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Thank you.
Twilight Sparkle hopped and skipped and jumped from shelf to shelf as she organized her library with all of the devout determination and compulsion a bookworm of her caliber should ever have. Spike was running errands for stationary and the like, and a stormy day like like this was a time to revel for any librarian.
As Twilight Sparkle categorized the very last volume, which happened to be Predictions and Prophecies, she heard a particularly weak knocking on her front door. Her Equine ears could hear the tap tap tap... tap tap over the sound of pealing thunder and hailstones smacking against the windows. Once Twilight was able to climb down to the bottom floor, her horn flared and the door opened. She gasped as she took in the sight before her.
Standing in the doorway in all his decrepit glory was an elderly stallion, his coat resembling the same bright shade of blue as Rainbow Dash's own. He bore a peaceful expression that betrayed a feeling of dread or worry, but said nothing as he gazed upon the purple unicorn before him.
Twilight Sparkle stepped to the side as to make way for him, but he did not move an inch. He asked in a somewhat labored voice, "Miss Twilight Sparkle?" The hailstones that were now accompanied by plump, icy water droplets did not seem to phase him as he stood out in the storm. Twilight Sparkle could see that it was indeed a very stormy day. Dark, oppressive thunder clouds covered every inch of the sky, making it exceedingly dark for how early it was in the evening.
"Yes, sir," Twilight Sparkle said, now feeling somewhat worried. This stallion is going to freeze if he doesn't come inside. "Would you like to-"
He cut her off, not seeming to be trying to be rude. "Do you know my daughter? Rainbow Dash?" He stood in the same spot, his limbs shaking either from the bitter cold or the burden of his many years. Twilight suspected it to be both.
"Yes, I do," Twilight replied. She tried again. "Would you like to come in?"
The cyan earth pony took one hesitant step into the tree house and looked back into the sky behind him. He continued into the library, and as Twilight closed the door behind him, he asked, "Do you know where she is?"
Twilight nodded, her expression one of grim curiosity. "She's supposed to be heading right this way any moment after helping the other weather Pegasi." Twilight's horn flared once more as she handed him a towel, which he politely turned down.
"Miss... Twilight? I don't mean to be so impolite as to come into your home and bombard you with questions, but I have a request I hope that you will not refuse. May I sit?" He gestured toward a cushioned chair.
"Please do." Twilight pulled her own chair underneath her as he took his own sea, waiting for the stallion to speak.
"I don't take you for a fool, Twilight. You can tell that I'm not in the best of conditions." He gave a weak laugh as he adjusted himself in his seat. "It is very likely that I am going to pass away on any of the coming days. It could even be today." He paused, staring hopefully at the front door. Twilight began to feel uncomfortable with the silence and looked to him as if to speak, but he caught her discomforted expression and continued. "I was not always there for Rainbow Dash, you see. For all my life, I've been so conservative, so protective... Too protective for a fiery mare like my Rainbow Dash," he said with a smile. "Her mother was always the one that would fly with her and go and do things with her, and I would simply sit back and watch, happy to see her soaring high above everypony else in more ways than one."
Twilight had wondered why Rainbow Dash never spoke of her father. She watched this stallion tear up in front of her, and she could tell that he loved Rainbow Dash with everything that he was. "I don't mean to be rude, either, but if you've come to see Rainbow Dash, then why have you come to my library?"
The stallion immediately looked at the floor between his hooves, his face now bearing an expression that Twilight perceived to be none other than that of shame. "I... I'm told by many ponies on Ponyville that you're particularly gifted with magic. Actually, I came here first because I could never get over the fact that I could never fly with my daughter. What I came to ask was: Could you... Cast a spell to make me fly?"
Twilight began to understand why he seemed so desperate. He wants to fly with his daughter once before he goes... I can't say 'no' to him. "I could try." A look of hope and relief spread itself across the stallion's visage as he rose to his hooves. She could tell that he was trying to conceal what youth he had left, but he was not doing a very good job of it.
"Thank you, Miss Twilight." He hung his head and closed his eyes, not knowing what to expect. He opened one of his purple eyes and peeked out at Twilight, who was hanging her head just as he was. Her horn began to glow as there was a knock on the door. tap tap tap
"Twilight? Can I come in?" Neither Twilight or her guest moved as her horn flared even brighter. He simply grinned, and as Twilight gritted her teeth, transparent blue wings began to wriggle their way out of the stallion's back where they should be.
Tap tap tap. "Twilight? Are you in there?"
Twilight looked through one eye at the door, and then closed it to finish the spell. As a finishing touch, Twilight gave the stallion some strength of her own so that he would be able to use his entire body. I just hope it's enough... It's only temporary.
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫
Rainbow was in disbelief. Only moments before, she had been flying alongside her father and his translucent, cyan wings... And now she held him on a tempest peak as the life slowly drained away from him. How long she had held him, she did not know. His voice roused her from her sorrow induced stupor.
"Rainbow Dash," he said.
"Y-Yes, dad?" Rainbow Dash was going to cry. She knew it.
"I'm sorry I-"
"Dad, you don't need to say it, you don't-"
"Rainbow Dash, I do. Every time you would go with your mother to fly, I would try and keep you with me, and I fought it every inch of the way until I finally couldn't take it anymore, and I left. I just left, and there's no excuse for that. I-"
"Dad-"
"Rainbow, listen to me! Every-" a fit of labored coughing interrupted him, and he sounded horrible. He continued whispering over the sound of the rain and thunder between fits of hacking. "Rainbow Dash, I was selfish, and I lived that way for so many years, and it blinded me! I never realized the only thing I wanted." He closed his eyes and then opened them, smiling weakly up at the daughter he loved so much.
Rainbow Dash could hardly speak. "Y-Y-Yes?" Her tears fell onto her father's face inside the veil of her soaking mane.
"Rainbow... I never really wanted you to stay on the ground with me. I wanted you to soar in every aspect of you life; Not just the sky. I want-" He started coughing again, and Rainbow Dash was already sobbing. "I want you to be happy without me. I want-"
"Dad-!"
"I want you to fly. I want you to fly faster, higher, and farther than you ever thought you could, and I want you to be happy. I want you to shine in the colors you were born with. Promise me." He reached up and touched her cheek with his hoof.
Rainbow Dash, through gritted teeth, sobbed: "I promise, dad. I'll do everything bigger and better than everypony else, and I'll fly higher than anypony else, even if I have to pull Equestria up with me. Dad... I..." She buried her face in his chest. "l-love you, daddy, I do!"
"I love you too, Rainbow." As Rainbow Dash sobbed into her father's chest, as the thunder boomed, and as the rain pelted down on her back as hard as ever, she felt an unbelievable sense peace come over her as she felt her father petting her mane. She hadn't felt that since he held her as a filly.
The rainbow mare held her father in the rain until she lost track of time, happy to be in the arms that held her so protectively as a child... Until his hoof ceased to comb through the strands of her mane. She raised her head and opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again in grim understanding. As she searched his face for a sign of life, she found that he was indeed at peace. A smile had spread itself across his face, and he looked as happy as he had ever been as the wind blew the rain sideways over him. Only his face was shielded from the relentless downpour, warded away by Rainbow's mane.
Rainbow Dash never knew how long she stood on the ridge, looking over the stallion she had abhorred as a filly, and the stallion she now missed so much. It was as if a hot coal had settled into her heart and had no intent of leaving.
Still, Rainbow was strong. She knew she could let her grief overcome her when she was in the arms of her friends, but not yet. Her father would not receive a burial this day, but Rainbow would sooner part with her wings than part with her father without giving him the sendoff that the world's greatest dad deserved.
Maintaining as much of her stoic, tomboyish demeanor as she could, Rainbow hovered above her father, the gusts of her wings stronger than that of the gales that blew past. With each beat, she could see the skin of his cheek depress as the air pushed against it. She gave him the most reverent of salutes, and with a crack in her voice, she whispered, "Daddy." With that, she rose vertically at a snail's pace through the hale stones that continued stinging her face and wings. She ascended higher and higher until her father was naught but a speck beneath her. And then she dropped.
The Rainboom she was attempting would have killed even the most seasoned of pegasi stallions, but Rainbow Dash was the best flyer in Equestria, and her father had raised her better. She would shift all of her weight when she was only fifty feet above her father and turn ninety degrees and zip off toward Ponyville, leaving him with the sharpest, loudest, and brightest Rainboom she would ever make.
Closer.
"For you, Daddy," she said through gritted teeth.
Closer.
"For me."
Before Rainbow Dash could blink ten times in the might of the icy blizzard, her father was already too far behind her for her to see. She spread her wings at the last moment and shot past the expanding nova of colors that illuminated the earth and Sky for miles around, but could not hear a thing. All she knew was that her father had been given the best memorial a pony could ask for, and that was all that mattered.
She flew beneath Cloudsdale, nearly wrenching the towers and paths from the clouds they were lodged in. She knew she should be sad. She knew she should be bawling her eyes out, as she well would be soon enough... But for the next few seconds, she could feel nothing but the icy high winds across her back and the love of her father keeping the chill at bay.
"Thank you, Daddy..."
I wrote sixty words of this story a month ago. Now, it's 1:50 AM, and I've finished it in about 20 minutes of nonstop typing. I don't even remember what I just wrote, I'm SO tired, but oh well. I hope it was good. If not, I don't mind. I can't even see straight right now, I'm so exhausted. Thumbs up, maybe? (Oh, Celestia, I'm about to sleep like a rock)
Actual word count: 2012 words.
