A Game of Hearts

Chapters

Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth
Sixth
Seventh
First

Second

"Huh," said Applejack.

"I know." Twilight found it hard to meet Applejack's gaze. She and Rainbow had left the castle and flown straight to Sweet Apple Acres, the shaking treetops out in the east orchard telling them where their friend was working. "I'm still not sure I believe it, but—"

Rainbow snorted, the sunlight through the leaves dappling her coat. "It was completely and totally obvious."

Twilight couldn't stop a scowl. "What we saw was enough to base a hypothesis on, I'll admit. But before we can draw any conclusions, we need to—"

Another snort. "Big words, Twilight." Rainbow tapped her own chest. "I saw everything I needed to see: Big Mac and Rarity have a secret thing for each other, and that's all there is to it!"

"The evidence is entirely circumstantial!"

"You're entirely circumstantial!"

"What? That doesn't make any sense!"

"You don't make any—!"

"A-hem." Applejack didn't clear her throat: she actually said the word, and Twilight couldn't keep her ears from folding at the rumble behind it. "How 'bout we all just settle on down and pretend we're civilized, huh?"

Taking a breath, Twilight forced herself to relax into the grass, then blew the breath back out. "You're right. I'm sorry, Rainbow."

"Yeah, yeah." Rainbow shrugged and turned to Applejack. "But I'm serious, AJ! Mac and Rarity talked at the cart today for, like, twenty minutes!"

"More like five minutes," Twilight couldn't keep from interjecting.

"Ten minutes!"

"Eight at the outside."

"You saying you had a stopwatch?"

"I'm saying there's no need to exaggerate the—"

"A-hem," Applejack said again.

Twilight covered her face with her hooves. "I'm sorry, Applejack! This whole thing is just—" And before she knew what was happening, everything whirring around inside her came cascading out:

"Because I'm the Princess of Friendship, right? So why do I have such a hard time figuring out love? The two concepts ought to be related: I mean, the Princess of Love helped raise me and is now my sister-in-law! But my research so far has been nothing but inconclusive! I've been trying to expand my sample of loving couples to study—Mr. and Mrs. Cake, my parents, Cranky and Matilda—but including Cadance and Shining really seems to throw off my calculations, and whenever I try to talk to Cadance about love, she pretty much ends up telling me I've got to find it for myself!

"Worse than that, as far as I can tell, love only ends up in the 'happily ever after' resting state at the end of cheesy paperbacks and foals' tales! So why should I go looking to get involved in an experience that's probably going to leave me metaphorically bleeding from a thousand cuts? It's not like there aren't plenty of monsters out there willing to take multiple, literal bites out of me! And as much as everypony says that love's worth the chance, how can I know? How can I possibly know?"

In the silence that followed, Twilight found herself wishing her wings were shovels: digging a hole right here and staying in it for the rest of her life seemed like such an attractive idea all of a sudden.

"Okay, now, listen, sugar cube." Applejack spoke quietly and gently enough to make Twilight peer out from between her hooves. And while Rainbow was staring like Twilight had grown a second horn, Applejack had that same open smile on her muzzle that always made Twilight feel better about whatever disaster they were crashing through. "Maybe I ain't any expert on romance, but I've always looked at love like it's an apple tree."

Rainbow groaned. "Of course you have."

A flicker of annoyance tightened Applejack's face, but she went on just as gently. "Neither of 'em takes kindly to being rushed, y'see. You can't force a tree to start bearing fruit, and you can't force love to come into your life on your schedule. Just be ready for it when it's ready for you, and you'll end up with a terrific harvest."

"And besides," Rainbow said, rustling her wings, "having to dump a guy—or even getting dumped yourself—it's like you said earlier, Twi: not the end of the world. It can be bad, sure." Her voice wavered. "Sometimes real bad. But you just pick yourself up and start over. And sure, maybe you take a year or five off from the dating scene to get your head back together and maybe you put in for a transfer to another weather post and move to a different part of Equestria..." She trailed off, then she shook her head quickly and stomped a hoof in the grass. "But that's not what we're talking about! We're talking about Rarity and Big Mac! Not, y'know, anything else!"

Staring at Rainbow now, Twilight felt questions start buzzing at the back of her tongue. But she swallowed them—best to deal with one weird situation at a time, she'd found—and looked from Rainbow to Applejack. "So do you think it's possible for Big McIntosh to be attracted to Rarity?"

Applejack rubbed her chin. "More'n possible. 'Cause, sure, us Apples live a little rough out here, but we got an eye for beauty." Her gaze seemed to lose focus. "A hard day of apple-bucking, and a body might just wanna come home to a little sweetness and tenderness, I reckon, a little kindness and—" She blinked, her eyes widening and snapping back to meet Twilight's. "And Rarity can be all them things, right? To Mac's way of thinking, I mean. Since he ain't as familiar as the rest of us with what a gol-durn nightmare she is mosta the time."

Rainbow’s cough might actually have been a laugh, but Twilight couldn't decide before Rainbow reached over and poked her in the shoulder. "And that, Twi, is what dating's all about. You get a glimmer that's maybe gold, but you've gotta dig around some, brush the dirt off and see what's really there before you can know for sure." She turned to face Applejack. "But was that what we saw in the market, y'think? Mac asking Rares out on a date? Or would he be more likely to do the whole flowers and candy and poems thing first?"

A twinkle lit Applejack's eye. "Maybe she was asking him."

"Hey, now." Rainbow's eyebrows went up. "That's totally possible."

Twilight tried to stop her ears from going back. After all, every study she'd read concluded that it was just as acceptable for a mare to approach a stallion romantically as it was for a stallion to approach a mare, but the romance novels she'd been examining over the past few years seemed to imply that it was incumbent upon the stallion to make the first move. Why that should be, she'd never understood: mares took the lead in so many aspect of Equestrian life that it didn't make sense to say that in this one area, they shouldn't—

"And what?" Applejack asked, startling Twilight out of her thoughts. Had she missed a turn in the conversation? But, no: Applejack was still looking at Rainbow. "You want me to jump Mac soon as he gets back from market, hog-tie him, and find out if'n he's hitting on Rarity?"

"No!" Rainbow glared for a moment, then shrugged. "I mean, yes, but maybe without the hog-tying."

That made Twilight's mane rustle a little. "Look, Rainbow." She reached out and touched her friend's hoof. "I know you want to help Rarity, and I want to help her, too. But this is starting to feel like we're getting into 'none of our business' territory."

"All right, all right!" Rainbow gave a big enough flap that she rose an inch or two into the air before drifting back onto the grass. "We'll ask Rarity instead of Mac! Will that make you happier?"

Applejack nodded. "Reckon it'll be easier. Getting more'n a trickle of words outta Mac's like milking a pig: you can do it, but neither you nor the pig's gonna enjoy it much."

"Fine!" More flapping brought Rainbow into a hover. "Let's just head over to Fluttershy's, then!"

"Fluttershy?" Applejack's eyes widened. "What'cha wanna get her involved for?"

"Well, duh." Rainbow slid forward and tapped Applejack's forehead. "Nopony knows Rarity as well as she does, so we'll need her along if we wanna get the truth."

Twilight stood, but Applejack got to her hooves more slowly. "I dunno, RD. Thursday afternoons, Fluttershy's kinda busy working with the raccoons 'long the west edge of Whitetail Woods." She squinted at the sun. "Might be we'll catch her afore she leaves, though: them critters don't usually get to stirring till pretty late in the day."

"Okay!" Rainbow clapped her front hoofs together. "When I get there, I'll tell her to wait! But you guys get a move on, and we'll start getting to the bottom of all this!" She swooped away in the direction of Fluttershy's cottage.

"Rainbow!" Twilight called, but by then, even her multi-colored contrail was starting to dissipate in the crisp, blue autumn sky.

"Yep." Applejack pushed her hat back. "That gal don't often get an idea in her head, but when she does, nothing short of a landslide'll shake it loose."

"I suppose." With a sigh, Twilight started between the apple trees, Applejack falling into step beside her. "This whole romance thing sure came out of nowhere, though. Except it sounded like she was saying—" She turned to Applejack. "You've known her longer than I have, AJ. Do you know why she left Cloudsdale and came to Ponyville?"

Applejack shrugged. "She tol' me once that, what with the wild storms that come outta the Everfree, Ponyville's the toughest assignment for weather ponies in all of Equestria. Soon as she heard that, she said, she marched right into Weather Central and asked 'em to send her here." She turned a grin toward Twilight. "She said this assignment was the best birthday present she ever got."

Twilight couldn't help grinning back. "That sounds like Rainbow. I mean, it sounds more like her than that she moved here because of a love affair that went bad."

The grin on Applejack's snout wobbled, and she looked away. "Can't say as how I know a thing about that."

The fine hairs along the back of Twilight's neck rustled, and she shook herself. For something that was supposed to be so wonderful, love sure did seem to make ponies uncomfortable when it came up in conversation. "Still," she went on, trying to find a positive spin to put on the topic, "I liked what you said about not rushing romance. I mean, with everything else that's been happening lately, love is pretty much the last thing I want to be worrying about."

"Eggzactly." Applejack's grin strengthened. "What's the ol' tortoise and the hare story say? 'Slow and steady wins the race'?" She gave one of her low chuckles. "Y'know, we oughtta test that out some time with Tank and Angel. 'Cept I reckon we'd wind up with a mite more biting and kicking than the original had."

That got Twilight giggling and made her think of something Applejack had said earlier. "So what's Fluttershy doing every Thursday with these raccoons? I haven't heard her mention anything about it."

"Oh. Yeah." Applejack's cheeks pinked, and she looked away again. "Reckon that's mostly my fault. See, I was kinda complaining to her 'bout— Y'know how raccoons got them little claw-hand things? Kinda like Spike? Well, they's been using 'em to grab the fruit outta my apple trees afore I get a chance to buck it down. And she said—" The smile that spread over Applejack's face this time was another of her slow, gentle ones. "She said she'd ask them raccoons to pick berries from the wild bushes out Whitetail way so we could make jam to sell at the Acres, and we'd give 'em the apples as payment for services rendered."

Twilight blinked. "That's ingenious!"

"Ain't it, though?" A skip entered Applejack's step. "And ain't that just like Fluttershy? Coming up with a fix like that where we all win?"

They emerged from the rows of apple trees then into the wide swath of lumpy grass that grew between the orchards and the first gnarled trees of the Everfree Forest. Twilight turned in the direction of Fluttershy's cottage and had to pick up her pace to keep abreast of Applejack. "C'mon," her friend said. "Reckon we oughtta get this nonsense over with afore we foul up Fluttershy's schedule any more'n we already are."

Third

"Oh, my," said Fluttershy.

At the end of the table, Rainbow slumped in her seat and groaned.

Turning to glare at Rainbow, Twilight saw that Applejack was already glaring at her. So she turned back to Fluttershy and had to sigh. Judging from her friend's pinprick pupils and quivering lip, Twilight could only conclude that asking if Fluttershy had time to answer a few questions hadn't been the ideal way to start this conversation...

"It's not a big deal," Twilight said, trying her best not to look like a policemare. She raised the cup of tea Fluttershy had insisted on bringing her when she and Applejack had arrived: Rainbow had already been seated, a half-empty mug of cider in front of her, and Fluttershy had brought Applejack a stein of it as well when they'd all joined Rainbow.

Twilight sipped her tea, lowered the cup, and hoped her smile didn't look as phony as it felt. "We were just wondering if Rarity had perhaps mentioned to you whether she was interested romantically in Big McIntosh."

"Oh. Ummm..." Fluttershy combed a hoof through the locks of pink hair covering half her face. "I'm pretty sure I would've remembered her saying anything like that. And besides, I...I don't think Big Mac is really...her type."

Applejack snapped her glare over to Fluttershy, but when Fluttershy winced, the glare softened into something closer to a regular look; Twilight was glad to hear Applejack give a little chuckle, too, when she said, "I'm gonna assume you ain't saying there's anything in particular wrong with my brother, sugar cube."

"Oh, no!" Fluttershy sat forward, earnestness practically a scent around her. "I've always found him to be very nice! For a stallion, I mean. But, well, he is very big. And his hooves are so very clompy that it's sometimes just a little bit scary to think that he might be too busy making sure the cart he's pulling is rolling along properly to notice if a baby duck or a baby bunny is running across the road ahead of him, so he might accidentally—" She pressed her front hooves to her mouth. "Not that I'm saying he's clumsy or careless! Because I'm not saying that at all! I just—! He seems—! I didn't—!" Her voice crumbled to nothing, and she seemed to pull back behind the curtain of her mane.

The silence in the cottage went on for several long seconds, a blush turning Applejack's cheeks almost as red as her cutie mark. Twilight cleared her throat. "But you've never heard Rarity express any feelings toward him?"

"Well, duh!" Rainbow smacked the table, the mugs and cups rattling. "She's not gonna come right out and say anything, Twi! She's gonna be all sneaky and secret! Especially around us!"

Twilight blew out a breath. "Y'know, that's another thing I've never understood about love and romance and all this—" It took some effort to stop herself from saying 'nonsense,' but she managed to. "Why keep it so hush-hush? I mean, we're best friends! If one of us wanted to start dating anypony, why wouldn't she tell the rest of us? We'd be happy for her, right?"

It was only because she was looking around the table at that exact moment that she saw the expressions flash across all three of her friends' faces: not nervous exactly and not ashamed, either, but something that combined elements of those with other elements Twilight didn't recognize.

The looks were gone almost immediately, and Applejack was saying, "Of course we would, Twi, but, well, it's like I was saying earlier. None of this stuff likes to be rushed, and telling folks about it, that just plain puts roller skates on it. Takes it to a whole 'nother level entirely."

"Oh, yes," Fluttershy muttered. "If I ever had a crush, I'd never be able to mention it, not to her or to anypony else. I'd barely even be able to think about it most of the time because it would make me so happy and so sad, I wouldn't be able to do anything else all day long."

The way Applejack's eyebrows shot up, Twilight was sure she'd noticed the 'her' in what Fluttershy had said. But before Twilight could ask about it, Rainbow had begun speaking: "See? Like I said! When you've got it bad, you're wrapped up in a world where it's only you and only him. And if you open that world up by telling anypony else, well, that's just more ponies to get hit by the shrapnel when it all blows up!" She raised a hoof like she was going to smack the table again, but then her eyes went wide, and she jerked upright like she'd suddenly noticed a bee on her nose. "Not that that's gonna happen to Rarity and Big Mac! 'Cause we're not gonna let it happen! Right?"

"Right-a-roony!" a high-pitched voice shouted directly into Twilight's left ear.

Startling sideways, Twilight had to flare her wings to keep herself from falling over. With a whirl, she saw Pinkie Pie sitting beside her, a scoop of chocolate ice cream slowly oozing down the sides of the pointed sugar cone balanced on the tip of her hoof. She gave the drizzling ice cream a lick, leaned toward Twilight while glancing toward Rainbow, and whispered loudly, "What're we talking about?"

Not a single word came to Twilight's mind: would the concept of romantic love even have a place in Pinkie's thought processes?

"Hey, Pinks," Rainbow said, taking another swig of cider. "We're talking about Rarity and Big Mac."

"Ooo-ooo-ooo." Pinkie's mane somehow poofed up even fluffier than usual. "Is this about smootchie-wootching?"

At Rainbow's nod, Twilight couldn't keep herself from blurting, "We don't really know! We have a few observations from which some of us have drawn a conclusion!" She aimed a pointed glance at Rainbow. "But that's all!"

With a roll of her eyes, Rainbow pushed her mug away. "Which is why I've called this meeting."

"What?" Twilight blinked. She hadn't felt this unsure of herself while battling Tirek. "Rainbow, what are you talking about?"

Rainbow didn't seem to notice the question. "We've heard AJ's report on Big Mac and Fluttershy's report on Rarity." She turned to Pinkie, their friend still lapping at her ice cream cone. "Pinkie? Your twitches picking up anything romantic?"

Pinkie pursed her lips and squinted one eye closed. "Hmmmm." Opening her mouth, she shoved the rest of the cone in and swallowed, Twilight staring as its pointed shape traveled all the way down her neck. "Something's in the air. I thought maybe it was Bon Bon's latest batch of fudge chunkies—" a grin spread over Pinkie's snout like melting butter, and she slumped back, her eyes unfocused "—'cause those're so cream-de-la-creamy, they're, like, the best thing in the whole entire world except maybe love." She straightened. "So yeah, in my expert opinion, the sweet, delicious twitching that's rustling all over town right now is either love or chocolate." Her ears perked. "Or maybe both! Y'know, I've always thought that Bon Bon and Lyra might be more than just—"

"Yeah, thanks, Pinkie." Rainbow cocked her head at Twilight. "So, if you'll admit that something's happening, Twi, I'll admit that we don't know enough yet about what it really is."

Twilight felt her lower left eyelid give its own sort of twitch. "I'm not admitting anything!" But in all honesty, she had to add, "Except that second one. And that first one, too, I guess." Gritting her teeth, she blew a breath out through them. "Fine! Something's happening, but we don't know what it is! Is that what you want me to say?"

The innocence in Rainbow's expression wouldn't've looked out of place on a cuddly little kitten's face. "I'm just trying to get to the truth, here, Twi." She spread her hooves to include everypony at the table. "That's all any of us wants, right?"

"Umm," said Fluttershy.

"Well, now," said Applejack.

"You betcha!" said Pinkie. "'Cause 'special somepony' parties are so much fun, and I haven't gotten to do one for any of my very bestest friends yet!" She tapped her wrist. "Clocks are ticking, girls: I'm just saying."

"And there it is." Rainbow's smile made Twilight want to clench her teeth even harder. "Looks like we're all in, and that means we're gonna need a plan. And that means—"

"Me." Twilight almost succeeded in keeping the edge out of her voice. "No offense, Rainbow, but your plans usually involve more crashing into things than this situation calls for. So how about I give this some good, solid thought for the rest of the day, then get back to you tomorrow after breakfast?"

"Thought?" Rainbow had about five or six different edges in her voice as far as Twilight could tell. "We don't need to—!"

"Yeah, RD." Applejack leaned toward her. "We do. And more'n that, we ain't doing one single thing without us all agreeing on it. Y'understand?"

Rainbow seemed to vibrate in place, and Twilight was sure she was going to start yelling. But instead, after a long moment, she just folded her front legs across her chest and said, "Fine!"

Applejack nodded and turned to face Twilight. "Reckon the whole bunch of us oughtta show up to the castle after breakfast, Twi? Or might that be a mite suspicious, us five being there without Rarity?"

"Oh!" Fluttershy had been watching Applejack, Twilight noticed, with an odd little half smile on her muzzle, but now she suddenly sat up straight. "Tomorrow's Friday, so Rarity and I will be meeting at ten for our regular spa appointment!" And her smile then seemed to light up the whole room. "The rest of you can meet at the castle, and I'll pay extra special attention in case Rarity says anything about Big McIntosh!" She clapped her hooves, her eyes curling closed. "Oh! This is so exciting! And so romantic! Can you imagine if Rarity really is in love?"

If Twilight had still retained any capacity to feel surprise, she was fairly certain Fluttershy's burst of enthusiasm would've surprised her. As numb as she was by this time, though, she simply nodded and got to her hooves. "Well, Fluttershy, we don't want to keep you from your raccoons, so—"

"The raccoons!" Fluttershy leaped into a hover, her wings a blur behind her. "I almost forgot! Oh, dear! I hope they won't be upset that I'm—" she whirled toward the cuckoo clock on the wall "—only half an hour early!"

"Whoa, now, sugar cube!" Applejack sprang up. "Don't get yerself in an uproar! We'll head on over there now, and if'n they tries to give you any guff, well, I reckon I can persuade 'em otherwise."

Fluttershy settled back to the floor. "Oh, thank you, Applejack. I'm sure they'll be fine." That half-smile drifted across her face again. "They should have another barrel or two of berries ready for you, though, if you want to come get them."

Applejack nodded, the same sort of smile pulling at the edges of her own mouth. Rounding the table, she poked Rainbow in the shoulder as she passed, then turned to Twilight. "Till tomorrow at ten, folks."

"Whatever," Rainbow grumbled.

With a laugh, Applejack crossed the room, held the door open for Fluttershy, and the two of them left.

Only then did Rainbow unfold her front legs, groaning and flopping back in her chair. "Ten o'clock tomorrow! That's, like, four hundred hours from now!"

Twilight couldn't help rolling her eyes. "Try seventeen."

"Don't mind if I do!" Pinkie popped up between them, dozens of origami animals scattering across the table where the stack of napkins Fluttershy had set out earlier had once sat. "As long as you mean seventeen lemon tarts." She licked her lips. "'Cause I could really go for ten or twenty of those right about now."

"So go already." Rainbow's wings flexed, and she swooped for the door. "But don't be surprised, Twilight, if I get to your place early tomorrow. We've gotta get cracking on this thing, y'know?" She didn't seem to slow down, but the door leaped opened and slammed shut, leaving Twilight and Pinkie standing in Fluttershy's front room.

Twilight pressed a hoof to her forehead. As far as she was concerned, it had been four hundred hours since Rainbow had first pointed out Rarity and Big Mac talking down in the marketplace. So much had changed since then—

Except, of course, that nothing actually had.

"How 'bout you, Twilight?" she heard Pinkie ask.

"Me?" Twilight looked up, Pinkie looking back with her head cocked. "I honestly don't know, Pinkie. I mean, love? Romance? I just—" She sighed. "I don't know."

Pinkie reached out and took Twilight's hoof in hers. "I was talking about the lemon tarts, but, yeah. All us girls have been kicked sideways by love one way or another. Except you, of course."

As was often the case when talking to Pinkie, Twilight found herself asking, "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean— Bagels and baguettes! Look at the time!" A pink blur streaked toward Fluttershy's front door. "I'm gonna be late for the dinner shift at Sugarcube Corner!" The door flew open. "See you tomorrow, Twilight!" And with another slam, Twilight stood alone.

Fourth

"Huh," said Spike.

Twilight's smile felt more ill-fitting than one of Rarity’s fancier hats, the kind with all the swirling ribbons and streaming feathers. She’d walked back from Fluttershy's place, her insides too churned up for flying, and the first thing she’d seen on stepping through the castle’s front door had been Spike walking past with a comic book tucked under one arm. "Hey, Twilight," he’d said. "What’s up?"

The panic bursting through her had made her yell "Nothing!" so loudly, the word had echoed up and down the crystal hallways for a good five seconds.

Spike arched an eyeridge. "You know that when you say 'nothing' like that, it usually means 'something', right?" he asked.

"Oh, now, Spike!" She wanted to laugh nonchalantly, but she wasn't at all sure she'd be able to stop if she got started. "How can 'nothing' mean 'something'? I mean, that's a logical impossibility!"

The silence that followed was even worse than the echoing shout. "Okay," Spike said. "But if you're planning a surprise party for me, tell Pinkie I really liked those little crunchy amethyst bits she had at the last one." He nodded and continued on toward the castle's east wing.

It took another several seconds before Twilight's heart had settled enough to let her hear anything other than it pounding. Scrambling then toward the west wing and the door to her study, she shoved it open with her magic, slid inside, shut it, and leaned back against it.

Because if Rarity really was in love with Big Mac, where did that leave Spike?

After all, Twilight had been standing right there the very first moment Spike had set eyes on Rarity and had watched those eyes turn into hearts, an effect she'd only read about previously in neurological studies of love and affection. And yes, the little guy was growing into a fine young drake, but still, she had to wonder how he might react when he found out that Rarity's heart possibly belonged to another.

Big Mac was a friend of his, too: at least, he headed over to Sweet Apple Acres now and again to talk hoofball with him and some of the town's other stallions. Would Spike see this as a betrayal of some sort? Would it get him upset at both Rarity and Mac?

Her midsection tightened, and she pushed away from the door with a stomp of her hoof. Something else to add to the negative column concerning this whole love thing: it might very well cause friendships to fray. And that had it encroaching onto her territory.

Although... Maybe that would be another way to approach Cadance and actually get some answers from her....

Moving to her desk, Twilight focused her horn on the section of shelves where she kept the notebooks she'd started keeping on the subject of love. She set the books in their proper order on her blotter pad, picked up her quill pen—

And before she knew it, a knock at the door was startling her from the notes she'd been making about the day's events. "Dinner time!" Spike called.

She got through the onslaught of Spike's less-than-subtle questioning while they ate by pretending that she actually was hiding a surprise party from him—if whatever happened tomorrow broke his heart, maybe some of those amethyst bits would help—and on the way back to her study afterwards, she stopped before the big doors to the throne room, sighed, and used her magic to push them soundlessly open.

Inside, the map table sat dark and silent. So whatever was making her wings as prickly as the strange winds that sometimes gusted out of the Everfree, it wasn’t a friendship problem as far as the Tree of Harmony was concerned...

With a shake of her head, she headed back to the kitchen, helped Spike finish the dishes, then told him she’d decided to turn in early. Her lack of any real plan for the next day kept her tossing and turning longer than usual, but she didn’t remember any dreams when she woke, the autumn morning sunlight rustling her curtains as crisply as newly-fallen leaves.

At breakfast, when she told Spike she was expecting Applejack, Rainbow, and Pinkie and asked him to show them into her study as soon as any of them arrived, he said, "You bet!" and gave her a wink. She managed not to roll her eyes in response, but it was even harder to keep from galloping into her book-lined sanctuary, locking the door, and pretending she wasn't there.

As usual, though, a few hours working on her notes slowed her breathing enough to let a certain calmness settle over her. And the plan that came to her as she was reshelving Gemstone's classic work Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, well, it seemed the only possible option. It didn't stop her feathers from rustling—her wings seemed even more tingly today than they'd been last night—but by the time Spike was knocking on the door and opening it to let Rainbow flap in, Twilight was as ready as she figured she was going to be.

"Well?" Rainbow asked. "What's the word?"

But Twilight cut her off before she could go on. "Thanks, Spike. Say, could you maybe head back out to the front door and see if the others are here yet?"

Spike smirked. "Fine. I'll just let you two get on with your top-secret plans." He waggled his claws like quotation marks as he said those last words.

Rainbow was blinking, but Twilight forced another smile until Spike had gone out, closing the door behind himself.

Twilight let her smile droop, and Rainbow didn't look all that happy, either, folding her front legs over her chest. "What's all that about?" she asked.

With a sigh, Twilight tried to stretch some of the tightness from her shoulders. "You know how Spike's always felt about Rarity."

That got a snort, Rainbow tossing her mane. "The whole town knows that."

"Well, if it turns out Rarity's really in love with Big McIntosh—"

"She is." Rainbow smirked, but then her eyes widened, and her smirk faded. "Oh. Yeah." She gave a couple blinks, then waved a hoof. "Well, he'll get over it. I mean, he's just a kid, Twi; he'll prob'bly wanna be ring-bearer at their wedding."

"Wedding?" Twilight couldn't keep from shouting it, what felt like every hair in her mane bristling up.

"Wedding?" Applejack's voice asked from the doorway, and Twilight snapped her head over to see her and Spike standing there.

"Really?" Spike was blinking, his forehead wrinkled. "Is that the surprise? Well, okay, I guess, but...who's getting married?"

Not for the first time, Twilight found herself wishing she hadn't already used her chance at Starswirl's time travel spell. "Nopony!" she said, aiming the word as forcefully as she could at Rainbow.

"Yeah!" Pinkie hopped in past Applejack and Spike. "Rarity and Big Mac haven't even had their first date yet! It's way too early to be talking about their wedding!"

Twilight's throat squeezed shut tighter than the wild Everfree snapdragons she'd been studying in the castle's greenhouse; all she could do was stare as Spike blinked some more. "Rarity?" he asked. "And Big Mac? But...but that's impossible! She's a—! And he's nothing but a—!"

"Whoa, now!" Applejack glared down at the little dragon. "Nothing but a what?"

All Spike's spines had wilted, his eyes wide and focused on Applejack. "A great guy! The best! Everypony knows that! But him and Rarity? How could—? I mean, why would—? I mean—" He took a step back, his face suddenly making Twilight think of crumpled paper. "I...I've gotta go. I...I can't—"

Shaking off her paralysis, Twilight wrapped her magic around him before he could do more than turn. "We don't know, Spike!" She lifted him gently from the floor, brought him into the room so she could look directly into his eyes, and went on: "Rainbow and I saw Big McIntosh and Rarity talking for a while in the market yesterday, and Rainbow's convinced that that means the two of them are—" Her mind jittered, trying to find a way to say it; she finally went with "—interested in each other."

"Yeah!" Pinkie flexed her lips like a goldfish. "Maybe even compound interested!"

"What?" The anguish in Spike's face was slowing melting into something sharper. "That's it?" He flailed his arms, Twilight wincing when his claws smacked the inside of the bubble she still had him floating in. "News flash, guys: ponies talk to each other all the time! And y'know what it hardly ever means? That they're in love!"

"All the time, huh?" Rainbow was looking at the floor off to Spike's right. "Even Big Mac?" she asked quietly.

Spike froze, and Applejack cleared her throat. "And much as I hate adding fuel to Rainbow's fire, when Mac got home yesterday, he was, well, he's always pretty chipper, but last night—" She shook her head. "He was humming and smiling; heck, he even did a little shuffling dance in the kitchen while we were putting the supper dishes away!" She shuffled one of her own hooves at the floor. "And that ain't something he usu'lly does."

In the silence that followed, Twilight tried desperately to think of something—anything!—to say, but Rainbow spoke before Twilight could even start. "Look, Spike." Rainbow's gaze came up from the floor, and Twilight saw the same gentle sadness there that she'd seen yesterday. "If Mac's found a pony he likes—or, y'know, if Rarity has—it's up to us to be there and support them, right? 'Cause we're their friends, and that's what friends do. And you are Mac and Rarity's friend, aren't you, Spike?"

The silence this time seemed a little less stunned, a little less frosty. And when Spike sighed and said, "Yeah, I...I am," Twilight almost puffed out a relieved breath of her own. His snout scrunched up a little then. "But they still could've been, I dunno, trading embarrassing stories about Applejack, right? I mean, Mac has some doozies he's told us guys at Hoofball Night, so—"

"He what?" Applejack's shout nearly knocked Twilight over.

Pinkie giggled from where she sat pulling books from the shelves and stacking them into a pile shaped like Princess Celestia. "Yeah, his stories are pretty good, aren't they?" she asked.

Applejack's jaw was clenched so hard, Twilight was sure it was jutting out at a perfect right angle to the rest of her face. "Might be that varmint'll be wearing a full body cast on his first date with Rarity!"

"Simmer down." With a grin, Rainbow jumped into a hover. "Hey! I think that's the first time I've ever gotten to say that to you!"

Snorting, Applejack pulled her hat over her eyes and leaned sideways against the wall. "Let's get on with all this, how 'bout?"

"Yeah!" Rainbow turned her grin toward Twilight. "So what's the plan, huh? Ninja suits after midnight? Sneaking into Rarity's attic and keeping her under surveillance till we get the skinny?"

Shaking her head, Twilight let her magic settle Spike back onto the floor. "We ask her," she said.

"Ask her?" From the blank look on Rainbow's face, Twilight was pretty sure the idea had never even occurred to her.

"Yes." Twilight planted her hooves firmly and looked around at all four of her friends. "We ask her what's going on and if there's anything we can do to help. And if she says there's nothing going on or nothing we can do to help, then we tell her we're there for her if she needs us, and we let the whole thing drop."

Rainbow dropped to the floor with clattering thump. "But that's not—! She isn't—! How can you possibly think that'll—?"

"The direct approach." Applejack was nodding. "Reckon that'd be for the best, all right."

"Um-hmmm!" Pinkie had a pencil in her mouth and was drawing a googly-eyed Celestia face on a sheet of parchment paper attached to the top of her book sculpture. She spit the pencil out and gave Twilight a smile. "And asking'll be the easiest way to find out what kind of cake she wants for her bachlorette party, too."

"I'm in," Spike said from where he stood, the quiver in his voice so slight, Twilight didn't think anypony else would've noticed. "'Cause you're right, Rainbow. She needs to know her friends are there for her whether it's good news or...or bad news."

Twilight had to swallow against the lump in her throat. She nodded to Spike, then turned to Rainbow. "We all have to agree," she said. "Remember?"

For half a heartbeat, Twilight thought Rainbow was going to object, her face as cloudy as the morning before a rainstorm. But— "Fine!" she practically spat out. "We'll go over there and ask her!"

The thought popped into Twilight's head. "Except she's at the spa with Fluttershy right now."

"So?" Rainbow leaped for the door, Applejack and Spike both ducking out of her way. "We'll bust into her front room and wait for them there!"

Fifth

"Huh?" gasped Rarity.

"Sorry!" Twilight jumped to her hooves; she'd been sprawled on the rug beside one of Rarity's couches while paging through a book of love poetry that seemed to have been arranged in order of increasing overwroughtness.

The others had all looked up as well when the front door to Carousel Boutique had opened to admit a laughing Rarity and Fluttershy, but when nopony else said anything, Twilight took it upon herself to explain: "We were going to wait outside, but the door was unlocked, so we—"

"Well, of course!" With a blink, every sign of Rarity's shock vanished, a smile spreading across her milk-smooth face. "I'll not have my friends standing around in the wind when I have all these lovely warm sofas sitting here!" The tiniest frown wrinkled her forehead. "As I was telling Fluttershy, however, I do have a bit of work I need to take care of before lunch, so if the rest of you want to go ahead and get us a table at Timothy Hay's, I'll be glad to join you shortly." Most of her smile returned.

And as much as Twilight wanted to let this all go and forget it had ever happened, she instead took a breath and dredged up a smile of her own. "We won't take up too much of your time. We only wanted to say—"

"It's no good, Rares!" Rainbow swooped over with a grimace and hovered in front of their friend. "Hiding's not gonna work anymore, so you might as well come clean!" She poked Rarity in the chest to punctuate each of those last two words.

Fluttershy shrank back into her mane, Applejack pulling her hat down over her eyes while Twilight couldn't keep from shouting, "Rainbow! Will you please—!"

"Woo-hoo!" Pinkie, draped over the back of a chair, pounded its cushion while Spike, on the couch beside Applejack, slapped a paw to his forehead. "That's telling 'er, Dashie!"

"'Telling her'?" Rarity repeated, her expression hardening. "Telling me what, exactly?"

Twilight opened her mouth, but Rainbow was too fast again: "We know all about it!" She shook a hoof at Twilight and stuck her snout out till it almost touched Rarity's. "Me and Twi saw the whole thing in the market yesterday, and we wanna hear what you've got to say for yourself!"

Gritting her teeth, Twilight jumped forward, wrapped her magic around Rainbow, and pulled her out of Rarity's face. "Will you please stop this?" she hissed, setting Rainbow down on the carpet beside her.

"Indeed!" Rarity's voice rang as cold and bright as a well-cut diamond. "I must insist on a modicum of decorum! For while I'll be happy to discuss anything at all, darling, I first need to have some inkling of what in the wide, wide world of Equestria it is we're actually talking about!"

The instant Twilight shut off her horn, Rainbow sprang back toward Rarity. "You and Big Mac!" she yelled. "And don't try to deny it!"

The wide-eyed panic that flashed across Rarity's face vanished almost at once, but Twilight knew she'd seen it. Everypony else had, too, given the way Rainbow cried, "Ah-ha!" and Spike let out a little whimpering gasp.

"It's not—!" Rarity took a breath. "It's not whatever vulgar thing you're thinking it is, Rainbow Dash."

"Really?" Rainbow landed, hooves spread wide and muscles tense, like one of Applejack's bulls getting ready to charge. "So what exactly is it?"

Twilight would've called the sound Rarity made then a snort if any other pony had made it. But from Rarity, that just didn't seem like the right word. "McIntosh asked me for some advice," she said, her head drawn back and her eyes half-closed. "And that's all I care to say on the subject."

"Mac?" Rainbow's voice dripped with disbelief. "Asking advice? From you?"

"Rainbow Dash!" The words sliced like knives, and everypony in the room jumped, their gazes snapping straight to the source: Fluttershy, still standing beside Rarity, the Stare shimmering around the edges of her eyes. "You're behaving very rudely!"

"I'm behaving rudely?" For all that the air felt like it was solidifying in Twilight's lungs, Rainbow kept shouting as loudly as before. "I'm not the one lying to my friends!"

"I beg your pardon?" Rarity didn't seem to be having any trouble with the air, either. "How dare you say such a—?"

Rarity stopped again, but this time it seemed to Twilight more as if she snapped her teeth closed to bite off whatever words were boiling up from her throat. "Please forgive me, all of you." She looked around the room, her gaze finally coming back to settle on Rainbow, both their jaws clenched so hard, Twilight imagined she heard teeth cracking. "And especially you, Rainbow Dash, but I don't believe that any further discussion of this point at this time will result in anything other than bruised egos and hurt feelings." She swallowed, and something close to an actual smile whispered over her lips. "I hope that someday soon, you'll be in a clearer state of mind, and we'll be able to discuss this matter rationally."

"Ha!" Rainbow stomped the floor. "Like that's gonna happen!" She pushed past Fluttershy and shouldered her way out the front door.

Silence filled the room like an overinflated balloon, and when something popped loudly behind her, Twilight jumped for the second time in as many minutes. Whirling, she saw Pinkie taking her hoof away from her mouth.

"Wow, Twilight." Pinkie slithered down into the cushion of the chair she'd been hanging over, tumbled onto the carpet, and puddled there like melted strawberry ice cream before sitting up and shaking her head. "I don't think that went the way you planned it."

Applejack rushed up. "Fluttershy? Rarity? You okay? I mean, I know Dash wouldn't do more'n shout, but having to use the Stare on her?" She shook her head and took another hesitant step toward Fluttershy. "You need to sit down a minute, sugar cube?"

"I'm fine, thank you, Applejack," Fluttershy murmured, her mane once more hiding most of her face. "I...I didn't mean to, but she was being so...so..." She sighed and shrugged.

By this time, Twilight found that she could speak again. "I'm really sorry, Rarity." She shot a glance toward Pinkie Pie. "My plan was for us to ask you if anything's going on with you and Big Mac and if there's anything we can do to help."

"There isn't," Rarity said so sharply Twilight couldn't help wincing. Rarity groaned, then, put a hoof to her forehead, and rubbed back and forth. "I mean, there's nothing going on between Mac and myself." Her hoof stopped, and when she pulled it away, she had a spark in her eye that hadn't been there the moment before. "If you'd like to help, though, go find Rainbow Dash." The spark grew brighter. "Yes! Find Rainbow Dash, and tell her to take heart! Things often seem the darkest just before the dawn!" She clapped her front hooves together. "Yes! Please! Go at once! I shall catch up with you as soon as possible! And I may just have a surprise with me!"

Twilight blinked, and the way Fluttershy and Applejack were staring at Rarity told her they found her sudden change of attitude just as peculiar. "O...kay," Twilight said. "If you're sure you're all right?"

"Better than all right!" Rarity's hooves flashed in a high-stepping sort of dance. "Quickly, now! If all goes well, I shall see you shortly!"

Applejack and Fluttershy had both shifted to look at Twilight, but she didn't have any answers except trusting their friend. "All right," she said. "I guess we'll see you."

She turned toward the now-open door, her mane rustling in the breeze blowing through, but Spike speaking up behind her made her stop and look back over her shoulder: "Rarity?" His eyes shimmered as they gazed up at her. "Mac's a great guy, y'know, so, I mean, if you do like him—"

"Oh, Spikey." Rarity patted a hoof against Spike's head ridges. "As long as I have wonderful friends like you and McIntosh, I know that my life will be filled with 'great guys.'" She spun for the curtains at the back of the room. "But ta-ta for now!"

Outside, the wind had really picked up, Twilight's wings wanting to open as the gusts buffeted her pinions. "Well," she said as Applejack pulled the door closed after the others. "I guess we need to find Rainbow and—"

"Didn't I tell you?" Rainbow dropped into the space between Twilight and Pinkie, her eyes glassy and shining in the not-quite-noontime sunlight. "Now, we'll need rope and firefly lanterns and ninja suits if we're gonna get the truth!"

"Ninja suits?" a scratchy voice asked from off to her left, and Twilight glanced over to see the Cutie Mark Crusaders coming around the curving wall of Carousel Boutique, Scootaloo in front and shaking her head. "It's like ev'rypony's here to get their Nightmare Night costumes today!" she said.

"Well?" Sweetie Belle tossed her mane. "Rarity's the best!"

"Shhh!" Apple Bloom held a hoof up to her lips. "Will you two be quiet? Mac said he didn't want nopony to know, remember?"

"Oops." Scootaloo gave a sheepish smile. "Forget I said anything, everypony!"

"Hold it!" Rainbow spun through the blustery sky and landed right in front of the smaller pegasus. "What's this about Big Mac?"

"Nothing!" Apple Bloom more squeaked than said, but Rainbow had her attention fixed on Scootaloo as sharply as a hawk regarding a mouse.

Scootaloo swallowed so hard, Twilight could see it travel down her throat. "He was just—" She pointed a hoof around toward the back of the boutique.

"Rainbow," Twilight started, but Rainbow was already leaping to the front door, flinging it open, and bounding inside.

Galloping after her, Twilight instead ran smack into her, her wings puffed out and her head drawn back. And at the far end of the showroom, both of them turning to face the front, their eyes going wide and their mouths dropping open, stood Rarity and Big McIntosh.

Twilight felt her own jaw loosen, and then light flashed over the entire scene. Thunder crashed, Twilight already losing track of how many times she'd given a startled jump so far today. Something that sounded like hissing started up, and Twilight spun to see rain falling thick and fast from a suddenly cloud-covered sky.

"What the hay?" Applejack shouted from outside, then she rushed in pushing Fluttershy ahead of her, water pouring from her hat brim, Pinkie and Spike at her heels; beyond them, Twilight could see ponies running for cover all up and down the street. "Ain't any storm scheduled today, Dash!"

"Never mind that!" Wings slashing the air, Rainbow shot into a hover, one front leg snapping out to point at the two staring back at her. "What was it you just said, Rares? Nothing going on with you and Big Mac?"

"No, Rainbow!" Rarity's mane, so perfectly coiffed just a few moments ago, was beginning to frazzle around the edges. "It isn't—!"

"More lies!" Rainbow's voice cracked, and standing right beside her, Twilight couldn't help but notice how she was shivering. "Just like always happens when a stallion comes into the picture!"

"What?" The look on Rarity's face wavered back and forth between shock and anger. "Rainbow, we're not—!"

"Whatever!" Rainbow jabbed a hoof at her own chest. "Me, I've got a freak Everfree storm to deal with right now! And who knows? Maybe I'll let it blow me clear back to Cloudsdale! Or Fillydelphia! Or Manehattan! Or...or anywhere that isn't here!" Spinning, she rocketed over the others and vanished into the darkness outside.

Sixth

"No!" yelled Big McIntosh.

Twilight leaped sideways as he barreled past; he somehow swerved to brush between Pinkie and Spike without breaking stride and skidded through the doorway, the rain crashing down over him in absolute torrents. "Dash!" he shouted, Twilight barely able to hear him even though he was only a few paces away. "It ain't Rarity! It's you!"

"What?" Applejack leaped forward, grabbed her brother's bobbed tail in her teeth, and dragged him back inside. "You start talking, mister, and I mean now!"

Water puddled the floor around him, his mane dripping down either side of his head. "I been thinking 'bout Dash a fair while, wondering if'n she'd be int'rested in, y'know—" how he managed to blush with his coloring, Twilight had no idea, but she could clearly tell that he was "—stepping out with me. I reckoned I needed advice, so I worked myself up to asking Miss Rarity yesterday what'd be the best way to let Dash know."

"And today," Rarity said, her voice cracking, "when I saw how upset Dash was and realized she must have similar feelings for McIntosh—"

"What?" Applejack shouted again. "You telling me that, not only has my big brother been nursing a secret crush on RD, but she's been doing the same for him?"

Rarity gave a hollow sort of shrug. "It came as a shock to me as well, but I thought that would just make it so much simpler to get the two of them together. But—"

"My fault," Big Mac rumbled. He lowered his head, everything about him drooping. "Dash is whip-smart and lightning-quick and purty as the first blue sky after a rainstorm, and I done wrecked it all afore it even started."

"No," Twilight heard somepony say: her own voice, she recognized with a start. "That isn't going to happen." Tension gripping her chest and shoulders, she stomped a hoof, and everything she'd been thinking and feeling the past two days came bursting out of her. "I mean, as far as I can tell, love is only good for making ponies lie and scream and get so embarrassed, they hide things they really don't have any reason to hide! But I am not going to let all this stupid romance nonsense break up our friendships or our town!"

She looked from wide-eyed face to wide-eyed face. "Now! We've got an Everfree storm out there! That means the Ponyville civil defense plan is in effect, and you all know your stations!" Stopping her gaze on Spike, she lowered her voice. "I'm afraid you'll have to get the castle's emergency shelter open on your own, but I know you can do it."

Pinkie was rushing from pony to pony, pulling umbrella hats from her mane and slapping them onto their heads. Yellow rain slickers floated from a closet in the bluish haze of Rarity's magic, Spike's drifting into place around his shoulders. "On my own?" he asked. "Where're you gonna be?"

With a swallow, Twilight looked at the open door, another bolt of lightning splitting the sky, its thunder shaking the whole boutique. "Rainbow Dash is key to resolving any storm situation, and if she's too angry or depressed, she won't be able to concentrate." Twilight flared her wings. "So I've got to find her and tell her what's really been going on here."

"What?" It was Fluttershy this time, stopping with her slicker already cinched as she headed for the door. "Flying? In this storm?" She shook not just her head but her whole body. "Twilight, you can't!"

"Actually?" Twilight gave her a smile she didn't quite feel. "I'm the only one who can. I mean, maybe the map doesn't think so, but I say this is a friendship problem. And that means it's up to me."

"Whoo-hoo!" Pinkie shouted behind her. Turning, Twilight felt something slap down between her ears, a strap fastening under her chin, and she blinked at Pinkie Pie, the top of her friend's head blocked off by the red and green umbrella hat Twilight realized she was now wearing. "You be all princesscent at Dashie, and we'll take care of everything here!"

Not letting herself think, Twilight nodded, leaped, flapped, and whisked through the doorway into the pelting rain.

The wind grabbed her around the middle and threw her sideways; she couldn't help gasping, but her weekly drills with Rainbow flashed to the front of her mind as bright as the lightning that cracked the sky ahead of her. Bending her left wing just a bit, she let the gust wheel her around till she was facing into it, then she straightened her wings, dug at the air, and felt herself rising the way she was supposed to.

Her vision was adjusting to the weather, too, the way Rainbow always said it would: "Us pegasi got, like, extra parts in our eyes for that," she'd told Twilight more than once, though when Twilight would start giving Rainbow the scientific names for those extra parts, Rainbow would just wave a hoof and scowl. "Whatever they're called, it means we can see better in the dark, and we don't get flashblind even if a lightning bolt smashes right past us."

In fact, looking at the mass of black clouds tumbling in from the Everfree, Twilight could see a fair percentage of Ponyville's pegasi quite clearly now, brighter bits of shadow moving against the storm. Her ears pricked to the sound of their whistles, pitches and patterns that carried much better than speech under these conditions; she'd been learning them ever since she'd gotten her wings, and homing in on the command codes, she struggled through the blustery air in that direction.

But the pony giving the command whistles a few hundred yards in advance of the bulging clouds was too stocky to be Rainbow, and the flattop mane told her it was Thunderlane. Coming up behind him, she gave her best rendition of the 'priority' whistle, and it must've been close enough because he snapped his head around to stare at her.

Not even half an instant, and he shouted, "Nice hat!"

"Never mind that!" She somehow managed to maintain something close to a hover. "Where's Rainbow Dash!"

"Topside!" Thunderlane aimed a few more whistles at the ponies taking their positions around the storm's perimeter. "We're doing a squeeze play, all of us bucking the clouds straight up, then we usually have four or five smashers up there to bust 'em into pieces!" He shook his head. "She said we couldn't wait for any others, so she's up there alone, and that's just crazy! She okay, Twilight? She didn't look so good!"

Her stomach tightening, Twilight gave the 'thank you' and 'carry on' whistles, flexed her wings, and propelled herself upward.

The driving droplets stung her face. Flexing her neck, she positioned the brim of her umbrella hat to block as much of the rain as she could. The air flowed around her in ways she'd never even imagined it could, solid as a flashflood one instant, then dropping away the next to leave her wings flailing against an emptiness that gave them no purchase at all. Phrases like 'pressure differential' and 'wind divergence' rattled around in her head, but she pushed them all aside. Knowing what was happening wasn't going to help her fly through it, after all.

She was still climbing, her inner ear told her, and every fifteen or twenty seconds—depending on when she could gasp in enough breath—she puckered up and gave the 'priority' whistle as well as the most basic signal for 'where are you?' Lightning gnashed its gnarled teeth through the thunderhead to her right, and she knew that in theory, she should be getting near the top. But of course, Everfree storms never seemed to quite follow the same patterns as regular, pegasus-made weather...

More whistling, more flapping, her muscles pumping in ways that were going to leave her very sore tomorrow, and then, as she was sucking in another lungful of cold dampness, an answering whistle seemed to trickle out from behind a grumble of thunder.

She puffed another 'where are you?' and added the patterns for Rainbow Dash's name at the end. Holding her breath and twisting her ears, she definitely heard the standard directional response followed by a less-standard and fairly brusque 'who wants to know?'

Realizing that she didn't have an official Weather Central Whistle Designation, she was about to start puckering out the dots and dashes to spell her name in the Horse code they used on the railway lines when a gust of wind caught her from behind. It tumbled her upward, and she found herself surging over the lip of the darkest mound of cloud, roiling beneath her and stretching off into the murky light, gray misty tendrils swirling in all directions.

A splash of blue to her right drew her attention. The only color in the whole place, it whooshed toward her till she could make out the rainbow mane and tail, those violet eyes narrow and not at all happy, that raspy voice screaming over the storm, "Twilight, are you crazy? You can't be up here! When they start kicking the cloud—!"

"Listen!" Twilight wanted to grab Rainbow's shoulders and shake her to make sure she was paying attention, but she wasn't sure how to counterbalance if she did. So she just rammed her muzzle into Rainbow's ear and yelled,"Mac's in love with you! Not Rarity! He was only talking to her to find out how he should approach you!"

The thrashing air pulled her away before she could go on, and by the time she could swing herself back into a position ahead of Rainbow, her friend's eyes were wider than Twilight had ever seen a pony's eyes go. "What?" Rainbow asked—or at least, from the motion of her lips, Twilight guessed that was what she asked.

Opening her mouth to repeat herself, Twilight instead had to gasp when the whole sky seemed to rumble. "Fewmets!" Rainbow shouted, and she managed to grab Twilight's shoulders just fine. "Okay! D'you remember a couple weeks ago when I showed you how to buck clouds so they pop instead of letting loose their lightning and stuff?"

Twilight managed to nod, the air thickening around her till it began feeling more like oatmeal against her wings.

"Great!" Rainbow gestured to the storm bulging below them. "I'll be working down there! If any clouds get past me that're bigger'n, say, four ponies mooshed together, you've gotta buck 'em like I taught you!"

"But what—?" Twilight started in as loud a voice as she could manage, but she could barely hear herself over the roar of the wind; Rainbow was giving her some blank-faced blinks, too, so she quickly came to the conclusion that she didn't quite have the lung capacity for words to be useful under these conditions. She gave the 'acknowledged' whistle instead, and that got a grin flashing over Rainbow's face.

"You're a natural, Twi!" Lightning crashed behind Twilight, and in the sudden glare, she saw Rainbow's eyes wavering. "But...it's me? Mac and...and me?"

Whistling 'acknowledged' with her throat tightening and her face trying to form a goofy grin was even harder than keeping herself airborne, but Twilight almost stopped flapping when Rainbow suddenly wrapped her in a hug. "Whoo-hoo!" Rainbow shouted, and Twilight was pretty sure every pony in Equestria heard it.

Then Rainbow was pushing away and clapping her front hooves. "All right! Cloudchaser and those other lazy bums oughtta be along in a minute, but till then, how 'bout you and me get down to business and save Ponyville, huh?" She arrowed into a dive, and Twilight stared at the entire mountain of cloud surging upward like black lava.

Rainbow smashed straight into it, and it shattered, bits scattering upward and making Twilight think of a geyser going off. The smaller chunks unraveled all on their own, but Twilight was watching the larger ones, her mind running through the checklist she'd put together for herself from the somewhat erratic instructions Rainbow had given her several weeks ago.

Arcing into her own dive, she aimed herself at the largest of the cloud remnants, did the visual inspection necessary to determine its most vulnerable point, concentrated on the pegasus magic she'd gained with her wings, spun at what she deemed the appropriate time, and lashed out with her rear hooves: "If it feels like you've stomped on a rotten tomato," Rainbow had told her during practice, "then you've got it."

This cloud was a lot bigger than the ones she'd smashed that afternoon—it felt more like stomping on a rotten pumpkin than anything else. Close enough, she figured, and setting her sights on the next biggest cloud, she sliced her wings into the wind and raced toward it.

Flapping, spinning, and kicking filled her head for a timeless stretch after that, the incessant rain seeping deeper and deeper into her. The streak of blue that flashed back and forth among the lightning bolts below her kept her moving, though, till her ears again perked to whistles echoing up from the clouds: 'relief arriving' followed by some fancier trills that Twilight was too tired to decipher.

She heard Rainbow's answering whistles, turned her attention away from the cloud fragments dispersing all around her, and—

Fire lanced into her, her whole body going numb, and the air itself seemed to explode, whiteness blinding her eyes and a roar tearing her ears. Struck by lightning! echoed and re-echoed through her rattled thoughts, 'up' and 'down' disappearing from her world. She couldn't feel the storm battering her any more, either, and the one tiny part of her brain that wasn't as jumbled as the discharge from one of Pinkie's party cannons wondered idly if she was still flying or if she'd begun falling at this point.

There wasn’t any good way to tell, not with her nervous system twitching random sounds and colors through her. She was almost sure she felt something grab her around the barrel, though, and she chose to take that as a good sign. The sudden thump of pain along her entire front from chin to pasterns was a little less reassuring, but it did seem to focus her scattered bits and pieces: she blinked for the first time in what seemed like days and found a jagged blackness taking shape beyond the fuzzy popping shapes she'd been seeing for a while now.

"Hang on, Twi," a rough voice said somewhere. "I'll be back in, like, five minutes, and we'll get you outta here." But by the time she'd managed to raise her head—

Raise? Was she lying down? Yes, the familiar pull of gravity had returned to tell her that she was lying sprawled on her belly, a mixture of sharp and sandy sensations poking and scratching against her. A splashing hiss told her the storm was still going on, so not a lot of time had passed, but since she wasn't quite sure where her hooves were, she decided that standing might not be the best idea. Besides, Rainbow had said she'd be right back....

Her vision cleared further with each blink, and she realized that the gray light was coming from behind her. Craning her neck, she saw what had to be the mouth of a shallow cave, a curtain of rain on the other side. That meant that she was inside.

Pleased to find that her mental faculties were allowing her to draw conclusions from the data presented to them, she focused a little more on finding her legs, shifting and shuffling and slewing herself around in the pebbly dirt till she was facing the opening.

How long this took her, again, she wasn't entirely sure, but she was feeling a lot less like a soap bubble about to burst by the time she'd finished. She was almost ready to give standing another try when something scuffled at the cave entrance, and a long, thin shadow began stretching down from the top of the cave mouth.

Her first thought—snake!—nearly sent her scrambling backwards even though her hooves still wouldn't go she wanted them to. But a whistle whisked into the cave then, followed almost immediately by Rainbow Dash, skidding to a stop on the muddy soil. "Twi!" Her smile seemed to light up the whole place. "You're okay!"

"Glab," Twilight said, her mouth suddenly feeling like it was full of uncooked cookie dough. Folding her ears, she gave a shrug and a nod.

"I knew it!" Rainbow spun, grabbed the dangling thing in her teeth—a rope, Twilight realized with a start, hanging down over the lip of the cave mouth—and tugged it the three steps to Twilight's side. "A couple measly lightning bolts aren't even gonna make you blink!"

"Yeah." Twilight blinked a few times, then nodded and grinned. "Looks like I still remember how," she managed to say, her tongue feeling almost back to its normal size.

Rainbow laughed, her hooves moving around Twilight's middle. "Can you lift up a little?"

Concentrating, Twilight found that she could, and lowering her head, she watched Rainbow wrap the rope in a big bow under her front legs. "Okay," Rainbow said, stepping back. "Hang on!"

"To what?" Twilight asked, but Rainbow had already turned. She shot another whistle out into the rain, and the rope went taut.

"To me!" Rainbow whirled back around, scooted under Twilight's chest, and before Twilight even knew what was happening, she was back out in the rain, the rope pulling her upward while Rainbow guided her out away from the cliff face that stretched up and down and from left to right till it vanished in the mists.

Twilight just had time to recognize the place as Ghastly Gorge before the rope hauled her over the edge of the cliff. Rainbow's cheeks were puffing out with the effort of keeping herself and Twilight from smacking into the wall of rock, then solid ground was brushing the bottoms of Twilight's hooves, Rainbow sliding out from under her with a groan: "Yeesh! No wonder alicorns are so tough! How much do you weigh, anyway?"

A rumbling laugh drew Twilight's attention to a large figure in a yellow slicker, a stallion uncoiling the other end of the rope from his front hooves. An umbrella hat hid his face, but when he looked up, Twilight saw it was Big McIntosh. "You both together don't weigh more'n a hooffulla thistledown."

"Really?" Rainbow cocked her head, water slinging from drenched mane. "Guess you won't have any trouble carrying Twilight back to Ponyville, then, right?" She waved a hoof at the clouds, not quite as thick and nasty-looking, Twilight thought, as they'd been before. "Me, I've got a few things I still need to take care of, then you and me—" The catch in Rainbow's voice was so slight, Twilight almost thought she'd imagined it, especially with the big smile that was spreading over her face "—I understand we've got a little talking to do."

"That's all I ask." Mac cleared his throat and looked away. "Just wish it'd be in a more romantic kinda setting, but—"

"Are you kidding?" Rainbow leaped into a hover and spread her front hoofs like she was embracing the whole storm. "This right here? This is who I am, Mac, and there's nothing better in the whole wide world." She looked down at him, then, and something kind of hard seemed to come into her face. "So don't waste my time if you've got trouble with this, all right? You tell me right now, and you tell me true: you gonna be able to handle it?"

Twilight was pretty sure she'd stopped breathing, but then Mac smiled as big as a summer day. "Eeyup," he said, and Twilight thought she could feel the ground shake under the weight of it.

Rainbow's grin got so goofy, Twilight couldn't stop herself from doing a little dance. "All righty, then," Rainbow said. She waved at Twilight. "You two get inside, and I'll see you in—" Lightning raced in jagged bolts across the sky above them, and the thunder rumbled from low to ear-splitting like an approaching train. Rainbow didn't even blink: "About half an hour," she said, and with a quick loop, she burst upward toward the clouds again.

Seventh

"Huppity-hippety-hoo!" Pinkie said, the blanket shivering around her. "What happened then?"

Under her own blanket, Twilight sipped her cocoa; the fire Spike had breathed into the library fireplace was making her almost feel like her regular self again. "Mac brought me back here, and once the storm got squeezed down to a regular rainshower, the rest of you came in to dry off and warm up." She smiled around the cozy room at all her friends—Applejack, Fluttershy, and Pinkie on the other side of the hearthrug, Spike and Rarity beside Twilight on this side, and stretched out facing the fireplace, Big McIntosh grinning from ear to ear at Rainbow Dash tucked into a blanket and lying on her back against his side, her mane still damp enough to look more like a helmet than anything else.

"Yep, yep, yep," Rainbow said, nestling her shoulders deeper into Mac. "Those Everfree storms are a piece of cake if you've got, y'know, the right motivation." She turned her head, her eyes closed, touched her nose to his shoulder, and inhaled deeply. "And that right there? The smell of hot, wet stallion?" Her eyes came partway open, and the predatory expression on her face when she met Mac's grin made Twilight blush. "That's about as much motivation as I can stand."

"Smell?" Mac drew himself up and tried to look dignified. "Just so happens I had a bath last Saturday."

"Hmmm." Rainbow scrunched up her face. "Well, once a week should be okay. But only if you insist." She blinked then, and Twilight thought maybe her eyes were a little shiny when she turned. "And Rares? I...I'm sorry. Really. The way I was acting back at your place, I think it musta been the weird pressure changes before the storm hit that made me so goofy."

"Of course, darling." A cat full of cream wouldn't have looked as content as Rarity, her mane wrapped in a towel. "I'm well acquainted with the pressures you're referring to." She chuckled. "And I'm ever so glad that you've found what you need to relieve them."

Again, McIntosh somehow managed to blush, and Applejack, her hat sitting on its own towel between her and the fireplace, blew a noisy breath through her lips. "Land's sake, Rarity! That's my brother you're talking about!"

Rainbow laughed and took another big whiff. "You better believe it is."

Pinkie whooped, and even Fluttershy gave a giggle. "Oh, my," she said, her eyes wide and dreamy and focused on Rainbow and Mac. "It's so wonderful that everything worked out happily in the end." She nodded to the library window, rain still spattering against it. "The storm did very little damage around town, and Rainbow found her special somepony." Her glance strayed in Applejack's direction, and since Applejack was looking at her, their gazes met with a click Twilight was certain she could hear.

They both looked away, but Rainbow’s laugh pulled Twilight's attention back to her. "That's right!" Rainbow batted her eyelashes at Big McIntosh. "'Cause a certain pointy, purple bird told me earlier that you're in love with me." She said the word 'love' with something almost like a sneer in her voice, and that set Twilight to blinking. After everything they'd gone through the past two days, was Rainbow now making fun of love?

Expecting another touch of that impossible blush to brighten Mac's cheek, Twilight instead could only blink some more when Mac half closed his eyes and cocked his head. "I reckon, Ms. Dash, that I oughtta give you a chance to convince me on that account. Just to be fair and all."

"Fair, huh?" Rainbow stretched herself suddenly, her front hooves taking each side of Mac's face and pulling his head down so their lips met. And for all that Twilight had seen ponies kiss many times before, in the long and timeless instant that followed, the feelings that burst through her were like none she'd ever experienced: happiness and envy and curiosity and a warmth that enveloped her even with the fireplace going.

In the crackling silence, Rainbow pulled back, her and Mac's gazes locked. "So?" she more whispered than said. "Would'ja call that fair? Good? Near mint, maybe?"

The breath that Mac puffed out was so steamy, Twilight could almost see it. "Well, now," he rumbled as deeply as a manticore purring. "That there's a darn compelling case, ma'am."

Twilight knew she shouldn't be leaning forward the way she was to get a better view of this private moment, so she was glad—kind of—when Pinkie Pie let out another whoop. "First smootchies to Rainbow Dash!" She leaped from her blankets and whirled to point a hoof at Rarity. "Which means I win and you owe me a pancake supper!"

Rarity rolled her eyes. "Yes, yes, yes."

"What?" In a way, Twilight was glad that things could still surprise her after all the shocks she'd been having recently. But still, she couldn't help narrowing her eyes. "Did you two have some sort of a wager going on?"

Pinkie seemed to be too busy with the little dance she was doing along the wall under the window, but Rarity sighed. "Some months ago, Pinkie and I got to discussing the possibility of romance amongst the members of our little group. And while I was convinced that you, Twilight, would be the first of our number to kiss a stallion while the rest of us watched, Pinkie insisted it would be Rainbow Dash."

"What?" This time, surprise wasn't a big enough word: Twilight found herself up on all fours, her blankets scattered and her wings fully unfurled. "Me? How could you think—? I mean, I've never even—! I—! It—! They—!" Realizing that she wasn't likely to complete any sentence she might start at this point, Twilight pulled her mouth closed and aimed as much of a glare as she could manage at Rarity.

"Exactly, darling." Rarity's smile made her seem even more worldly-wise than she usually did. "You have a fresh-faced, wide-eyed innocence about you that draws stallions like flies to sugar." She shook her head. "Add to that your matchless magical prowess and the princess cachet, and, well, were you to give even the hint of being interested in such things, you could have suitors lined up from here to the town square, all of them most eager to make your further acquaintance."

The thought of suitors—for her?—froze everything inside Twilight. So she shoved it into that part of her brain where she kept things she needed to think about slowly and carefully. "That's very nice of you to say, Rarity," she said after swallowing nine or ten more sputtering replies. "But I really don't think it's going to be an issue for quite a while."

A shrug rose and fell under Rarity's blankets. "Of course." Her eyes sparkled. "But should you ever find yourself considering the matter, you know you can always discuss it with—"

"Me!" Pinkie slid into the center of the hearthrug on her knees, her front hooves spread. "I totally called it on Rainbow Dash, didn't I? And I've got a pancake supper coming that proves I'm the best at romance! Meddling spinsterhood, here I come!" She waved at the window. "It's not hardly raining at all now, too, so how 'bout we head on over to Timothy Hay's and have him fire up the griddle! Rarity's treat!"

Rarity's jaw fell, but no words came out.

Applejack chuckled. "Oh, now, don't you fret none, Rarity. You pick up Pinkie's tab, and the rest of us'll cover ourselves." She licked her lips. "'Cause I've gotta say, a stack or two of flapjacks'd do me a world of good right about now."

"Yeah!" Rainbow jumped to her hooves. "Fighting a monster storm, and then having pancakes for dinner?" She turned and smacked Big McIntosh in the shoulder. "Best first date ever!"

Mac grinned, stood, leaned down, and touched a kiss to Rainbow's forehead. Rainbow laughed, her wings vibrating like a hummingbird's, and darted to the library door.

"All right!" Spike pumped a fist and moved quickly to where Rarity was shedding her towels and blankets, her hornglow holding them out so he could fold them and set them on the floor.

Applejack trotted past, but a tiny whisper of a sigh tickled Twilight's ear; she glanced back to see Fluttershy looking away and starting to fold her own blankets.

Dash was holding the door open for Mac, the two of them practically glowing with happiness—

And Twilight made her decision. "AJ?" she asked.

"Hmmm?" Applejack stopped and turned. "What's up, sugar cube?"

"It's just—" Once again, Twilight was forced to confront her inability to act nonchalant, but once again, she did her best. "Hey, I bet this'll interest you, too, Fluttershy."

"Oh?" In the doorway, Rarity stopped as well, Pinkie and Spike beside her, Rainbow and Mac in the hallway just beyond them. "Something juicy, Twilight?"

Twilight gave a laugh that sounded pretty natural, she thought. "No, no." She gestured to some papers on her desk. "I just had some thoughts about a few emendations to the 'wildlife assistance' component of the Ponyville Civil Defense Plan. And since AJ and Fluttershy are the section leaders there, I wanted to get their reactions to—"

"Booooooring," Pinkie said, her eyelids drooping.

"Pinkie!" Rarity shot her a glare.

"But pancakes!" Flailing her front hooves, Pinkie fell to her knees. "I can hear 'em calling me!" Her tongue lolled out. "Such...sweet...syrupy...voices!"

Smiling then was as easy a thing as Twilight had done in days. "It's okay," she said. "You all go ahead. This'll just take a minute, then we'll catch up with you."

With various nods, the others disappeared down the hallway toward the front door, but Rarity cocked her head, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly. Twilight pretended not to notice, focusing her attention on stepping steadily toward her desk. "I hope you two don't mind me butting into your areas this way."

"’Course not." Applejack moved up on Twilight's left. "Organizing's what'cha do."

On her right, Fluttershy nodded. "Anything to better help our animal friends."

"Thanks." Taking a breath, Twilight turned, and when she saw that Rarity was gone, she lit her horn to soundlessly push the door closed. "Then AJ?" She pointed at Fluttershy. "Tell her. And Fluttershy?" She pointed to Applejack. "You tell her."

The two of them froze, their wide-eyed expressions almost mirror images of each other. Then they both moved, Fluttershy drawing back so her mane sloshed around to cover her face and Applejack jumping about half a pace away from her. They spoke at the same time, too: "I...I don't know what you mean," Flutttershy muttered as quietly as a falling glass about to hit the floor; and "Hold on now!" from Applejack, her voice higher and tighter than it usually was.

Twilight kept her own voice gentle. "In your cottage yesterday, Fluttershy, I said something about not understanding why a pony wouldn't tell her friends if she was in love. Rainbow Dash looked very uncomfortable at that, and I guess we've seen why now. But the two of you looked just as uncomfortable, and I've been noticing plenty of other little signs that—"

"Don't." The word wavered from Applejack's throat in a way Twilight had never heard from her friend. "'Cause, I mean, yeah, that'd be a dream come true, but—" She sighed so heavily, she seemed to partially deflate, her eyes pulling shut. "Let's face it: a gorgeous, sweet, and wonderful supermodel ain't gonna be interested in some grubby ol' farmer."

The whole room flashed yellow, and Twilight had to jump back as Fluttershy threw herself forward, her arms and wings wrapping around Applejack's neck to press their lips together.

Again, Twilight had no idea how long the kiss went on, but she couldn't help but notice that, when Fluttershy finally fell back onto her haunches to quiver in front of Applejack, all three of them were panting. "Interested," Fluttershy gasped, her front hooves clasped below her chin. "Yes, please. If...if you wouldn't mind, I mean."

Except for her chest pumping, Applejack stood as still as a statue, eyes and mouth wide. "Shwuh?" she asked after a moment.

A sour stink of fear was creeping into the salty scent of Fluttershy's sweat. "When I first came to Ponyville, your family was so much everything mine wasn't, and you're so strong and brave and smart and gentle and good and..." Her voice crumbled, and she covered her eyes. "And now you'll hate me forever because I'm weak and cowardly and stupid and—"

This time, her words cut off when Applejack stepped forward, slipped a hoof into Fluttershy's mane, and gave her a kiss that made Twilight suddenly understand a lot of the things she'd read about kisses in various romance novels. "Oh, darlin'," Applejack murmured, her nose resting against Fluttershy's and her hoof stroking Fluttershy's neck. "Lemme tell you what'cha really are. You're the secret wish of my heart, and holding you's 'bout the only thing I've wanted the last couple years."

"Oh." Fluttershy's eyes shimmered, her hooves shaking as they settled uncertainly as butterflies on Applejack's shoulders. "You— I— Umm, thank you. And please. And...and—" She bent her neck, and their lips touched for the third time.

And again, while Twilight knew that she shouldn't be standing there staring, she also knew that she wasn't about to look away. Because whatever had happened between Rainbow and Mac, whatever was happening right now between Applejack and Fluttershy, as different as their respective situations were, they were both examples of love, romance, pair-bonding, whatever else the books wanted to call it.

Which meant that it was another subject she couldn't learn about by her usual study methods. After all, how would she have found the real meaning of friendship if Celestia had just assigned her to read up on the subject? If she hadn't left Canterlot, hadn't gotten entangled in the lives of the ponies around here, hadn't made mistakes and acted crazy and embarrassed herself by stumbling into more than one hole in the ground, she never would've gotten the feel of friendship, never would've discovered her true self, never could've stepped up all those times that Equestria had needed her.

It was like Cadance kept saying: she had to discover love on her own. "It's as if it's a unitary concept," she heard herself mumbling, "with near-infinite variations when actually put into practice...."

"Twi?" Applejack's voice startled her; she blinked up to see her two friends standing close together on the other side of her desk. Applejack's left eyebrow arched and she nodded to the piece of parchment Twilight suddenly realized she was scrawling over. "Taking notes on us?"

"Sorry!" She let the quill fall from her hornglow and leaped backwards. "I didn't mean to!"

"Easy, sugar cube, easy!" Rearing back, Applejack rested her hooves on the edge of the desk. "The way I been so jumbled up 'bout this romance stuff, I surely got no business telling any other pony how best to get a handle on it."

"Exactly!" Fluttershy's smile shone with the sort of reassurance Twilight had seen her give to frightened rabbits or birds, then she turned that smile toward Applejack, and it deepened, pure joy wafting up from her with an aroma that made Twilight think of lavender and roses. "And after everything you've done for us today, we're happy to help you in any way we can!"

"But—" Twilight blinked at them, two of her dearest friends and both still very much the same ponies they'd been five minutes ago. Still, something had changed about them, but whether it was their scents or their expressions or the way they held their ears, she couldn't tell. "I didn't really do anything! And you would've told each other how you felt eventually!" She looked back and forth between them. "Wouldn't you?"

Fluttershy was shaking her head. "If it had turned out that Applejack didn't feel for me what I feel for her?" She swallowed hard enough for Twilight to hear it, but when she went on, Twilight could barely make out the words. "That would've been too terrible to think about."

"Yep." Applejack moved to press her shoulder against Fluttershy's. "To tell the truth, it's still a little scary. I mean, thinking and dreaming's one thing, but now that we know?" She nuzzled Fluttershy's ear. "Everything's new, ain't it?"

"It is." Fluttershy rubbed the side of her head against the side of Applejack. "But it's wonderful."

"Yep," Applejack said again.

Twilight couldn't help picking her quill up again. "Then Rainbow Dash and Big McIntosh are likely to be having similar sorts of emotions?"

"Worse, I reckon." With a sigh, Applejack glanced at the library door. "Me and Fluttershy, we been friends for so long, we got a pretty good idea what each other's like. But Dash and Mac, they gotta whole lotta discovering yet to do." She cleared her throat. "Speaking of which, we better get going afore they come looking for us."

A thought struck Twilight. "Should we tell them? I mean, should you tell them? Is it too soon to let other ponies know? Or since, like you said, you've known each other for so long..." Uncertain how to go on, she let the words trail off.

Applejack and Fluttershy gave different sorts of grimaces and looked at each other. "I dunno," Applejack muttered.

"Ummm..." Fluttershy pulled partway back into her mane. "Because, I mean, well, it's just...this is Dash's day, isn't it?"

"Mac's, too." Applejack nodded. "They both been kinda wrung out when it comes to love, so yeah. All the focus oughtta be on them."

A smile emerged with Fluttershy, and she leaned forward to tuck her head against Applejack's shoulder. "I love you," she murmured.

"Oh, my." Applejack's eyes pulled shut, and Twilight thought she saw little gimmers at the corners. "How many years I been dreaming of hearing you say that? And how many years I been dreaming up what I'd say back?" She reached a hoof down to Fluttershy's chin and raised her head till their gazes locked. "But you know? Not a single thing I ever came up with's anywhere near as good as just saying, 'I love you, too.'"

It took some self-control for Twilight not to squeal like Pinkie Pie when the two slowly kissed again, but then they were pulling apart and Applejack was turning for the door. "So! Who's up for some pancakes?"

Fluttershy giggled and trotted after her. "I hope Pinkie hasn't drunk all the strawberry syrup yet."

Twilight followed them out into the hallway with a veritable plethora of questions bubbling inside her—Did Rarity suspect anything about Applejack and Fluttershy? Would Pinkie's twitches let her know? What might happen if things didn't work out between Rainbow and McIntosh, or even worse between Applejack and Fluttershy? How would the comparative friendship levels each couple had shared before admitting their romantic feelings affect their new relationships?

Shaking her head, she pushed them all into the back part of her brain, picked up her pace, and fell in beside her friends. Yes, the past two days had seen a lot of changes and had given her a lot to think about. But tonight was for congratulations and pancakes.

First

"Huh," said Rainbow Dash.

"Huh?" Twilight glanced up from Daring Do and the Amethyst Eye, the autumn afternoon shade on this particular balcony of her palace just plain perfect for settling down and reading after what Rainbow called their 'weekly patrol.'

Yes, all they did was criss-cross the skies above Ponyville and the Everfree Forest for an hour or so every Thursday before stopping at Hayburger for lunch, but Rainbow insisted that these maneuvers were vital. "Rogue weather!" she would exclaim with a flaring of wings at least once during every patrol. "Lurking nests of changelings! Nightmare Moon cultists or Ahuizotl's henchponies! We've got a duty to protect Equestria from all that kinda stuff!"

And as much as Twilight agreed with those sentiments in principle, in practice, she mostly looked at it as an excuse to get out once a week and stretch her wings. The hour she then scheduled for her and Rainbow to geek out over Daring Do was an added bonus.

This time, though, Rainbow wasn't looking at her copy of the book. From her cushion by the balcony rail, she was looking down at the street that lead to the town square where the market was in full swing. "Whaddaya think about that?" she asked, nodding toward the crowd.

"'That'?" Blinking, Twilight stood and peered through the railing. Ponies moved along the road and among the stalls, the cinnamon-sweet scent of pumpkin bread and the salty-sweet scent of roasting peanuts drifting on the breeze, but as far as Twilight could tell, nothing but the usual buying, selling, talking, trading and laughing seemed to be going on. "What, exactly?"

With a sigh, Rainbow pointed a hoof. "That."

Twilight bent down, sighted along Rainbow's leg, and saw— "Rarity buying apples from Big McIntosh?" Straightening, she wrinkled her brow at Rainbow. "Why should I think anything about Rarity buying apples?"

Rainbow's mouth went sideways. "Maybe because she isn't buying apples."

Another blink, and Twilight squinted more intently, the Sweet Apple Acres booth sitting at the far end of the square. "Well, Rarity's got her saddlebags on, and whatever's in them is pushing out the sides in multiple rounded lumps, each of which is about the size of an apple." Shrugging, Twilight sat down and gave Rainbow a grin. "I think I'll stick with my original hypothesis, thank you."

"Really?" Eyes half-closed, Rainbow folded her front hooves. "So if she's buying apples, why are her saddlebags closed?"

"Because she's already bought them?" Twilight couldn't help turning it into a question. She knew from experience that Rainbow often picked up on things other ponies missed, but she also knew from experience how wild Rainbow's imagination could get.

"Exactly!" Rainbow leaped into a hover. "She's already bought them! Which means she's doing something else right now, doesn't it?"

"OK, fine." Twilight looked once more. "If you want to get technical, right now, she's talking to Big McIntosh."

"There it is!" Clapping her hooves together, Rainbow did a quick spin. "And why would Rarity be talking to Big Mac, huh? What could those two possibly have to talk about?"

Twilight tapped the balcony's crystal floor once for each reason: "The weather, the crops, the Ponytones' rehearsal schedule, how Applejack's doing, the latest Crusader escapade, the price of—"

"No, no, no!" Rainbow flopped back down onto her cushion. "Don't you get it? They've got a thing going on!"

"A thing?" And because it was Rainbow saying it instead of Rarity or even Fluttershy, Twilight decided she'd better make sure. "You mean a romantic thing?"

"Totally!" A sort of glow had come into Rainbow's eyes. "Like 'Beauty and the Beast,' y'know?"

Unable to stop herself, Twilight asked, "Which is which?"

Rainbow scowled. "This isn't a joke, Twi! Mac's obviously got it bad for Rarity, and there's no way she doesn't have it bad for him, too!"

Possibilities flashed through Twilight's mind. Could this be a changeling? Was Rainbow feverish with the feather flu? Had there been something suggestive in the book they'd been reading? But no: a changeling would know not to act so completely out-of-character; Rainbow had devoured two-and-a-half burgers and most of Twilight's fries at lunch; and Daring Do never did anything even remotely romantic in her books. That had always been one of the main attractions of the series in Twilight's mind, as a matter of fact.

But that meant, following Shamrock Homes's dictum, that since she'd eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, however improbable, had to be the truth.

"So, wait." For the first time in her life, Twilight found herself doubting something she'd read in the Great Detective's adventures. "You're telling me that you think Rarity and Big McIntosh—"

"Oh, they'd never admit it!" Rainbow waved a hoof. "But look at them!"

Twilight's gaze slid unwillingly to the scene again, and she did a double-take. Rarity and Mac continued facing each other as they had been for some minutes now. "They're still talking?" She couldn't stop a gasp.

"Yep, yep, yep." Rainbow polished a front hoof against her chest. "Did I call it, or did I call it?"

"There—" Every thought seemed to desert Twilight. "There's got to be some other explanation!"

"Trust me, Twi." Rainbow touched the side of her nose. "I know all about this stuff."

"You?"

Rainbow narrowed her eyes. "And whaddaya mean by that?"

"Well?" All Twilight could do was flail her hooves. "The only thing I've ever heard you say about romance is that it's stupid and mushy! Am I suddenly supposed to accept that you've now become some sort of expert on the subject?"

Clearing her throat, Rainbow gave a sniff. "A real lady don't kiss and tell, all right?" That glow seemed to come over her again, and she hunched forward on her cushion. "The important thing is that we hafta help 'em get together. 'Cause that's what friends do for their friends, right?"

"I...guess..." Head still spinning, Twilight moved her stare back and forth between Rainbow and the two—still talking!—out in town square. "But this is more Cadance's field, don't you think? I mean, if they're really—" She stopped, unable to make herself say it. Could one of her friends truly be in love?

"Cadance?" Rainbow blew a noisy breath through her lips. "No way! This is Applejack's brother and Rarity we're talking about! If we can't handle this, nopony can!" She jumped up and began pacing along the balcony. "We'll need Applejack to talk to Big Mac, of course, and Fluttershy to handle Rarity, so—"

"What?" Twilight fought the urge to grab Rainbow and shake her. "We don't even know for sure that anything's going on!"

Rainbow stopped. Her left eyebrow arched, and she gestured to the view past the balcony rail.

Almost afraid to look, Twilight glanced down to see Rarity laughing at something Big McIntosh had just said. Then Rarity leaned forward, and Big Mac began laughing.

"Unless..." A quizzical note came into Rainbow's voice. "Are you getting weird 'cause you like Big Mac?"

"Me?" Just the idea stole Twilight's voice for a moment. "No!"

"Good." Rainbow gave a sly grin. "Since you already got a coltfriend up north and all."

"He's not—! I don't—! We've never even really talked, and there isn't—!" Biting off her further objections, Twilight tried to ignore the warmth spreading across her face and pushed on. "Look, Rainbow, you said it yourself: this isn't a joke or a game or anything like that. If you're right, then this is something real and adult, and we've got to take it seriously!"

"Adult?" With another clearing of her throat, Rainbow leaned against the railing. "Says Princess Twilight from the balcony of the castle she got after saving the world for, like, the third or fourth time."

Scowling, Twilight waved a hoof. "OK, yes, fine. But having a job and responsibilities and everything, that's just a matter of applying knowledge and honing skills. Love is—" She shook her head and presented the conclusion she'd come to after studying numerous novels and non-fiction works on this very subject. "Saving the world is a sprint: a big effort, sure, but it's quick and one-time. You leap into it, and you either succeed or you fail. Love is a marathon: a long-term commitment that you nurture and develop every minute of every hour of every day. And if it falls apart, you don't get snuffed out like a candle like you might with the world-saving thing. No, you've still got to go on living no matter how painful and terrible it might be."

She swallowed, her heart thud-thud-thudding in her ears. "Being a princess is hard, but when you get right down to it, I've been training for it my whole life. But being in love?" The breath she took went in shaky, and she blew it out hard in an attempt to steady herself. "That's something to be very, very careful about."

Rainbow clicked her tongue. "Don't date much, do you?"

Twilight clenched her teeth. "Rainbow!"

"Okay, okay." Sitting down, Rainbow spread her front hooves. "I'll admit that you're maybe kinda right about some of that. 'Cause, sure, nothing's worse than love gone wrong." A smile touched her snout, a smile about as gentle as any Twilight had ever seen from her friend. "But when it goes right, there's nothing better. And if we can help things go right with Rarity and Big Mac, then we've got to. That's what I'm saying."

Unable to stop herself, Twilight glanced through the railing again. Rarity was just now walking away from the Sweet Apple Acres cart, both her smile and Big Mac's easily visible even from this distance. "We'll be careful?" she heard herself ask.

"Of course!" A whoosh, and Rainbow slid up beside her, one front leg hooking around her shoulders. "I mean, c'mon! When aren't we?"