and Applejack would have no longing towards home: they were the only two Ponyville natives in the group, and their families were around them -- or, in Rarity's case, on the other side of town. Pinkie Pie turned to the family of her heart. Twilight occasionally mentioned her parents, and -- that was it. And Fluttershy had to have the instinct, but she was locked into ground and cottage: it was hard enough for the animal caretaker to arrange a short-term trip and she always had to worry about the chaos which might come in her absence. Spike... as with so many other things with the little dragon, there was no real way to tell, but Rainbow felt that for him, home was wherever Twilight was, or at least a sleeping basket close by.
Just her, then.
The walls would always be there, for as long as they all lived and Loyalty was needed to complete the set. Invisible to most and completely unbreakable. But... at least she was trapped inside with company.
So she could... drop by Rarity's for a while. Maybe a few other friends, too. Get dinner: surely somepony in the group had to be cooking dinner -- actually, maybe the Acres first, or Pinkie, but not Twilight because if Spike was anywhere but the library, there would be no free food of edible quality to be found there. And she wouldn't talk about the pull, or anything which came with it. She'd just concentrate on them, at least until they said something worth ignoring, or where she just had to send the conversation to a more interesting direction just to stay sane, which generally meant switching the topic to herself.
But she would ask them not to play any carols until she left. Or talk about the approaching holiday too much. Rainbow felt she'd be fine as long as she could just focus on something else for a while --
"Rainbow! Rainbow, down here!"
She glanced in that direction as her body instinctively dropped, wings flaring out for a landing. Within seconds, she had touched down in front of the beaming slim unicorn, who hadn't even bothered to put on a jacket before racing forth from the library. "Twilight? Aren't you cold?"
"I -- guess," Twilight ventured as the slender body wriggled with excitement. "But that's not important right now! I just got the scroll, and I went out to find everypony so I could tell them myself! You'll never believe what the Princess just asked us all to do!"
"A mission?" Rainbow guessed.
"Even better!"
Canterlot.
The heart of the Hearth's Warming Eve celebrations. The most expensive stores in the realm blaring the same old music at increased and totally unsynchronized volume. Gangs of carolers on every corner looking for high-end extortions, because it was Canterlot and five bits wouldn't even buy a pause. And at the end of all of it, she would have to be in the dumb play like a schoolfilly who hadn't been able to beg out in time.
Admittedly, it was the starring role. But...
Rainbow sighed as she flew home, script pressing against her right saddlebag with twenty times its actual weight.
Well, at least we'll all be in it together.
East. From here, the first group rehearsal would be east.
