Usually when a hurricane was due to hit Ponyville, the town was given sufficient advance warning by the weather department to batten down the hatches, but this particular one had come out of nowhere and seemed intent on blazing a curiously prismatic trail of destruction through the sun-kissed thoroughfare of Market Street; ponies scurried to and fro, yelping in fright as they did their best to avoid being caught in the fury of its polychromatic wake. Stalls were turned over, assorted goods were scattered across the dusty ground like soldiers crying out for a medic, and one innocent bystander would need two-hundred-and-twenty-seven consecutive sessions with a therapist before they would say more than two words.
Two words which – though deceptively simple – summed up the thirty seconds of chaos to which this sleepy village in Equestria's quiet heartland had been subjected.
Those two words were, of course,
“Rainbow Dash,” Applejack said furiously, uttering the name of her best friend as if it were a vile curse, “would you stop being such a show-off! Look at what they hay you've just done.” The farm pony adjusted her dishevelled stetson with a flourish, gesturing to the carnage Rainbow Dash's high-speed stunt had caused.
“The horror,” said a trio of weak voices in unison, “the horror.”
“Sorrycan'ttalkrightnowbye,” Rainbow Dash replied in a hurry, barely slowing down her assault on Ponyville's innocent streets and citizens long enough to deliver her response; and with that, the blue pegasus was suddenly gone in a burst of varicoloured streaks in the direction of the glittering spires of the Castle of Friendship.
“I hope Princess Twilight clips your wings for this,” said Applejack, muttering crossly to herself as she went to help the stricken ponies littering the road.
*
If Rainbow Dash was aware of Applejack's irritation, it was playing second fiddle to another, far more important realisation; one that had startled her so much that she'd almost fallen off the side of her house, and she just might've done had Tank not been there to reel her back in. Few things could creep under the skin of a pegasus enough to disrupt the passive application of their flight magic that allowed them to live on clouds, but this had, and that was a source of concern to Rainbow Dash.
Quite simply, it revolved around a pretty purple pony princess that lived in a castle in Ponyville who whiled away the hours solving pesky pestiferous friendship problems.
A warm smile broke out across Twilight Sparkle's expressive face when she opened the door to see her friend and she greeted Rainbow Dash with a cheery, “Hello!”
“Are you busy?” asked Rainbow Dash agitatedly, the hooves of her forelegs fidgeting nervously on the ground in front of her.
“Just some, er, studying,” replied Twilight with a distracted look back inside the lobby. “Princess Celestia had a new batch of books sent over from the Canterlot Library to replace the ones that were irrevocably damaged in the fire at Golden Oaks. Spike and I were supposed to be categorising them, but we, uh-” she flushed slightly “-found some old favourites and started reading them instead.”
“D'you want to grab some lunch? I have something important that I want, need, to tell you.”
Frowning, uncertain as to the last time she'd seen the pegasus look so uncomfortable, Twilight asked, “Is everything all right without you? You seem … tense.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” said Rainbow Dash, a pensive look further creasing her already wrinkled muzzle. Her shoulders drooped and she let out a sigh. “Sorry to have bothered you. Have fun with the studying.”
“Wait!” Something was up with her friend, the alicorn inferred, and she was determined to get to the bottom of it.
Rainbow Dash, for her part, didn't have much of a choice, what with her tail suddenly trapped in the iron grip of Twilight's thaumic aura. She folded her forelegs and shot Twilight a withering look.
“Let's go to lunch,” said Twilight, sheepishly releasing the cranky pegasus. It was considered bad form in pony society to use magic on another sentient creature without their permission, but there were times when a snap decision had to be made. “I am kinda hungry,” she added when her stomach rumbled audibly. The alicorn blushed again, deeper this time.
*
“Are you happy?” Rainbow Dash asked while waiting for her hayburger and fries to arrive. The café was mostly deserted at this time of day, arriving as they had about an hour before what most ponies agreed was lunchtime, so she hoped that there wouldn't be too much of a delay. Most pegasi had big appetites, thanks to the hours and hours of weather manipulation and flying that they put in each day. “With … well, life here in Ponyville?” she added for clarification.
“Am I happy?” Twilight Sparkle was confused and that confusion tugged at one corner of her muzzle while forcing her eyebrows to knit together. “I thought that this was about you?”
Rainbow Dash waved her hoof dismissively. “Just answer the question, please.”
Twilight mulled the question over in her mind for a moment. “Yeah, I guess I am. I have Spike, you guys, the castle. I mean, I miss the library, of course, but it can be rebuilt.”
“Uh.” The pegasus' ears flattened against the side of her head and her gaze shifted awkwardly. “Are you seeing anypony? I mean, have you had any luck finding a special somepony yet?”
“That's kind of personal, Rainbow Dash.” If she had been feeling confused before, the alicorn was now lost somewhere in the misty mires of outright befuddlement. Hang on, she isn't … oh, Celestia, she is, isn't she? It would explain the awkward behaviour around me today, anyway. “Look, I'm flattered, but ...”
“What? No, I wasn't asking you out or anything!” Rainbow Dash's cheeks flared bright red when she realised how she must have been coming across to Twilight. “No offence to you, Princess, but you aren't my type.”
Twilight covered her eyes with her hooves, wishing that the darkest pits of Tartarus' deepest catacombs would open up beneath her and swallow her whole. “I'm sorry, I just assumed when you were acting weird and asking me if I was happy and … and stuff.”
Rainbow Dash leaned forward and pulled Twilight's hooves away from her face so that she could look deep into those piercing mulberry eyes. “I woke up this morning and I realised that I, we, suck at being friends to you, Twilight.”
“What do you mean? You guys are great!” Flabbergasted was the word that flitted through the alicorn's mind at that moment.
The pegasus' cerise eyes lidded slightly, as if she were holding back a wave of emotion. “Really? How often do we hang out?” Her tone turned mocking. “Oh, that's right, only when we go to some kind of function together or have to save Equestria from destruction. How many times has one of us come by just to shoot the breeze, or have long, stupid talks about relationships and eat ice-cream, or-” the pegasus' hoof floundered in the air “-you know, just do friendship-type stuff with you? Four years we've known you now, and it still feels like we need an excuse to drop by just to see how you're doing.”
“Rainbow, I-” Twilight hesitated as she felt a lump form in her throat “-I had no idea that you felt that way.”
“I'm being silly, aren't I?” Rainbow Dash looked away, barely even registering the fact that a plate full of piping-hot food had just been placed in front of her. “I just … I still feel like there's so much that we don't know about each other.”
“You're not being silly at all,” the alicorn replied, finding herself both amazed and touched at just how sweet the pegasus was capable of being when she showed her compassion for others. It was a side to her friend that she'd love to see more of. “Maybe we don't hang out as much as other ponies do, but there are reasons for that. We don't live together, like Lyra and Sweetie Drops, and we all have full-time jobs, so I can see your point that we only seem to get together on … special occasions. But we're still the best of friends. I know that, no matter what, you'll always be there for me, just as I'll always be there for you.”
Rainbow Dash's head sank onto the table, chagrin writ large across her face; wishing, just as Twilight had done moments earlier, for the ground to consume her. Rather than cool wood, however, she found herself submerged in the spongy mass of her hayburger. When she sat back up, her muzzle was covered in sesame seeds.
Twilight laughed.
After a moment, so, too, did Rainbow Dash.
*
Dear Princess Celestia,
I know it's been some time since I last wrote to you concerning friendship lessons, but an encounter with Rainbow Dash today taught me something very important: not only that there are always new facets to my studies still waiting for me to discover, but that friendship itself isn't always about the big things; it isn't about going to galas, it isn't about facing down monsters, and it isn't about trying to solve everypony's problems.
What it's REALLY about is the small, silly moments that you share together in-between those times.
Always your faithful student,
Twilight Sparkle
