Romp

Rainbow Dash sat at the writing nook of the castle library, resting her chin on an open paperback. The dull sound of the storm outside continued to echo through the tall, vacant room, the green tint of the windows overhead illuminating her surroundings with a calming light.

Several hours had passed since Rainbow sent Twilight to bed. She originally intended to fly back home for a while, even if just to stretch her wings some. Given how Twilight was feeling, she had planned to come back later that evening to check on her. But when she opened the doors to the world outside – which equated more to a wall of thick, unrelenting rain – she surrendered herself to what she could only assume would be an immensely boring day.

“Mmgh,” Rainbow growled against the book, squinting out at the empty room around her. For the first couple hours, she napped on one of the comfier chairs, hoping to alleviate some of her headache. Instead, she woke up to a dull throbbing in the back of her skull. She then spent the next unknown amount of time roaming around the castle, figuring out how to get to certain places she didn’t know about before.

Eventually, she ended up back in the library, back to the mess of books Twilight had scattered across her desk. Resigning herself to defeat, she took to browsing through some of the works, if not to simply engage herself by trying to figure out how to read middle-Equestrian. After a couple failed attempts, she turned her attention to the little book that got Twilight so worked up. Skimming through a few pages, she quickly confirmed what she had already believed: it was all far too technical. She could see why Twilight would have gotten herself so worked up over it, but…

She too was familiar with how scary it could be to face a new and strange part of yourself. And she too knew that you couldn’t learn to face it with just a book.

With a huff, Rainbow lifted her head and closed the book, setting it aside. She leaned back in the chair, stretching her forelegs behind her head as she closed her eyes.

She let her mind drift back to the events she could remember from Twilight’s imagination. With just a bit of effort, she remembered the moment she flew behind Twilight’s flank when she began to laugh that unnerving, haughty laugh. In hindsight, even in light of everything she had told Twilight just hours ago, she had to admit that the nature of what she witnessed last night, and the fear that came with it, was simply not something she could call ‘normal’ with a straight face.

There was something dark about her behavior. Something far more frightening than even the shock of witnessing a giant pony for the first time.

Still, she knew Twilight. She stood by what she told her earlier – that if she had known there was any real risk to somepony she cared about, she never would have gone through with it. Though Rainbow hated to admit it, she could only assume her fear stemmed from something else that hit closer to home.

I wonder… if I should tell her?

Rainbow crossed her hind legs in the chair as she leaned further back, flicking her tail from side to side. No matter how she spun the events from last night, there was one thing certain: Twilight was afraid. She was afraid of the new things she was discovering about herself. The fact that she had even allowed herself to get caught up in the moment was a good sign, as she knew only too well.

But she also knew how quickly progress can be lost when something unexpected happens.

“Uuuuugghh,” Rainbow groaned as she pivoted forward, bringing her forelegs down to the table with a thud. “I can’t believe I laughed at her for telling me about this… nngh!” She slid over a softer-looking book and face-planted into its cover.

If there was any one thing Rainbow knew she was, it was a hypocrite. All too often, both in her past and present, she found herself doing one thing or another to her friends that was the exact opposite of what she would ever want someone to do to her. And it wasn’t because she liked to hurt others’ feelings, she just genuinely found a lot of things silly. That’s just the way she was wired.

The same way that every other hidden part of her was.

Rainbow sighed – or at least as much as she could with her face against a book. Lifting her head with tired eyes, she slowly drew a breath—

Yeah… I think I’ll tell her.

—then exhaled, shoving herself away from the desk to canter into the hallway.

__________

Twilight stirred beneath her covers, clutching tight to the end of her comforter with her hooves. With a muffled whimper, she peeked open her eyes at the closed door of her bedroom.

She sighed as she nuzzled into her pillow. Although she was aware her sleeping pattern would now be thrown off, she was thankful to have a little more rest. She contemplated just lying there for the next few minutes, until a quiet tapping came from her door, pushing it slightly open. “Hey Twi. You awake?”

Twilight rubbed her eyes with a grunt. “Mhmm. Come in.”

Rainbow Dash stepped inside, smiling at her sleepy friend. “Good morning,” she murmured, walking over to the side of the bed. “Or good afternoon, I guess at this point.”

Twilight slowly blinked herself to waking. “H-how long did I sleep?”

“No clue,” Rainbow said with a shrug. “I’ve just kinda been sitting around doing whatever.”

Pushing one of her pillows up against the headboard, Twilight scooted to sit upright. “I’m surprised you haven’t gone home already.”

“Eh.” She suggested to a window with her head. “Little too wet out there for me.”

“Ah. Right.” Twilight smiled a second before letting loose a yawn. “Well, uh… how are you feeling now?”

Rainbow’s head continued to throb with a dull pain, but she wasn’t about to let on. Knowing Twilight, she would just get worked up again. “I’m alright. A little bored, I guess.”

“I bet. What exactly have you been doing, anyway?”

“Oh, uh…” Rainbow glanced away. “Not a lot. Took a nap earlier, then just kind of hung around.”

“I see.” Twilight’s ears folded a little as she rested her weight into the pillow behind her. “Listen, Rainbow. I just wanted to say that—”

“Don’t start this again, Twi,” Rainbow interrupted. “I already told you you don’t need to be sorry.”

“No.” Twilight shook her head. “I know that. I just… wanted to thank you.”

Rainbow’s ears flicked forward. “For what?”

“For everything last night. And today.” Resting her head against the top of the headboard, Twilight closed her eyes. “I’ve had dreams for years that I could never control, things that scared me… things that excited me. And I…” She gulped, then looked over at Rainbow. “I always wanted to try living the experience somehow. But I never looked into it, because…”

“You were too ashamed to face it,” Rainbow stated flatly.

Twilight blinked. “Y-yes, actually.” Bending forward a little, she said, “How did you know?”

Rainbow exhaled long and slow as she knelt down beside the bed, resting her forelegs on the edge of the comforter. “Well, I can tell you I didn’t learn it from a book.”

Twilight blushed a little, averting her gaze with a small grin.

“So, like…” Letting her eyes drift as well, Rainbow said, “Well, first off, I’m sorry for laughing at you last night when you told me about all this.”

“You mean when we were figuring out how to use the spell?”

Rainbow nodded. “I shouldn’t have made fun of you for telling me you wanted to play a giant pony.”

“Oh. Well, it’s alright.” Smirking a little, Twilight said, “Honestly, it does sound kinda silly when you’re the one hearing it.”

Rainbow giggled softly as she looked up at Twilight. “Yeah. But still. I didn’t mean to embarrass you or anything.”

“Rainbow, please.” Twilight smiled at the mare. “I know you too, and I know you don’t say or do things to intentionally hurt others.”

“Yeah, but… does that matter?”

Twilight tilted her head.

“I mean, like…” Rainbow shrugged. “Who cares if I mean to or not? The fact that I don’t think before I say stuff sometimes just… nngh.” She rubbed a hoof across her muzzle, looking away. “I hate that I don’t think things through sometimes.”

“Rainbow…” Reaching a hoof out to the pegasus, Twilight said, “It’s alright. Everypony makes mistakes.” Chuckling softly, she added, “I mean, take last night for example.”

“...?” Rainbow glanced back with an arched eyebrow.

“I never should have tried delving into that stuff,” Twilight continued with a sad smile. “If anypony here made a mistake, it was me for ever wanting to try it in the first place.”

Rainbow blinked at her. With a furrowed brow, she stood back up. “Wait. You think using that spell… was a mistake?”

“Well of course.” With a sigh, Twilight looked out toward one of her windows. “If I had just left it alone, if I hadn’t brought those strange dreams or desires out, then none of this would have happened. It was stupid.” She shook her head with a smirk. “Now I understand why some ponies say ignorance is bliss.”

With those words, Rainbow froze. She stared at her friend for a moment, her mouth working fruitlessly to form a response. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Twilight, believing she was in the wrong for… learning something? And of all things, learning something about herself?

Slowly, she began to shake her head. “What we did last night wasn’t stupid.”

Twilight glanced over. “Hm?”

Rainbow breathed a bitter chuckle. “Now, what you just said? Yeah. That’s stupid.”

Twilight blinked, eyes widening in shock.

“And by the way,” Rainbow continued, shooting a frown at Twilight. “If you really feel that way, then that must mean I’m pretty stupid too.”

“...I… wh-what?”

Climbing onto the top covers of the bed, Rainbow plopped down in front of her friend. “I want you to tell me something, in all honesty.”

Twilight merely continued to blink, her eyes darting confusedly between Rainbow’s. “U-um—”

“Can you or can you not change the spell so it, like, isn’t as dangerous or whatever?”

“What?” Twilight’s eyes widened further still. “You can’t be serious.”

“Just answer the question, Twi,” Rainbow insisted, her voice growing slightly in volume. “Can you make it safer?”

Twilight gulped, pulling her head away from Rainbow. “I-I mean, yes – technically, it isn’t that hard. All you have to do is—”

“Whatever.” Rainbow waved a hoof. “Don’t need the details. Just do what you need to change it, and let’s go.”

“No,” Twilight answered almost instantly, tossing her covers off as she made to get off the bed. “There’s no way we’re going to—”

“Twi, listen to me,” Rainbow said as she reached out to her. “Please. I promise, nothing bad will happen—”

“You don’t know that!” Twilight shouted as she clambered off the bed, heading for the door.

“I do know!” Rainbow shouted back, jumping off the bed with a flap of her wings to land in front of the door. “Trust me!” She locked eyes with Twilight. “Please.”

Twilight stopped, hoof halted mid-air as she looked at Rainbow. “I just… I can’t! I can’t do it again—”

“Oh, but you can. You already said you could.” Glancing back at the door, she said, “Do you need some of those books first, or—”

“That’s not what I mean, Rainbow Dash!” Twilight spat with a spiteful tone.

“I know that!” Rainbow retorted just as passionately. “Twilight, you said that you trusted me more than I probably know. And…” She glanced away with a scoff. “Though I still don’t really know why, if you want to prove that’s true, then you need to listen to me.” Her tone softening, she said, “I promise everything will be fine, if you’ll just give this one more shot.”

Twilight’s legs began to shake. “I-I can’t, Rainbow! After last night, I—”

“Just listen,” Rainbow said, touching a hoof gently to Twilight’s muzzle. “I can’t force you to do this, but I’m begging you.” She gulped, her eyes softening as she dropped her hoof. “For both of us.”

Twilight blinked, her ears flicking forward.

“Please… one more time,” Rainbow finished, her voice nearly a whisper.

With a shiver, Twilight slumped her shoulders. She closed her eyes, if only to avoid seeing Rainbow’s steadfast gaze.

Finally, after several bated seconds, Twilight’s horn began to glow. “I’m… going to modify the way our subconscious interacts with our physical bodies,” she muttered as the world around them began to blur. “From what I understand, this is how newer variants of similar spells were engineered. I think if I get it just right, I can also decrease the level of pain experienced.”

“No,” Rainbow said with a firm tone. “Fix the physiowhatever junk that screwed with my memory, but don’t change the pain stuff. And make sure you make the world just like it was before.”

Twilight looked at Rainbow, her eyes beginning to glow with the white resonance of magic. “But isn’t it too—”

“Just do it,” Rainbow spoke over her. “I’ll be fine.”

For a moment, Twilight hesitated. But the longer she looked into Rainbow’s eyes, the warm, reassuring smile she was now returning her, the more she understood.

Rainbow was showing her true loyalty.

Closing her eyes once more, her horn grew in intensity, thrusting the world into blinding white light.

__________

Moments later, Rainbow found herself nestled in the crux of a limb at the top of a tree. Her vantage point gave her a perfect view of the world around her.

The amber glow of a sunset cast broken bands of light through a canopy of clouds far off in the horizon. Snow-capped mountains crested the farthest stretches of the landscape to each side of the sun, beneath which stretched miles and miles of forest. In a couple spots, she caught the glimmer of rivers far off in the distance, one of which led into a small lake.

“Wow.” Rainbow nodded with a smile. “She’s really good at this.”

“Oh, um, thanks,” came a booming voice from above her.

“G-guh!” Rainbow’s wings flared out, though she stayed mounted on the limb. Pivoting to look around the trunk, she saw Twilight standing right behind her, still several stories above her even as she sat at the top of the tree.

Twilight grimaced, lifting a hoof away from the pegasus and the forest. “S-sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Nuh uh!” Rainbow waved a hoof up at her. “You’re fine!” She glanced over once more to take in the beautiful landscape.

Leaning against the trunk of the tree, she considered how to proceed next. Although she had originally intended to tell Twilight about her own secret, it appeared more crucial at the moment to help her face her own.

But now that she had managed to get her back here, what could she do?

She considered the tactics she had used thus far. When Twilight first considered bailing on the spell last night, she had used taunts to get her riled up. It was a strategy she tried on a whim, knowing Twilight hated it when she dragged out the egghead stuff too much. And just to make sure she knew she was serious, she had committed to throwing the first punches.

Of course, given how sensitive Twilight was at the moment, that probably wouldn’t work. If anything, it would probably make her even more fragile.

Well… what can I do then? What’ll get Twi riled up like last night?

She mulled the question over silently for several seconds. Eventually, an idea began to take shape. It seemed a bit raw, and it was probably harsher than the things she had done last night. But…

It might just work.

__________

Twilight stood rather awkwardly above the carpet of trees beneath her. Every shift of her weight, every twitch of her hooves, threatened to do untold damage to the synthetic world she had built.

“So, um…” She gulped, the sound of her swallow echoing softly across the earth beneath her. “Wh-what exactly are we supposed to—”

Her words suddenly caught in her throat as she felt a violent tug on the primaries of a wing.

“GUAAAAAHHHH!” Twilight screamed at the top of her lungs as somepony mercilessly ripped a feather clean off the bridge of her wing.

In a prismatic blur, Rainbow Dash sped off beyond the giant mare with a lavender plume nearly as big as her body clutched between her teeth, her ears pressed hard against her head to protect her from the shout.

It was a shot in the dark. A long one. But Rainbow knew that one of the things that will get a pegasus’ primal fighting instincts to a boil is if you manage to rip out one of their primaries. She wasn’t sure if the same applied for alicorns, but given the low, menacing growl now forming behind her, she assumed it must.

She grinned as much as possible with the feather in her mouth as she glanced back at Twilight.

Her expression instantly faltered. As Twilight spun to face her, wings spread high to the heavens, her eyes widened.

Twilight looked down at the tiny pegasus, her massive teeth gritting with a snarl as her violet eyes stared back, narrow and angry. The breadth of her wing’s size cast a dozen-mile long shadow across the landscape beneath her.

And all Rainbow could do was stare.

Suddenly, not realizing where she was going, one of Rainbow’s wings caught in the topmost branches of a taller tree. Yelping in pain, she instinctively pulled it against her side, only to begin free-falling to the forest below.

“Gaaaaah!” Smashing through the thicket of branches, Rainbow bounced hard off the trunk of a smaller pine, landing against limb after limb before finally falling to a bed of pinestraw below.

“Oomph!” Rainbow span, rolled, and tumbled – among other various means of rolypoly ambulation – before skidding to a halt at the edge of a riverbed. With a wheeze, she carefully stood to her hooves.

Looking over her body, she noticed a few limbs stuck in her injured wing. She flexed it carefully, shaking out some of the debris before recoiling it with a wince. She then fluffed her other wing freely, just a little sore from the fall, and noticed a few minor scrapes and scuffs along her coat.

That was when she heard the crash of a hoofstep and smashing trees very, very close by.

Rainbow’s legs locked up. Slowly, she turned her head to look behind her.

Twilight stood directly overhead, her nearest hoof having obliterated the patch of forest she just fell through.

“What in Tartarus did you do that for?!” Twilight shouted with a deafening roar, hanging her head low with a snarl as she stared Rainbow down.

Rainbow gulped the bile that had suddenly rose in her throat, her legs now racked with tremors. She couldn’t afford to back down now, though. Not just yet. If this was going to be worthwhile, she had to get Twilight to actually come at her.

Mustering a weak sneer, she shouted, “Oh yeah, heh. Sorry ‘bout that.” She studied the ground around her briefly, spotting the feather she had dropped during her fall sitting close to the river’s edge. Trotting over on shaky hooves, she picked the thing up and hefted it into the sunlight. “You looking for this?”

Twilight’s scowl fell into a frown as she lifted her head. “Rainbow, I know you’re trying to taunt me. But I’m sorry.” Her frown began to falter as her eyes drifted down to the crop of broken trees beneath her. “I… I just can’t do this—”

Rainbow had already sped off beside the mare, snatching yet another plume from Twilight’s wings with an audible rip.

“GRRRAAAAGGGHH!” Twilight’s wing flared on instinct, batting the pegasus away with a thud.

The force of Twilight’s impact knocked the wind right out of Rainbow’s lungs and the feather from her mouth, injuring her other wing. With thin, tear-filled eyes, she struggled to regain control of her flight path. Both wings now throbbed with immense pain, sensations like white-hot nails shooting through her ribcage. With each pound of the feathery appendages, she felt her consciousness slowly slipping away.

But gradually, she could feel the familiar rush of adrenaline beginning to pump through her system – a thrilling, comforting sensation she once held dear long ago.

Alright… here’s hoping Twilight fixed that spell.

Marshalling every ounce of willpower and focus left, Rainbow Dash banked hard to the side, pitching her body against the wind above her head to spin around toward Twilight.

As expected, the colossal alicorn was already rampaging toward her, eyes blind with rage as she kicked a swath of dirt and bark high into the air. The thunder of her hoofsteps, the snapping of trees far beneath them, rang loud in her ears.

Drawing a deep, deep breath of the cool evening air, Rainbow snarled at her friend, letting loose her best warcry.

Twilight, leveling her head with the oncoming pegasus, tore asunder the heavens with her own.

Each locked eyes with the other.

And Rainbow…