Glimpsing the Future

Chapters

Chapter 1: The Weekend Ahead
Chapter 2: Home is Where the Heart is
Chapter 3: Parting Shots
Epilogue: What About Us?

Chapter 1: The Weekend Ahead

“San Franciscolt Bay!” Twilight Sparkle pressed her nose to the window like a foal scoping out their favorite store. But instead of candy or toys, her attention was fixed on the green water, tossing and rolling along with the wind, under the train tracks outside their cabin. “Oh my gosh, I’ve never seen so much water before! How deep do you think it is?”

“I think the train’s never felt so slow,” Rainbow growled.

Twilight smiled and leaned against her. “The city’s right on the other side of this bridge. It’s only a little longer. Then we can finally scratch this off our list.”

“No kidding. You promised to come see my parents next week for about a zillion weeks in a row.”

“And that little vacation up to the Wonderbolt Academy was...?”

“A lifelong dream!” Rainbow grinned and threw a leg around Twilight’s shoulders, trying to pull her tighter.

Twilight hissed as Rainbow’s grip dug into her new wing joint. “Too hard!”

Rainbow’s hoof jerked away. “Sorry!”

“It’s okay. Just... stings.” Twilight tried to flex away the pain. Headaches, she could deal with. Stubbing a hoof or twisting an ankle were also child’s play, but the wings and all their nerves, muscles, and reflexes were still foreign to her. She tried to spread the wing and stretch out the joint, but felt the second instantly push against Rainbow’s body, her muscles there struggling in vain to join those on her other side. “I still can’t control them, can I? I’m sorry.”

“Eh, at least you didn’t hit me in the eye this time.” Rainbow shifted and let the wing out to its full span. “No problem.”

Twilight bit back her reply. Both her wings flapped in spite of her effort to only move one, and she folded them back to her body.

“Hey, don’t go all silent on me like that.” Rainbow’s leg returned to her shoulders. “It’s fine. Your wings are new. So what?”

“So I’m visiting a family of pegasi, and I don’t even have a foal’s understanding of my new body yet.”

“And I’m telling you that you’re overthinking it. Your parents didn’t kick me out because I didn’t have a horn, did they? My folks are cool. If you don’t want to go flying, then don’t go flying.” She shrugged. “Nothing else to it.”

Everything else to it! Rainbow never actually had a horn to channel her magic when she visited Canterlot, but Twilight’s new wings had the exact same capability of lift and thrust as any other pegasus’.

And pegasi flew. And Rainbow and her parents were all from Cloudsdale. And they flew every day. And Rainbow was a super athlete. And according to her, her parents were stars in their own right during school. And her parents trained her. And if they wanted to take a family flight during the vacation—

“Stop it,” Rainbow said, squeezing her hoof. “You got that look in your eye again.”

Twilight let out a slow breath and nodded her thanks. She and Rainbow had gone round and round about Twilight’s flying skills—lack thereof, Twilight had to admit—and in spite of all Rainbow’s assurances her parents wouldn’t care if Twilight couldn’t fly with them, she still dreaded being little more than a lump to be planned around.

The simple solution had been to cancel to give her more time, but cancelling again had been out of the question. They had promised to make this trip every week after their visit to Twilight’s parents, and as the train entered the city, Twilight ticked off another reason for their delay with every building that sailed by the window.

A surprise test from Princess Celestia that had turned into a quest to save a lost Empire, Trixie’s return and imprisonment of Ponyville, some had certainly been more dire than others, but all had been followed with the same promise she and Rainbow made on the way home from Canterlot: next week. Then next week came, quickly followed by another excuse, followed in turn by another promise of next week.

The train shuddered, and the buildings outside began to pass slower. She grinned, stuffing some travel brochures back into her saddlebags. The constant rescheduling had hardly been fair to Rainbow’s parents, either, but as Rainbow had always pointed out, there were no secrets to reveal this trip. There was nothing but two ponies to meet and a vacation to enjoy.

Rainbow Dash stood up, arching her back. “Longest...” She rocked back and forth, stretching out her legs with audible cracks. “Trip...” Splaying her wings out and making one slow, giant circle with them, she was done. “Ever. Seriously? We had to go north to go west, then south again just to get to the west of where we started. What sense does that make?”

“It’s better than plowing a rail line through a historical landmark. How were the buffalo tribes supposed to know ponies would end up building a city right next to their earliest settlements?” Twilight stood and shook her legs one by one, trying to get some feeling back into them. “If it bothers you so much, we can change our return tickets to go south on the way home instead. That way we’ll swing by Las Pegasus.”

Rainbow’s jaw dropped open. “Really?”

“Sure!” Twilight smiled and put on her saddlebags. “I booked another non-stop trip anyway.”

“Evil, Twi. Just evil.” Rainbow grinned and helped Twilight adjust the bags over her wings. “You know, this might be part of the problem. You just got these beauties, and you haven’t done anything but tie them down.”

Twilight twisted about to look at the tips of her feathers poking out, just a bit too long to hide completely. “I know. I just... I want to be Twilight Sparkle this weekend. At least in public.” Rainbow’s parents knew about her ascension, of course. Almost all of Equestria knew by now, but most of Equestria had also only seen pictures of the newly-crowned Princess Twilight—wrapped in the royal colors of her gown, mane stylized, wings extended, and adorned with her crown. Without those trappings, her identity was still private.

She hoped.

The saddlebags had worked so far, on their trips to and from the dining car, and as she and Rainbow stepped out to join the bustle of ponies making their way off the train, there was a decisive lack of exclamations and bowing.

Rainbow grunted and nudged an apologizing earth mare off of her. “Don’t suppose you could blow your cover until we’re off the train?”

Twilight smiled. “Keep walking.” They squeezed through the doors and onto the platform, Rainbow giving an exaggerated sigh about being able to breathe again. Squinting her eyes against the sun, Twilight looked out to the horizon, and the sea stretching out from the city to meet it. It was remarkably easy to do, considering the towering buildings of light she had seen last night passing through Vanhoover and had expected to see here. “Everything looks so flat. We are in downtown, aren’t we?”

“Uh-huh.”

Ponies hooked up to carts and cabs trotted through the streets while pedestrians lined the sidewalks, some jockeying for position in front of the stores with those climbing down from the platform. Above the crowds, every window Twilight could see was decorated with streamers or signs or clothing. A few ponies even stood by the doors, crying out their goods for all to hear. “Wow, this almost reminds me of the market in Ponyville. More colorful and crowded, but it feels familiar.”

“Uh-huh.”

Twilight closed her eyes and drew a long breath in her nose. The slightest scent of salt lingered in the air. “So that’s what the ocean smells like! The only beaches we ever went to in Canterlot were lakefronts.”

“Uh-huh.”

Frowning, Twilight looked back at Rainbow—standing on the tips of her hooves, neck stretched out and craning around to search the crowd. “Are you listening to me?”

“Uh-huh.” Rainbow settled down, flicking her tail. “They’re not here!”

Twilight furrowed her brow and scanned the crowd. A moment later, her cheeks flushed. “Um... what do your parents look like?”

“Dad’s got the mane.” Rainbow waved a hoof through her hair. “Coat’s darker than mine, but you can’t miss him. Mom looks like a storm cloud, gray coat, dusty hair.”

They made their way down to the street, but Twilight failed to spot anypony matching Rainbow’s descriptions. “They knew today was the day, right?”

“Yeah! I’ve still got Mom’s letter in my bag. She promised one of them would be here!”

Twilight raised an eyebrow at the sour note in her voice. “Are you okay?”

Rainbow’s tail flicked again. “I thought they were looking forward to this!” Her head bowed after one final scan of the crowd. “We haven’t seen each other since I moved to Ponyville. They’ve never missed out on me like this before.”

“Oh.” Twilight looked up to the sky, seeing no incoming pegasi. “Do you think they could be on their way?”

“I don’t know. Probably not, if they aren’t here by now.” Rainbow looked back up to the platform. “Did you see a map anywhere? Let’s get moving.”

“No need,” Twilight said, waving a hoof. “You said you still have the letter, right?”

One of the cab ponies stopped next to them. “Welcome to San Franciscolt! Where am I taking you today?”

Rainbow told him the address, and they were soon on their way. The bustle of activity around the train station faded into the background, and a much quieter San Franciscolt took its place. Several times, Twilight found herself confused on what was a home or a shop of some kind, and she soon picked up a pattern on what stores she did make out. Each neighborhood seemed to have its own grocer, its own hardware store, its own set of goods and services with no centralized competition like Barnyard Bargains.

The paved roads provided a much smoother ride than the rumbling of the train, and Twilight used the opportunity for more reading. “Did you know kelp is used in over half a dozen grocery products, and also in dental health?”

Rainbow quirked an eyebrow. “Kelp?”

“Kelp! And Equestria’s largest resource of it is right off the coast!” Twilight flipped over the brochure. “There are forests of it in the eastern ocean, of course, but the mermares keep a close eye on them.”

“On the kelp.”

“Yep! They harvest it for themselves out there, but there aren’t any mermares in the western ocean. In fact, the university here in San Franciscolt has identified over fifty new species since their founding, all in addition to their discoveries in processing kelp!”

“Kelp.” Rainbow scowled at a passing grass and hay smoothie shop. “My folks came here for this and kelp.”

“It’s San Franciscolt’s biggest export.” She levitated the brochure up for Rainbow to read. “See? They harvest and process it here, then ship it out to Vanhoover or Las Pegasus to reach the rest of Equestria.”

Rainbow’s eyes flicked over the page, and pushed it away. “So they’re farmers. I thought this place reminded me of Ponyville.”

“You noticed it, too?” Twilight watched the city pass by, only a sparse few buildings more than a single floor. “There’s more ponies, certainly, but I guess the kelp trade doesn’t bring in a lot of money. I wonder if a direct railroad to central Equestria would help.”

“Historical dig site or whatever, remember?” Rainbow prodded her. “They’ve got some tourists at least. Drop the studying and focus on relaxing.”

“If you insist,” Twilight said. She rested her head on Rainbow’s shoulder. “Speaking of tourists, what’s on our itinerary, anyway?”

“Our what?”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Don’t play that game with me, Rainbow. You asked me to give you the chance to plan our schedule for once, so let’s hear what you’ve got. What are we doing this weekend?”

Rainbow wrapped a wing around her shoulders.

“I wouldn’t mind visiting the university, or maybe taking a boat tour out to the kelp forest. They offer snorkeling, you know.”

Rainbow just tightened her grip.

Twilight peered up at her mischevious grin. “We’re winging it, aren’t we?”

“All weekend!”

Rainbow grimaced as she looked down the street. “Kelp is one thing, but they traded Cloudsdale for this?”

Twilight followed suit much more impassively, studying every building in the little cul-de-sac their cab left them in. The same welcoming yellow shade saturated every wall. The same slanted roof capped off every second floor. The same brass insignia decorated every brown colored door at the end of every split pathway over every patch of green grass. “I didn’t know they lived in a duplex.”

“I didn’t know they lived in Dullsville.”

A rebuke slipped away with the sight of an elderly mare peeking through a ground floor window at them. Twilight smiled and waved. The mare adjusted her spectacles, took one look at Rainbow’s mane, and instantly returned it, gesturing to the building’s other door. “At least we know it’s friendly here.”

“Friendly, yeah.” Rainbow trotted to the door and rapped a hoof against it. A shout echoed past it a heartbeat later, bringing a grin to her face. “And them realizing they screwed up. Ten bits says it’s Dad first.”

The door flung open, and a rainbow blur shot out, slamming into Rainbow Dash in a peel of laughter. “Kid! You made it!”

Twilight sprang aside, but the blur settled into a stallion before it reached her, his mane nearly matching Rainbow’s to a T in style, length, and color. “M-Mister Rainbow, I presume?”

He didn’t seem to hear her. “Celestia, it’s been too long! Let me get a look at you.” His hooves cupped Rainbow’s face, and he leaned back, his yellow eyes locking onto Rainbow’s violet. “Ah, you’ve still got that confidence in you. You’ve kept up with your training, right?”

Rainbow stepped back with a smirk, stretching out her wing. “Want to see for yourself?” They slapped their wings together, and the stallion gaped, shaking his off. “See? Even stronger!”

“I told you they were due an hour ago!” A mare followed the shout outside, dark coated, beating the air behind her with a light gray tail. “And did you even realize you missed the guest?” She extended a hoof and offered a smile, her face framed by her short mane. “Excuse the oaf. Welcome to our home Miss... uh...”

Twilight fidgeted as the mare’s green eyes dropped to her hidden wings. “Twilight Sparkle.” She took the offered hoof in gentle shake, returning the smile. “Just Twilight. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Same to you,” she said. “My name is Cloud Dart, and this is—”

“Rainbow Blaze!” the stallion said, taking Twilight’s hoof from Cloud Dart’s. “So you’re the one who’s taming my daughter, huh?”

Dart rolled her eyes and turned her attention to Rainbow.

Twilight blushed. “I-I’m not sure I’d put it that way. She’s—”

“Ha! Only joking!” He squeezed her hoof before letting go—his grip nearly strong enough to make her shout. “Rainbow’s told us so much in her letters, but it’s great to meet you. And wow! It’s an exciting time for you, huh?”

Dart gave him a sour look, but slipped Twilight a wink. “What he means is, we have a lot to catch up on. Like the Wonderbolt Academy! I always knew you’d make it, Rainbow! I knew it!” She kissed Rainbow’s forehead, holding fast against her daughter’s squirms, and waved a hoof to the door. “How about we head in? I was just getting dinner ready.” She led them into a small alcove at the foot of a stairwell, only a coat rack and a mat to wipe their hooves filling the space.

“Allow me,” Blaze said, lifting Twilight’s bags and draping them over his back. “I’ll drop these off in your room while you two go up and sit for a bit. Rainbow?” He took hers as well, and followed Dart upstairs.

The stairs emptied into a spacious room. A simple wooden table sat to the side, with a pair of sofas beyond it making a de facto sitting room. Next to them, Twilight could see an unkempt bed lying beyond an open set of double doors. There was a kitchen in front of her, separated from the communal area by a chest-high counter.

Dart walked past it, swishing her tail at Blaze as he retreated down a nearby hallway. “We have a guest room down there, and a bathroom for you right next to it. So long as you don’t mind sharing with Rainbow.”

Twilight shook her head. “Not at all. Um...” She swept her eyes across the simple decor. What would Rarity say? “I like it! It’s, uh, elegant in its—”

Rainbow grabbed her shoulders, spinning her around. “Check out the hardware!”

The sight behind her stopped any protest in its tracks: the entire wall—stretching from the rail overlooking the stairwell all the way to the window at the end of the room—was covered in hanging medals of gold and silver, with a few plaques and pictures filling in the few gaps. “They’ve... they’ve got even more than you do, Rainbow!”

Dart laughed. “Just about, but there’s two of us, and one of her. Not exactly fair odds. Plus, some of her early ones are up there too.”

Twilight paced along the wall. “For the highest performance and indomitable spirit,” she read aloud from one of the plaques bearing Cloud Dart’s name. A spread of medals bearing identical insignias surrounded it, and after a few inches of bare space, another plaque dedicated to Rainbow Blaze shared the same decoration. “For selfless service and exemplary sportsmanship.”

“Our last competition in our last year!” Dart called from the kitchen. “Cloudsdale Academy whipped those up for us after it was over. Blaze and I graduated as the most decorated students they ever had.”

Five golds, Twilight noted, studying Dart’s half of the display in more detail, and three golds for him. “You beat him.”

“Dad got his share, too. Look!” Rainbow pushed her farther down, hoof darting from medal to medal. “Hundred Meter Sprint! Two Hundred Meter Ring Weave! The Long Glide, keeping a max altitude of five meters after a dive bomb!”

Twilight stumbled along, barely able to note the passing pictures. Dart, standing tall on a podium with her short hair still pulled back to keep it out of the way. Blaze, riding the shoulders of three other stallions, all of them holding up gold medals. Every picture, showing strikingly similar images of one or both of Rainbow’s parents. “Wait, were these all in the same year?”

“Most of ‘em, yeah. Dad didn’t get rolling until Mom got in his face about taking things seriously.”

Twilight glanced towards the kitchen. “I think I sense a story.”

Dart looked up from the counter with a ladle in her mouth, dropping it to her hoof. “Not much of one, really. You read his plaque, didn’t you? The selfless service it mentioned, he was practically an assistant coach our first few years. He helped the team improve, certainly, but his own marks weren’t getting much better. I just gave him a little push. He was better than that, and he knew it.”

The results were plain to see, all his medals hanging there because he listened to one mare. “You must have been good friends.”

“Not really.” Dart smiled. “I was better than him, and I knew it.” Her eyes flicked over to the plaque display. “We both hit the top of our game, and I finally got to beat him at his best.”

That sounds familiar. Twilight caught a glimpse of Rainbow’s face reflected in one of the frames.

“I heard somepony talking about me!” Blaze trotted back in to join Dart in the kitchen. “Don’t you believe a word of it, Twilight! I liked helping my teammates improve. It was good for morale, getting everyone to feel better about themselves, and she never really needed my help until that last year. I let her win!”

Dart scoffed, shaking her head. “And what was that trick you pulled, cutting into my lane in the last lap of the semis?”

“Youthful exuberance! Speaking of which, are we sure we want our daughter shacking up with a pony we don’t even know right under our roof?”

Twilight flushed and shuffled towards the far end of the house, nearly missing the not-so-hushed whispers snapping back and forth at each other from the kitchen. The memories and accolades on the wall passed in a blur, until she found herself staring at her hosts’ smiling faces—Blaze dressed in a jacket and tie, Dart draped in a beautiful white gown—holding each other close and smiling at the camera.

Alone on a dance floor surrounded by happy and cheering ponies, they looked no older than they did on their podiums. Her eyes lingered on a strip of cloth that looped around their necks, binding them together with three knots. She recognized the tradition from a social studies lesson Princess Cadance had taught at the school: a pegasi symbol that no ill wind could undo what had been bound.

A promise to share a life together.

“You’re so young!” Twilight slapped a hoof to her mouth.

Rainbow walked over. “Oh, the wedding photo? Yeah, they got married after school. Like, not even a year, I think.”

Blaze rolled his eyes. “And Cloudy here hasn’t changed a bit since then!”

She swiped a wing at him. “What did we just talk about?!”

Twilight bit her lip and tried to ignore the voices arguing behind her by studying the faces in front of her. Not even a year out of school, they were younger than her parents at their wedding, even younger than herself and Rainbow Dash. A hair smaller than their current selves, too, lacking some final muscle development.

Except...

Her eyes focused on Dart’s barrel. The white dress hanging so loosely around her shoulders and flanks wrapped snug around her stomach, swollen like an overgrown watermelon, and completely out of place with the rest of her trim physique. Her breath caught in her throat.

Rainbow chuckled. “I know that look. You saw it, didn’t you?” Her hoof entered Twilight’s frozen vision and pointed to Dart’s bulge. “There I am! With them since day one.”

Questions streamed through her thoughts, each one raising another logistical issue so quickly she had no time to voice her concern, much less reason an answer. Food. Housing. Employment. Younger than her parents, who had planned Shining Armor to the last detail.

Younger than her and Rainbow.

Married and pregnant while younger than their daughter now was.

Rainbow waved a wing in front of her face. “Twi? You okay?”

“I... I had no idea.” All the time she had spent worrying about her identity and her relationships, and her own partner had grown up in a home with two parents who had barely gotten their legs under them in life. “Rainbow, I can’t even imagine trying to raise a family now. How is it even possible that young?”

Rainbow shrugged. “We stuck together. They might have been young, but that’s what normal families do, right? They stick together.”

“Dinner’s ready, girls!”

They made their way back to the table, Twilight’s head still reeling. What normal families do... Rainbow was right, of course. Twilight saw no reason school-day friends couldn’t get married and have a happy family, even if the wedding was demonstrably swift compared to other such couples.

You came all this way to meet them, so don’t let one surprise throw you off. Relax, Twilight.

She was hardly a stranger to a whirlwind year herself. A wedding, competitions, graduation, all those could have easily left a strong foundation for a life together just like discovering the magic of friendship. She owed it to Rainbow to try and understand, and she tried to narrow down her queries as she sat down. One memory surfaced as Blaze sat across from her. “Rainbow told me you were the one who taught her how to fly. Did you teach for a living?”

Dart laughed. “Teach? Him?” She fought her chuckles, setting down a serving tray on the table. “He knows how to organize a practice, or a floor in the weather factory. Not a classroom.”

“Ah, you worked in the the weather factory.” Twilight took an offered plate loaded with steamed vegetables covered in a cheese sauce. “Did you join the weather team here?”

Blaze waved a hoof towards the window. “Not a whole lot of inclement weather gets scheduled here. The roster is only about a dozen deep, including the reserves.”

“That’s not much more than Ponyville!”

“I’m not surprised. No, my real job is coaching the track team at a school. Speaking of which...” He turned to Rainbow. “We’ve got a practice scheduled tomorrow, and I wouldn’t mind a little help. The best flyer I ever trained would be a pretty good thing for the little ones to see.”

His plate slipped out of Dart’s hooves, crashing to the table and flipping over. Twilight threw up a field and caught everything before it hit.

Rainbow whistled. “Nice catch, Twilight!”

Twilight ignored Rainbow’s cheer, but her any comment died on her tongue at the sight of Dart’s face.

She glared at Blaze—her eyes trying to throw fire at him, but her open mouth weighing down her anger with shock. “How could you— Blaze, we talked about this! You promised me you wouldn’t make her go!”

He shrugged. “She can say no. Besides, it’s a little late to reschedule. I can’t just drop in on every family tonight and tell them the practice is off.”

“I’m not worried about the practice!” she snapped, stomping a hoof. “We agreed not to drag her into—”

“Have you met our daughter? This is something she’d enjoy, so I offered it! I’m trying to entertain the guests!”

Dart snorted. “Right, because the best hosts in the world always schedule work for themselves over the weekend.”

Twilight huddled down as more volleys of arguments swarmed back and forth overhead. Did... did I say something?

Rainbow stretched a wing over her back, leaning in and whispering, “Chillax, Twilight. They argue like this all the time.”

All the time? She studied Rainbow’s face.

“What, your family never argues?” Louder, she said, “I’d love to go!”

Dart’s mouth snapped shut.

Blaze gestured at Rainbow. “See?”

Dart finished passing out the plates and returned her tray to the kitchen, offering a guilty look at Twilight as she finally sat down to join them. She broke the silence after a few moments of everypony eating. “So how has little Fluttershy been doing?”

Twilight lay on the white sheets of the bed she would share with Rainbow Dash, flipping through the pages of her book and failing to read any of them. Countess Cordial of Canterlot might as well have been Twilight Velvet for all the good Twilight Sparkle’s attention did, navigating the treacherous politics of her dinner party with all her guests making faces at each other like two foals behind her back.

She closed the book and rolled over, her head dangling over the side, and she stared out the now upside-down window. Rather than the idyllic neighborhood past the windowsill flower bed, she saw Shining Armor’s face contorted like a pumpkin carved for Nightmare Night. A quick threat from their mother to withhold dessert for the night had ended that game in its tracks, and her scolding of Night Light after he had been caught making faces right after kept the entire table quiet for the rest of the night.

Her father, for his part, had a knack for settling disputes in his own way. Shining Armor had once accused her of fiddling with his homework, and her assertions that she had corrected it fell on deaf ears. She had backed off once Night Light suggested she take on all of Shining’s homework if she was so set on interfering, however.

So we argued, too. A normal family. Why is this bothering me?

Twilight rubbed her temples. She couldn’t get Dart’s face out of her mind. Their fight had been so avoidable—Blaze could have settled his business before his daughter arrived, or even after, or a half dozen other scenarios that came to mind—but the look of hurt Dart had over such a minor thing...

She heard the door push open. “That’s not a good look for you, you know. What’s up?”

Twilight sat up as Rainbow shut them inside. “I was just thinking about dinner.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Again? Twilight, nothing happened.” She walked over to the bed and pulled up the sheets. “Trust me, I’ve seen them act like that before. It’s not a big deal.”

“I believe you. It’s just...” Twilight sighed and climbed off, pacing in front of the oval window. “My family had fights. I remembered a couple of them now, but something tonight was... different.”

“Of course it was. It was my family this time.” Rainbow settled in and pulled up Twilight’s half of the covers as well. “They were just stressed. They missed us at the station, and it’s been so long since we’ve been together, and it took so long for us to get here in the first place, and this, and that, I’ve seen this all before.”

“Stress?” Twilight closed the blinds. She nodded and climbed back into the bed. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Guess nothing. You should have seen them around the time for my competitions at the Academy. Or when I told them I was gay.” Rainbow reached for the desk lamp, but her hoof stopped short of it. “You saw their medals. They’re competitive, and they push each other. They’ve done it for years.”

Twilight smiled, willing to let her thoughts escape her in the coming darkness.

They didn’t.

Rainbow nestled next to her, and Twilight tried to accept her reasoning. The next day would be quiet, at least. Rainbow would leave with Blaze, and she would be alone with Dart for a few hours. Dinner had ended pleasantly enough, but there was still more under the surface for her to learn.

Satisfied at her plan, her mind let itself shut down, and she slept.

Chapter 2: Home is Where the Heart is

Twilight kicked her dangling hind leg back and forth over the edge of the sofa cushion, brushing it along the carpet with every swing. She coughed, and the sound echoed through the quiet house.

Rainbow Dash looked down on her from the wall, flexing her foreleg atop a podium and smirking out of the picture frame. Next to Rainbow Dash hung the medal she was presumably wearing in the photo. Twilight strained her eyes to make out the inscription. Again.

The first three symbols were numbers, perhaps a two in the first digit, most likely two hundred all told. The event itself was tougher, being mostly in lower case letters. Twilight thought she could make out a W as the capital in the second word, four letters total. Wind, she assumed.

200-something-Wind-something. Subbing in the obvious middle word, 200 Meter Wind Something.

Exactly where she left off half an hour ago.

She tried to tackle the final word, but the capital in it was too vague. It was a B, maybe. Perhaps an S. Or even a D. Without that first link in the chain, she had no frame of reference for the rest. Unless she sat up for a closer look.

Her hoof kept brushing the carpet.

Is this relaxation or boredom?

She pursed her lips and blew out a heavy sigh.

Her breath kicked up a tangle of hair from the sofa’s fabric. She quirked an eyebrow at the collection of reds, yellows, and greens. It was a familiar enough sight, even this far away from Ponyville. Rainbow Dash was always welcome in the library, but every time she had one of her spirited crashes into a bookshelf, a few colorful strands always popped up on some poor unsuspecting book cover. Perhaps she could ask Dart how she managed to keep such loose, contrasting fibers out of sight.

Perhaps she could ask Dart, if she were ever able to ask Dart anything.

“I’m bored.”

No answer came, nor did she expect any from the empty room. Another puff blew Blaze’s hairs away. They must have been his. Rainbow hadn’t been anywhere near the sofa yet.

“Bored, bored, bored.” She rolled to her side. Her book lay on the floor under her, a bookmark sticking out about three quarters of the way through. It was too early in the day to finish it. She had brought others, not completely trusting Rainbow Dash to make a full schedule all on her own. Of course, she hadn’t anticipated having most of an entire day to herself, and had only brought enough to account for having enough time to read after everypony had turned in for the evening. She also had to keep something in reserve for the train ride home.

Yet here she was, bored and alone, with nothing to do but lay on the sofa and squint at Rainbow Dash’s medal to try and win the game she had started an hour ago. Maybe two. It felt like two.

She could sit up, but if she did that, then there would really be nothing left to do. Not available to her, anyway. She figured Rainbow’s parents didn’t have company over very often, but whatever entertainment was to be found in their home, it must have been behind the doors of their bedroom, where Twilight was absolutely not going to invade.

She wondered if Dart or Blaze and Rainbow would get home first.

The day had started well, at least. The whole family had been nothing but smiles and laughter over breakfast. While Dart had still looked... disappointed, was the word Twilight had finally decided was the best fit, that Rainbow was still set on going, she didn’t raise any more objections.

How long does a practice last? She probably should have asked Dart when she had had the chance.

Dart had been polite enough about leaving when it was her turn, or as polite as Twilight could expect. Twilight had noticed the signs when she tried making small talk: curt answers, twitching wings, eyeing the sky through the windows. Dart may have been Rainbow’s mother rather than Rainbow herself, but Twilight knew a restless pegasus when she saw one.

And, with a drawn out sigh, a pained smile, and touch of hopefulness in her voice, Dart had asked if Twilight minded if she stepped out for a bit of a workout. A grown mare had practically asked permission to leave her own home.

Twilight rolled back and pressed a hoof to her forehead. She hoped against hope she would never have to face that awkward situation again.

She heard the door open downstairs and sat up. “Hello?”

“Me, Twilight,” Dart’s voice called up. “I take it Blaze and Rainbow haven’t come back yet?”

“No,” she said. Twilight stood up and headed for the stairs. “Did you have a nice flight?”

The easy smile on Dart’s face when she reached the top answered for her, but she still spoke. “That was exactly what I needed. I haven’t flown in two days.” She looked over the sheen of sweat that covered her coat and walked towards the master bedroom. “Blaze and Dash probably stopped for lunch on the way home. Give me a moment and I’ll whip something up for us.”

Twilight sat by the counter. “Please, take your time.”

The sounds of Dart fumbling for something in the next room were followed by a laugh. “I’m sorry, you know? All the fuss I made last night about Blaze and the practice, then I abandon you here for no good reason. I’m no better than him!”

Twilight giggled. “If you don’t mind me saying, I knew it was coming.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, Rainbow gets the same way back in Ponyville. I can tell when she wants nothing more than to fly off somewhere and stretch her wings a bit.”

Dart poked her head out, grinning and wiping off her chest with a towel. “Now you know where she gets it from! And if I’m any indication, I hope you don’t mind putting up with it for a few years. Or decades!”

“Not at all,” Twilight said. Decades? A slight heat crept up her cheeks. “N-no, I think it’s good for her. I have my books, and she has her flying. I think it keeps us ourselves.”

“And yet I got a letter from my daughter telling me how awesome this one particular book series was, and how I just had to check it out.” Dart tossed her towel away, and headed back for the kitchen. She extended a wing to brush against Twilight’s as she passed. “And you have these. Don’t be afraid of what the other enjoys.”

“I-I’m not really...” Twilight glanced at her wing and chewed her lip. “I can’t fly yet. At all, let alone like she can.”

Dart nodded. “Rainbow said as much in her letters. She’s teaching you, right? Believe me, you’re doing it the right way. I learned from my mother, and Rainbow learned from Blaze. It’s always best to only have one voice in your ear when you’re learning the basics.” She pulled some carrots out of the pantry.

Twilight’s ears perked up. “Do you need any help?”

“No, thank you.” She started to rinse them in the sink. “So how far along are you?”

“About five seconds hovering a few feet off the ground. That’s my record.”

To Dart’s credit, she didn’t laugh. “I’ve seen competitors last less than that when their nerves get the best of them. You want to hear something my mother told me? All flying is avoiding the ground for as long as possible. And the more you hit the ground, the more you’ll learn to avoid it.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind.” Twilight watched her reach for a knife. One quick spell could take it for her, but Twilight restrained herself. Her mother never appreciated interference in her kitchen, and she thought it best not to presume. “Was your mother a racer as well?”

Dart chuckled past the handle in her mouth. She finished slicing the carrots into chunks before letting it go. “She was a dancer. Aerial ballet. She taught me the basics, and then I learned to go fast on the playgrounds. I had to fight her to stay on the Academy’s track team. Until I started winning, at least. Could you grab the vegetable oil for me?”

Twilight skirted around the counter and made her way to the pantry. Stacks of napkins and rolls of paper towels on the bottom, boxes of protein bars filling the shelves, she finally spotted and levitated a bottle of oil buried behind a few cans of soup. “What was it like being on the team?”

“The team... oh, wow.” She laughed and pointed at a frying pan she had set on the stove. “Could you grease that, please?”

Twilight poured in a bit, took the handle in her magic, and twisted the pan around until the oil slick covered the surface. It started bubbling and spurting soon enough. She stepped back and let Dart drop the carrots in.

Dart snagged a bottle with her mouth, and sprinkled some spices that filled the room with their cloying scent. She put the bottle down and sat with a smile across her face. “The team was a good bunch. We were strong top to bottom, even in the ground events. We could challenge anyone, and Coach Firestar knew it. He signed us up just about every week for any meet and competition he could sniff out.”

Say something good. Twilight had been sore across her entire body after the Running of the Leaves. The idea of doing that every week was... “That sounds exhausting,” she admitted. “How did you keep up with all that and your school work?”

“With C’s, in my case.” Dart chuckled. “I can tell you some stories over lunch, but for now, tell me about yourself. Were you ever on a team?”

Twilight fiddled her hoof on the floor. “N-not quite. I mean, sometimes I partnered up with other students for lab assignments, but my brother really got the teamwork gene of the family. Studying was kind of a solo sport most of the time.”

Dart doubled over, trying in vain to hold in her guffaws. “That has got to be the first time I’ve heard studying called a sport!”

Twilight joined her laughter in spite of the flush creeping up her cheeks. “It’s not exactly strenuous, granted, but I still set goals for myself! I worked for them, and I got them. Every time.”

“Good!” Dart grabbed a spatula and rolled the carrots over. “That’s the kind of attitude it takes.”

“To be a winner?”

“To be anything.” She added more spices and turned the heat lower. “So tell me about Canterlot. We never got to go there.” She scratched her head. “Actually, I don’t think I ever saw Canterlot field a team for anything.”

Twilight shrugged. “My brother’s high school had a mean polo team. As for Canterlot...” It occurred to her she had never really given herself the chance to see it. Home came to mind. Princess Celestia’s school, Donut Joe’s shop, the castle soon joined it, but nothing else pierced through that haze of memories. “I know Ponyville better than I ever knew Canterlot. I guess... I don’t really have much else to compare it to. I haven’t seen much of Equestria outside of a few towns and, well, now.

“I don’t even remember all that much of Cloudsdale.” She spared a glance at her wing. Now she stood for all of Equestria, including the city her host came from. “You’d think walking on clouds would mean something to a unicorn, but after all the excitement of the Best Young Flyers Competition, I just can’t recall it.”

Dart gave her a soft smile. “You should go back. I’ve seen a lot of Equestria traveling between competitions. It’s a nice place to visit, but Cloudsdale was always home. Cloudsdale... it just had this energy to it. A feeling. Nowhere else I’ve been to could match it.”

“A feeling? What do you mean?”

“You know the city floats, right? I got to see Equestria even before I joined the track team, because the wind would carry us somewhere new. Manehattan one day, a week later, Baltimare. I got to see them all from the sky. I even got to fly over all of them. If you think a city is big from the ground, try it from the air. It looks like the entire world under you is made of nothing but concrete and metal, and you forget that there are forests and plains just over the horizon.”

In spite of the mare’s green eyes staring right at her, Twilight didn’t believe Dart saw her anymore.

“Despite that... or maybe because of it, the best days were the ones in between the cities. I could spot all the little streams across the countryside, and there was nothing stopping me from diving down for a quick swim. Or training, trying to go upstream with wings only. Oh, I miss the mountains most of all. You’d think something that’s been there for so many years would be consistent, but the wind currents around them always shifted. Always. If you’re looking for a flying challenge, go find the mountains. Every day brought something new in the sky. No true pegasus could ever be bored in Cloudsdale.”

Twilight gaped at her, groping after any kind of response that would live up to the feeling in Dart’s words. Is this what she was expecting me to say about Canterlot? She never would have been able to match the gripping emotion in every word on her own. “It sounds—”

Dart’s hardening eyes stopped her short. “Now there’s just nothing. I mean, you’d think a city with this many ponies would have something to do. A rec league. Something. But no, San Franciscolt is San Franciscolt. Take it or leave it.” Her lips curled back to show her teeth. “But we have kelp.”

Twilight moved out of her glare’s way, but Dart showed no reaction. “Would you like to move back someday?”

Dart snapped back to attention like Twilight had thrown ice water in her face. She sniffed the air. “Oh!” She turned back to the stove, taking the pan off the heating element. “I hope you don’t mind if they’re a little brown. I’m sorry, I just get wrapped up in the old days.”

The door opened before she could answer. “We’re home!” Rainbow Dash’s voice cried out. “And we brought lunch!”

Dart sighed. “Of course.”

“I’ll never say no to a home-cooked meal.” Twilight levitated one of the carrot bits out of the pan, and popped it into her mouth. The piece practically melted when she bit down. Spices flowed out of the mush and coated her tongue, even climbing up her sinuses to change the scent of the world itself to match the sensation she was tasting. She was barely able to keep her jaw closed until she swallowed. “That is delicious!”

With a rush of wind, Rainbow Dash was at her side. “Aw, no fair! You were gonna give her spice carrots without me?”

Dart chidingly clicked her tongue and poked at the bag on Rainbow’s back. “It’s only fair, after you got donuts without us.”

Twilight levitated another morsel out of the pan, dangling it in front of Rainbow with a smile. “Here, even trade.” She took the bag as Rainbow snapped down on the carrot, and turned to search for a platter. “Did the practice go well?”

“Ohdaly! Euh shud hov—”

“Rainbow Dash!” Dart said, barely able to hold back her laughter. “I taught you to have more self-respect than that!”

Blaze came up the stairs. “You want to talk about respect? You should have seen her with the kids today! The kid here set the pace all day long, on top of demonstrating everything for them to see! She has more fans than I do now!”

Rainbow swallowed. “Oh, Twi, you should have seen this one colt. Star Tracks, I think? Kid had some quick hoofwork. The fastest unicorn I’ve ever seen!”

Twilight paused to glance at Blaze. “You train unicorns, too? I assumed you worked with just pegasi.”

He smirked. “Who in the world says I can’t work with the other ponies?”

“No one!” Twilight said hurriedly, opening more cabinets until she found a stack of plates. She pulled one out and started arranging the donuts on it. “We were just talking about Cloudsdale before you got back, and it sounded like you’d have a lot of athletes looking for help up there. The school must have made quite an offer to lure you away!”

Dart smiled with a glint in her eye that Twilight couldn’t put a name to. “He wrote to them first, actually. They’re a perfectly ordinary school with a perfectly unspectacular reputation and a perfectly average bunch of kids.”

“We’ll see about that when the season starts!” Blaze snapped. “I’ve got a good feeling about this year.”

“Exactly what you said before every year, and every year brings the same-old, same-old. Has one of your foals won a gold yet? Even a silver?”

“You know just like I do that there’s more to sports than that!”

Twilight tossed a look to the side. Blaze was standing right by the counter, blocking any attempt to slip out. She bowed her head and caught Rainbow’s eye.

Rainbow Dash cocked her head, an incredulous look on her face. Her mouth moved.

Twilight thought she made out “Really?” She nodded.

“Blaze, you don’t win by settling! Something has to change. Either you need to get tougher, or your kids need to get better. And the kids won’t get better by themselves in this city! This is as good as you can expect.”

“They are getting better! I’m helping them get better!”

Twilight looked at both of them and back to Rainbow. She tilted her head towards them one at a time. Say something. Please.

Rainbow took a breath, rolling her eyes. “You know he trained me, Mom. I think he knows what he’s doing.”

Dart flicked her tail, shook her head, and moved the remaining carrots onto a plate. “Let’s eat. Twilight, could you put those on the table, please?”

Twilight scooted her way past a statue-still Blaze with the donuts, thankful to let the matter drop for now. It was only stress, she told herself. Like Rainbow said. Dart was still sore about the practice. They just needed a little more time.

“—and then he said, ‘Velvet, I can say it all you want, but those earrings look like you’re trying to torture yourself.’” A round of laughter at her father’s expense sounded over the waves crashing into the shore, and Twilight’s voice gladly joined them. The cool water rushed over her hooves, and she raised one to block the setting sunlight from her eyes, watching the wave roll back to sea.

She wondered if Dart had come here during her flight earlier in the day. Dart had been the one to bring this spot up when Twilight mentioned she was ready to get out of the house for a bit, and the chance to see the ocean was more than Twilight could resist, especially when she mentioned it was so close.

The little cove past the end of the cul-de-sac was beautiful indeed, framed by a broken ring of rocks about a hundred yards from shore. More importantly, it was theirs, the four of them walking and laughing together without another pony in sight. Whether it was the fresh air or the short walk that burned the last bits of stress away, Twilight was grateful for another peaceful time to share with them all.

If she could only find a sand crab to observe in its natural habitat, her day would truly feel complete.

Blaze was the first to regain control of himself. “Well, you’re here with us, so I guess the story has a happy ending, but there are some things you just don’t say to a mare!”

Twilight chuckled, readjusting the towel draped over her back. “They kept the pictures from that date though, and I have to agree with him. The rings look like wagon wheels! I can’t believe her ears didn’t fall off!”

Dart shook her head. “No jewelry for me, please. Doesn’t do anything but get in the way. Slows a mare down.”

“Same,” Rainbow said. “Last thing you need in a divebomb is the wind tearing at something stuck on you.” She waggled her ears. “Or in you.”

“That’s my girl!”

Twilight smoothed out her mane against the ocean breeze, and let her hoof linger on the crown of her head for a heartbeat. She had never worn much before either, but that would soon have to change. All things in time.

Rainbow Dash stopped next to her, and another wave washed over their hooves. “Brr! Little chilly for a night swim, huh? So what else were you thinking about?”

Twilight fought down a sigh, and her thoughts of the future. She looked at Dart and Blaze a few paces ahead, waiting for them to catch up. “I was wondering if you could tell me about yourselves. I told you a story about my parents dating, so how about you?”

Dart and Blaze traded a look.

Rainbow snorted and knocked some mud into the water with a flick of her hoof. “Twi, I told you already! The wall, remember?”

Twilight started to walk again. “Surely there’s more to it than that. Cloudsdale sounded so wonderful this afternoon. You two must have done something together away from the track.”

Blaze nodded. “Of course. We usually sat together for lunch. Parties, too. Those were fun.”

Dart grinned. “The oaf here got it in his head one time that he was going to teach me how to dance. I humored him for a song or two, then had to threaten him to make him give me the lead.”

Blaze tried to look horrified at Twilight and Rainbow’s laughter, but the corners of his mouth betrayed his mirth. “Why does everypony laugh at that? She said she’d turn me into a gelding if I stepped on her hoof again, and then some of the ponies who heard her kept trying to bump me into her in the next dance! Rainbow, you would never even have been born if Light Streak had her way!”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Rainbow said, struggling to catch her breath. “Coach Light Streak? You two partied with the coach that made me fly a mile every single time I did a barrel roll in a wind sprint?”

Dart pulled her close with a hoof around her neck. “The same coach that taught you how to land without breaking an ankle with all that speed of yours!”

Twilight beamed at them. This was what she had been searching for. Friends—and family, from what Dart mentioned that afternoon—to go along with Rainbow Dash continuing their legacy at their old school. A strong foundation of memories to build a happy life from. “It sounds like you had everything in Cloudsdale. You must have been very happy.”

“We were,” Rainbow said. She took a deep breath of the ocean air and slowly let it out. “Gotta admit, this is pretty nice, but what in the world made you two come here?”

Dart fixed a pointed look at Blaze, and Twilight could almost sense the mood swept out to sea with the retreating water.

Blaze met his wife’s eyes, and something passed unspoken between them. He turned his attention back to Twilight and Rainbow, fidgeting under their gaze. “It was time for a change. Rainbow had left for Ponyville with Fluttershy, and the weather factory was just... the weather factory. It was the same thing day after day. There wasn’t anything there for us anymore.”

Dart sneered and turned around to head back the way they came.

Blaze pounded the sand. “You’ve never even given this place a chance! What have you done since we got here except fly around the neighborhood? You’ve never seen anything more than a few blocks away!”

She whirled around. “Because everything more than a few blocks away is exactly the same as everything closer!”

He jabbed a hoof to the horizon. “Look at that!”

Dart jabbed her hoof to the sky. “We’ve seen better up there!”

Twilight lowered her eyes to the sand, and to Rainbow’s hoof next to hers. She put hers over it, looking up at Rainbow while worrying at her lip.

Rainbow shook her head, voice dropping to a whisper. “Let ‘em get it out this time. Me forcing them to bottle it up isn’t helping.”

“Please, Rainbow. They listen to you. I don’t want this to be our entire vacation.”

Rainbow shook her head again, waited for another trade of jabs, and raised her voice. “Twilight wanted to do some sightseeing while she was in town, and tomorrow’s our last day here. We could go together! That’ll take us more than a few blocks, yeah Twilight?”

Blaze scoffed. “What good will that do? You heard her! She’s already decided.”

Dart set her jaw with a fierce glare. Her eyes lost little of their fire when she looked at Twilight. “What do you have in mind?”

Twilight cleared her throat. What do I have in mind? “The market, maybe? We could pick up some souvenirs for our friends back home. Um... maybe the university? They have a museum of nautical science dating back to their founding. I’d love to see that while I’m out here.”

Blaze hummed in thought. “Do you mean the market by the train station? That’s just a tourist trap.”

Rainbow draped a wing over Twilight’s back. “I’ll take her by the shops we passed by today. The two of us will have some fun, and then we can all meet up at—” She hid her grimace well. “We’ll be waiting at the museum for you.”

Dart and Blaze traded another look. Their faces softened, and they both nodded.

“Good! It’s a date.” Rainbow turned back to the water, tugging Twilight with her. The sun was already halfway down—painting the sky with gorgeous shades of violet and bright reds—and her wing curled around Twilight’s body tighter.

Twilight tucked her head under Rainbow’s chin. “Thank you.”

Twilight tossed and turned in bed, knowing and yet not caring that her movements would keep Rainbow awake, if not wake her up outright.

The uneventful dinner that night had still felt like a powder keg, nothing but a reminder that Dart and Blaze had sniped at each other all day. She was supposed to figure out the answer, find out what made their lives together special, and she failed. All she did was spark an argument. All Rainbow’s question at the beach did was spark an argument. Twilight huffed and rolled over once more, only for Rainbow’s foreleg to clamp down on her.

“Settle, girl.”

“I’m sorry, Rainbow, but I can’t just—”

“Don’t you remember what happened at your parents?”

“That’s different!”

“Is it?” Rainbow pushed herself up, her face barely revealed by the starlight outside. “Think about it, Twilight. Your Dad stormed off after you told them you were gay, you went after him, you talked it out, and everything’s fine now, right? So what’s different about this?”

Twilight couldn’t answer her. She wanted to, but her mind was a jumbled mess of worry and guessing.

“Just relax. It’s one more day, then we’re gone. Tomorrow will be great.” Rainbow leaned down and pressed her lips to Twilight’s forehead. “You’ll see.”

Twilight forced herself to smile, thankful that the shadows of the night helped mask her face—and the insincerity she felt. “I hope so, Rainbow. I’m sorry, I just wanted this weekend—”

“Sleep.” Rainbow eased herself back down, but kept her leg wrapped around Twilight. “You’re not going to be any fun if you keep dragging this around.”

Twilight stayed quiet and let Rainbow drift to sleep. She closed her eyes and listened to her soft breathing. In. And out. In. And out. Peaceful and tranquil. Twilight matched her, never letting go of Rainbow’s leg. It did her heart good to imagine Blaze and Dart doing the same—together, out of sight, holding each other the way she and Rainbow did.

Would they?

Her eyes fluttered open. The thought zipped unbidden from her mind to her stomach, twisting it in knots. Try as she might, she couldn’t see that image in her mind’s eye.

She had never seen Dart and Blaze share such a moment in reality, either. No reassuring touch. No kiss on the cheek. Twilight strained her memory, but she failed to remember a single smile that wasn’t aimed at her or Rainbow.

Twilight pulled Rainbow’s leg closer to her. She was right. She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew she was right. Twilight had no idea what to call it besides mare’s intuition, but as the night dragged on, her thoughts and memories failed to prove it one way or another.

Chapter 3: Parting Shots

Twilight kept her gaze focused on the vessel mounted outside San Franciscolt University’s museum. The stained wood of its hull stood testament to years of wear and tear, and a few of the more rotten pieces had already been removed or fallen away. The information marker labeled the ship as a submersible—the first one to sail in the western ocean—powered only by the pedaling of the two ponies inside.

She wondered what it would be like inside the bulbous cap of plastic mounted on top, wondered what it would be like to be away from it all, under the surface of the water, alone save for one other pony and all the creatures of the deep. She wondered if such an environment would feel any different at the moment to Rainbow Dash, whose hooves continued to pound the sidewalk leading to the museum entrance.

Rainbow’s head swiveled around as it had for the last half hour. She scanned the sky, the road, and every pony—student, tourist, or otherwise—that walked by. “They’re not standing us up! I can’t believe they’d stand us up!”

“I didn’t say—”

“You were thinking it!”

Twilight learned that the primitive submersible had served over twenty-five expeditions before being replaced by a newer, more robust model. It had taken four years since the university’s founding before the first metal vessels had been tested and approved for use by the Equestrian Labor Safety Committee.

“Aw, Twi, don’t clam up like that.” Rainbow ran a hoof down her back. “I’m sorry. They were never late for anything up home, but now it’s just—” She vented a breath, something between a snort and a cough. “I don’t get it. The train was one thing, but they knew we were expecting them today. We agreed on it yesterday. Yesterday!”

Twilight took Rainbow’s hoof in her own. She looked in her friend’s eyes, her lover’s eyes, as they flashed a warning in the glimmering sunlight—and said what she knew to be true. “Something’s wrong.”

Rainbow yanked her hoof away. “There’s nothing wrong! Why are you still talking about this?”

“I don’t mean to pry—”

“Then stop asking!” Rainbow stomped and snarled at a pair of nearby stallions. “What do you want?!”

They hurried past Twilight on their way inside, and she took a step closer to Rainbow to try and keep her voice down. “I just want to know if your father said anything strange to you yesterday.”

“Ask him yourself! That’s all you wanted to do, right?” Rainbow slapped Twilight’s empty saddlebags. “You didn’t buy anything! You barely even looked at anything! All you wanted to talk about is how much my mom and dad hate each other.”

“I don’t want there to be a problem, Rainbow.”

“Good, because there isn’t one!” Rainbow started her pacing again.

A group of mares with books stuffed in their bags gave Rainbow quizzical looks as they passed her by. Twilight watched them go in, and then studied the meager skyline of the city past the museum. “Did he sound happy here?”

Rainbow groaned. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“Something your mother said when she told me about Cloudsdale.” Twilight thought it best not to repeat the exact thought. No true pegasus could ever be bored in Cloudsdale. Yet Blaze had wanted to leave for a fresh start. “You heard her at the beach last night. I don’t think she wanted to leave.”

“So what? She’s here now, isn’t she?”

Twilight flicked her eyes to the ponies on the street over Rainbow’s shoulder. “No, and neither is he. Something’s going on, Rainbow.”

She stopped her walk, and buried her face in a hoof. “I thought you wanted to drop this. Didn’t you say you didn’t want arguing to be our whole vacation? What could possibly be going on?”

“I know that arguing about where to live is a lot bigger than a petty lovers’ quarrel.” Twilight raised a hoof before Rainbow could respond. “And I don’t care how much you tell me they’ve always argued. That doesn’t make it right, Rainbow. It doesn’t add up.”

Rainbow whirled around, nose-to-nose with Twilight, eyes blazing. “This is my family you’re talking about! We aren’t some numbers on a chalkboard for you to mess with!”

Twilight shrank away from her. “It doesn’t add up...”

“Fine!” Rainbow turned and walked away. “You want answers this bad? Let’s go get them.”

Twilight slunk after her, eyes fixed on the ground.

The feeling of peace and quiet surrounding the yellow homes stood in stark contrast to the veil of tense silence between Twilight and Rainbow on their way back. Twilight almost felt as if it were a physical force field Rainbow had put around herself. She always stayed a few steps ahead the whole way home, and every time Twilight tried to pull even with her to say something, Rainbow’s brisk pace had sped up all the more, repulsing her away.

The only times Twilight managed to speak were calls that Rainbow had marched to the wrong home twice. Each time, Rainbow had not even thanked her, only lowered her head and pushed on. In her haste, she walked right by the ground floor window of the correct building, and the elderly mare sitting behind it.

Twilight noticed her. Rather, she noticed the look on the mare’s face. She watched Rainbow go by with her mouth pulled in a thin line, and her brow creased over her eyes with concern. The mare looked to Twilight and nodded after Rainbow, almost pleading with Twilight to follow her.

She didn’t understand until Rainbow opened the front door.

“I always hated this city!”

Dart’s voice ripped through the doorway and past Twilight’s ears. Her jaw dropped, as did Rainbow’s as she turned to look back.

“Then why did you follow me here?!”

Blaze’s booming answer echoed through the neighborhood, and Rainbow Dash bolted inside, Twilight hot on her trail. She stopped long enough to close the door behind them, and long enough for Rainbow to fly ahead.

“ENOUGH! What are you two doing?!”

Twilight hurried upstairs to find Rainbow hovering over her parents, both Dart and Blaze looking crestfallen, averting their eyes from their daughter’s glare. Dart glanced at Twilight for a split second before lowering her gaze to the floor, but not before Twilight saw the tears streaking her face. A quick glance aside at Blaze showed his eyes were red too. “Rainbow—”

“You stood us up today for this? Just to scream at each other?!”

Twilight reached up to her. “Rainbow, you need to calm down.”

Rainbow shrugged off the touch. “You’ve been doing this all weekend! You’ve been embarrassing us, and making her think we’re just crazy, and now you’re screaming at each other for... for-for-for what?!”

“Stop!” Twilight yanked Rainbow to floor with a burst of magic. “That’s enough! Shouting won’t help anything!”

Rainbow blinked, eyes glazed.

Twilight blinked back.

Four ponies panted for their breath in the calm, and a faint song floated up from the floor, a stallion’s voice singing and a swift fanfare of trumpets rising between choral segments, all with the tinny quality of an unsophisticated recording. After all was still for a few moments, the music faded away.

“I saw her,” Twilight said, gesturing to the floor, “in the window, before we came up. She looked...” Twilight ran a hoof through her mane. She saw the mare’s face again, not shocked, but almost resigned to what was happening above her very head. “She didn’t look surprised. How long? How long have you been fighting each other like this?”

Dart hesitated a long moment before raising her head at last. “Constantly. This wasn’t the first time we’ve bothered them.”

“They’re good ponies,” Blaze added. “The stallion was a psychiatrist before they retired here. They’ve been helping us get along, and we’ve... uh, we’ve needed it.” He tried to flash a smile, then stepped over to drop a wing over Dart’s shoulders—but the light Twilight had seen in his face over the last couple days was dimmed, and the stiffness of Dart’s body at the moment he touched her reminded Twilight of a block of granite. “We’ll have a talk with them when you two leave tomorrow, and everything will be fine.”

Dart laughed—once, and without any trace of mirth, and stepped out from under his wing. “Everything will go back to the way it was. It’s over, Blaze. Drop the act.”

Twilight shared a confused look with Rainbow. Act?

The last of the light in Blaze’s face vanished with his smile. “No. No, now’s not the time! This was your idea in the first place, and we both agreed to write her after they got back.”

Dart walked to the bedroom, tossing her head back to say over her shoulder, “Either you tell them, or I show them.”

Rainbow frowned. “Dad, what is she talking about?”

Blaze stammered for a moment, looking back and forth between his daughter and retreating wife. He settled on Rainbow after Dart dipped out of sight. “We... we needed a change. After you left. I wanted things to change. That’s all.”

Twilight covered her mouth. He was shaking. Even Rainbow looked taken aback, but Blaze was shaking right in front of their eyes.

Tears welled in his eyes, and he made no move to wipe them away. “Nothing changed. I just wanted a fresh start for us, but nothing changed.”

Rainbow’s face softened. “Dad... I told you guys everything. That I kissed Fluttershy. That I wrecked the house trying to do a rainboom when I was fifteen. That I was dropping out of flight school to go to Ponyville. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

Dart walked back in, head held high and a wing curled at her side. For a brief moment, Twilight imagined that she looked on her husband with pity, but Dart’s impassive face gave her very few clues. She tossed a small stack of papers onto the table with a flick of her wing. “Your father and I are separating.”

Twilight felt the room chill, her own body feeling a few degrees colder, but she didn’t shiver. She couldn’t if she wanted to. It was as if a block of ice sprouted from the floor to ensnare her, and it would never let her go.

No...

She misheard. Dart had said something else, and her own paranoia surrounding their relationship played a trick on her mind. There was no way... her hosts couldn’t be separating. They had a daughter. They had memories of their life hanging a few feet away from her. They had a daughter. Twilight had seen their wedding photo, seen the cloth tied around their necks. Three knots. Impossible to come undone.

Unless there was a deliberate attempt to untie them.

They had a daughter. Her lover.

Twilight peered through her sheet of invisible ice to see Rainbow trapped in her own. Rainbow stared straight ahead at her mother, not even seeming to notice or care about the papers that had been put before her. Twilight wondered if her heart was even beating, Rainbow was so still.

She needed... something. The world. The world needed to move again. Twilight lowered her eyes to the table.

In accordance with—

A phrase, leading into legal jargon most likely. But she recognized it. Twilight followed it, reading on and on. The world came back with every word, each one jolting her brain awake to remember its meaning. While Twilight failed to make sense of the page as a whole, she had recovered enough of her wits by the end of it to recognize the ink insignia at the bottom: the same image of the Royal Sisters found on the Equestrian flag.

She had seen the legal stamp of approval from Ponyville’s town hall before, and while the signature belonged to a High Desk rather than a name she was familiar with, the stamp meant the paperwork had been approved all the same. So Twilight turned the pages.

There was a copy of the marriage license from Cloudsdale. Duplicate forms, one signed by Rainbow Blaze, the other by Cloud Dart. A financial agreement—filled with numbers Twilight ignored as best she could—signed at the bottom again by both Blaze and Dart, this time with a public notary stamp. A waiver signed by Cloud Dart alone in which she forfeited the right given to females under Cloudsdale law to challenge their mate in trial by battle.

Twilight paused at that one. She had never heard of such a thing, but the military tradition in pegasi society was one of their oldest qualities. The waiver’s presence ultimately served to prove what she already noticed. Every I, dotted. Every T, crossed. Save one. The final page. It was just one more form, this one blank save for several red arrow seals pointing to several lines that needed to be filled, signed, and dated by a judge.

It was as good as done if he saw what Twilight had just seen.

Dart’s hoof tapped the empty page. “There’s just one more step. Next week, we have a hearing with Judge Fairwind to go over everything and give his approval. We didn’t mean for all this to come out while you were here, but...”

“N-no.” Rainbow’s voice was smaller than Twilight had ever heard. The smile on her face was even weaker. “This is a joke. Payback. Y-you wanted to get me back for taking so long to get here, right? I get it, I screwed up. I shouldn’t have waited so long to visit. Or to bring her with me. You’re in on it, aren’t you Twilight? They... they scribbled on something. Told you to act shocked. That’s not... there is no judge. There’s nothing to approve. That’s fake.”

Twilight caught her eye, struggling to find two words. She watched the smile fade from Rainbow’s face with every agonizing heartbeat until she succeeded, her voice raw. “They’re real.”

A small sound escaped Rainbow’s open mouth, and she looked at the papers. Back to Twilight. “But that means... what happened to...” She roared, charging her father. “Who was she?!”

Blaze sprang away, but Rainbow followed, never letting him get more than a few inches away. “What are you talking about?”

“This wouldn’t happen without a reason! You did something, didn’t you? You cheated on my mother! Your wife! Who was it?!”

The hurt that came into his eyes broke Twilight’s heart.

Dart leapt to his side. “Rainbow Dash, don’t talk like that! I promise you he didn’t do anything of the sort.”

“Then it was you!” Rainbow set her glare on her mother. “What, you found some new hunk close by? Or did you regret leaving one behind in Cloudsdale?!”

Dart held her ground, but she glared daggers at her daughter.

Twilight inched up behind her. “Rainbow, please think about this. There’s nothing about infidelity in any of the papers.”

Rainbow turned on her. “What are you upset about? You were right! This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“No! No, I never wanted this.”

“Neither did I!” Rainbow spun between the three of them, glaring at each in turn as she screamed, “I didn’t want my dad to lie to me yesterday when he promised everything was okay! I didn’t want my mom to hide this from me for weeks! Or months! And I don’t want to hear about papers!” She stamped a hoof and turned back to her parents. “I want the truth! Tell me what’s going on!”

Blaze tried to place a reassuring hoof on her shoulder, but Rainbow slapped it away. He sighed. “There’s nothing going on.”

“You’re lying! Something had to have happened!”

“Nothing happened,” Dart said. “That’s almost the problem. Rainbow, we don’t... there’s nothing to us anymore. We grew apart.”

Rainbow clenched her teeth, and a hiss escaped from them. “That’s it? That’s... that’s it?!” She swung a leg to the wall. “You did all that! You’ve been together for years! Don’t you dare stand there and tell me you just can’t be together anymore. My parents would never do that. They’d never just stop. They’d never look me in the eye and admit that.”

Dart looked her in the eye. “We can’t be together anymore.”

“There’s a void between us, Rainbow,” Blaze said. “We can’t cross it. We can’t fill it. We don’t know what else to do.”

“We don’t quit!” Rainbow bucked the table, and it crashed into the wall, the shock of its impact knocking some of the pictures to its surface and some to the floor. She was gone before Twilight could take another breath, the wind in her wake blowing down some of the hanging medals to join the broken glass and frames below.

Twilight raced downstairs—far too late. The street was empty of anypony else by the time she charged through the open door, and the skies were clear of anything but a few dark clouds on the horizon. She turned back and caught sight of the old mare once more, still sitting at her window. When she had Twilight’s attention, she pointed her hoof up. Twilight looked over the roof of the house, but even those skies were empty.

Her wings twitched under her saddlebags, useless things that they were. She could have followed if she were stronger. She could have at least searched. But she wasn’t stronger.

Twilight searched her memory, but she failed to think of any clue to where Rainbow would have gone. San Franciscolt was still too strange, too foreign, to predict where Rainbow would go to get away from everything. Only that she found comfort in the sky. She could have been on her way back to Ponyville for all Twilight knew. There was nowhere Twilight could go to catch up.

The open door corrected her. There was one place left to go. The only place, in fact, unless she wanted to try her luck and wander around the city until she ran into Rainbow Dash. Or until it was time for their train to leave in the morning. The tickets were still upstairs, past the ponies that must have been just as angry and brokenhearted as their daughter.

They might as well have been on the other side of a mountain.

All was quiet, however. Twilight took a tentative step inside, but the voices upstairs were hushed and muffled. She trudged up the stairs, not even sure if Blaze and Dart knew she was still there. Or if they cared. She couldn’t blame them if they hated her for her interference. They had a plan, and her meddling forced it out before they were ready.

She reached the top and saw the two of them drag the table back to its place. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” But she did. She meant to drag out the truth. She meant every second of it. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

Dart almost managed a smile, but it faded, and her ears wilted. “You couldn’t have. We decided to do this weeks ago. It was our fault for dragging it out over your visit.”

Blaze shook his head. “We should have told her. This wasn’t right!”

“How?” Dart challenged. “How were we going to tell our daughter her parents were splitting up when she was planning to come visit with the mare she’s dating?”

“I wanted to be honest with her!” Blaze snapped. “Avoiding it wasn’t helping. We’ve never hidden anything like this from her. It wasn’t right to string both of them along.”

“It wasn’t right for you to hide the fact you took a job here from me either! I should have just let you go. But no, I had to be stubborn. I had to try to save what we had.”

Blaze scowled, cocking his head to stare at his wife in disbelief. “You tried? When? Oh, I wanted you to try. We were at each other’s throats as soon as Rainbow left for Ponyville. All we knew, from when we were to kids, to raising her, all we knew was the track. We could have done something special here! Together! We could have taught so much to these kids!” He jabbed a hoof towards the door. “And now our daughter hates both our guts! This is you trying?!”

Twilight bowed her head as he stormed past them both, his pounding footsteps soon fading into the bedroom. She watched Dart move to the wall—stiff and graceless—and bend over to pick up one of the pictures. Twilight crept to her side as she dusted it off.

Dart held it out for her to see. Father and daughter had taken the ready stance for a race, but rather than focusing on the track, each of them had contorted their face at the other—Blaze letting his slack tongue hang out of one side of his mouth, and a filly Rainbow crossing her eyes with puffed out cheeks. “He always loved her more than he loved me. I knew, but I never minded. She was everything to us. For so long, she was our entire world.”

Twilight surveyed the chaos at their feet. Everything—every memory, every triumph, every moment—lay in a heap. She wanted to pick it all up. She wanted to leave it alone. But all she had really wanted was to understand.

A cracked sob came from the bedroom.

Dart hung her head. “A good wife would go to him, wouldn’t she? She’d talk to him, listen to him. Tell him what happened today had to happen, and everything will be fine.” She smiled. “Yes. That’s what a good wife would do.”

A few words died before Twilight could force them out. “So would a friend.”

Dart lifted her gaze to what remained on the wall. She swept her eyes over it, her lip starting to tremble every inch of the way.

Talk to him.

Twilight sucked her lips in. It wasn’t her place. Not anymore, not after what she had done. She walked away and left Dart to her decision. The hallway seemed a mile long, and almost an eternity seemed to pass until she could shut the door to her room behind her.

“Stupid!” She clutched her head, sinking to the floor. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” Her eyes burned, and the hot streaks of her tears soon traced her cheeks. “Stupid fool! Look what you did!”

All she had needed to do was nothing. If she had just kept quiet, none of these things would have happened. Because she pried into their business, a family had turned on itself and left nothing but tears and heartache in the place of a long-awaited reunion. Because she had to find her all important answer, Rainbow Dash had raced away, hating Twilight with every flap of her wings for all she knew.

What are you upset about?

Rainbow’s accusation, the desperate anger in her eyes when she said it, brought a bitter smile to Twilight’s face. Rainbow was right. Her objective was complete, and now there was no need for her to do or say anything else as long as she was in the house. She found the answer she had searched for all weekend. She figured out the foundation Blaze and Dart had built their lives together around.

She only hoped that foundation would realize how much she meant to them.

Twilight pulled her covers tighter to guard against the wind carrying the chill of the ocean through the open window. The breeze was strong enough to bring the scent of salt from the nearby little cove to her nose. She had watched the clouds gather until nightfall, and knew the rain would come sooner or later, but she couldn’t shut the window. Not yet.

She closed her eyes and listened to the mournful howling outside, surprisingly more noisy and chaotic than the remains of the day had been. Dart hadn’t challenged her new vow of silence over a tasteless dinner, nor had Blaze joined them until he came out to announce he would sleep on the couch that night. Just in case Rainbow came home. It was an unnecessary gesture now that the charade was over.

Thunk.

Her eyes shot open. “Rainbow!”

Rainbow moved away from the window and threw open her side of the bed.

Twilight sat up. “Are you okay? You had us—”

“Not now.” Rainbow climbed in and pulled the sheets back over herself. She turned her back to Twilight.

“They love you.”

“Just...” Rainbow clenched her eyes shut. She let out a sigh and shook her head. “Not now.”

Twilight closed her mouth. She had been trying to do it again. Rainbow didn’t want any discussion, so Twilight settled for lowering her head to rest on Rainbow’s neck. Her coat smelled like fresh rain, and the gentle patter of taps on the window started soon after. They love you, Rainbow. So much.

The rain fell for what seemed like hours, then it simply wasn’t there. She didn’t remember it stopping, nor did she remember falling asleep, but daylight broke through the cloudy sky outside the still-open blinds inch by excruciating inch. At the same time, she didn’t feel any more rejuvenated by her rest. Time moved on all the same, however, and they had a train to catch. Before that, there were two ponies to bid good-bye.

Rainbow was the first to get up, and Twilight watched her pack up the few things they had brought, including all her books. “What are you going to say to them?”

“Bye.” Rainbow shrugged, and tossed Twilight’s saddlebag onto the bed. “We’re done here. I’m gonna take a shower. You get your stuff out of there when I’m out.” She left the room before Twilight could answer.

Twilight rolled out of bed, thankful she had taken hers the previous night. She found both Dart and Blaze waiting in the kitchen when she went out. Neither seemed surprised when they heard the shower running, and Dart gave her a small smile and nod. Twilight left Rainbow’s plan unsaid. She was through interfering.

She smelled fresh bread in the oven, but it did nothing to stir her appetite. Dart studiously retrieved a platter for serving while Blaze busied himself with setting the knives, plate, butter, and jam on the table. Twilight sat by the counter, next to a pile of the fallen items from last night. The glass and frames of the pictures had been removed, but there were still gaps in the wall from the missing medals that were laying right beside her.

Perhaps they were thinking like their daughter, ready to pack up everything for the inevitable move. Twilight kept her thoughts to herself, but she couldn’t ignore what was happening around her. Blaze fiddled with the plates, twisting and turning each one multiple times. Dart engaged the stove’s hatch in a staring contest.

Don’t they deserve to talk with their daughter?

But she was through interfering.

The shower eventually stopped, and Twilight went to collect her things. Please talk to them, she thought as a still-wet Rainbow Dash slipped into their room. She mimicked Blaze by slightly nudging her hair and tooth brushes around until she heard something drop behind her. Her saddlebag was waiting for her by the door, and she caught the tip of Rainbow’s tail before it moved out of sight. She kept her ears up while she packed her toiletries, but didn’t hear a thing. Please, Rainbow. Give them a chance.

She occupied herself by making the bed to give the family more time, but there was still no sound coming from the kitchen. Twilight looked over the room once more for any straggling items, but it was clear of anything that belonged to them. She hoped Blaze would use it instead the couch that night. Perhaps he had, until she and Rainbow finalized their plans to visit. Regardless, they were packed and ready to go home.

Twilight went back out to breakfast and sat next to Rainbow, standing still and watching her parents’ every move.

Dart pulled a tray of biscuits out of the oven and started to tray them up.

“Don’t bother,” Rainbow said, stepping forward. She took one and popped it in her mouth. She tossed another over to Twilight as she chewed and swallowed. “You ready to go?”

Blaze stepped between her and the stairs. “Talk to us, kid. You can’t leave like this.”

Dart wrapped a leg around her shoulders. “We love you, Rainbow. You’re the most important pony in our lives. We just can’t love each other like that.”

Rainbow shook off her mother’s touch. “You can’t expect me to solve your problems for you.” She shouldered past her father and headed down the stairs.

Twilight shuffled after her, biscuit levitating in tow, but where Rainbow headed straight out the door, she stopped.

Blaze stood next to her, and put a hoof on her shoulder. He watched Rainbow walk away, not looking back a single time. “Please... do what we can’t.”

Twilight nodded and looked to Dart. Thank you came to mind. For her hospitality. For speaking with her. For sharing with her. I’m sorry quickly followed. For what Twilight did with her generosity. For letting Rainbow leave this way. Neither seemed appropriate.

Dart gave her an understanding smile. She closed the door without a word.

Twilight trotted after Rainbow towards the city proper, eating on the run until she caught up. “Rainbow—”

“They won’t do it.” Rainbow looked back to the house. “They said there’s another step, right? Take it to a judge?” She waited for Twilight’s nod, then fixed her gaze on the road ahead. “That’s their out. They’ll take it to the edge, but they won’t go through with it. They won’t.”

Epilogue: What About Us?

Twilight’s hooves sank into the soft grass of the hillside outside Ponyville with every step. In the distance, Canterlot glittered under the afternoon sun, and Twilight recalled the last time she had seen the city from this spot. She was no longer the same pony that had lazed the time away with Rainbow Dash that day, no longer the unicorn that dragged around a secret pain in her heart for so long. Only Canterlot sculpted into the side of the mountain seemed unchanged through the eventful months, but this last week had been the quietest she could remember.

Rainbow Dash had turned into little more than a ghost since they arrived home, and Twilight hadn’t seen her outside of her weather duties. As much as she missed the evenings and quiet moments together, she understood why Rainbow wanted her space and privacy, but Rainbow Dash had also ignored their lunch dates with the other girls. The signs of trouble were becoming too much for them to ignore.

She knew they meant well, but their assurances that no matter what problem she and Rainbow were having, everything would turn out okay between the two of them were almost too much to bear. Knowing the truth and hiding it behind a smile and a promise of Everything is fine, really, and Rainbow will be back soon stung a little deeper every time it came up.

Fluttershy had even offered herself as a go-between because of Twilight’s flight difficulties. Privately, at the library, which Twilight greatly appreciated. She didn’t want to imagine Rainbow’s reaction if the others took inspiration from Fluttershy’s suggestion and began harassing her, but the anxious look on Fluttershy’s face almost made Twilight want to tell her everything.

But that was Rainbow’s decision to make, her news to share. Twilight had been content to let her escape into the sky to find what comfort she could, but they had both known the date for Judge Fairwind drew closer every day. Whatever the news would be afterwards, it had hung over Twilight’s thoughts until Thunderlane’s visit to the library early in the day.

Rainbow had missed her shift for the first time anypony could remember.

The mail ponies had been kind enough to answer her questions and tell her Rainbow received a package from San Franciscolt that morning. So her fruitless search of Ponyville had begun, refusing to consider any possibility until she was at Rainbow’s side to hear it herself. She had almost given up, almost resorted to bringing in Fluttershy to help search the sky however she could, until Twilight remembered one final spot she could reach on her own. One place that meant something to them both.

Twilight could almost feel Rainbow Dash’s wings around her again. Whatever pony she was now—whatever pony the foolish young mare that had thrown herself at a coldhearted stallion had grown into—she had to repay Rainbow for her understanding and acceptance. Somehow.

She saw her long before she reached her, Rainbow laying flat on her back, the bright blue of her coat sharply outlined by the green grass. She held a foreleg under her head like a pillow, but Twilight saw her eyes open and looking up to the sky. They held the same impassive look Twilight had seen leaving her parents’ home, showing no anger or pain or even a hint of acknowledgement to Twilight settling down next to her.

Rainbow had looked the same way on the train home, and as she opened her mouth to speak, she sounded no different than her calm refusals to talk. “They did it.”

Twilight’s heart blocked any response from leaving her throat. She had almost allowed herself to believe Rainbow had written them first, and started the discussion she rejected in San Franciscolt. Surely a judge wouldn’t have minded being told no thank you for his services in such a matter as this, after a daughter and her parents realized how much they meant to each other.

She had almost allowed herself to hope the family could repair itself without her.

Rainbow lifted a pair of envelopes with her free foreleg. “They both wrote me. Dad said... not a whole lot. Just that he wanted me to write back. Mom’s on her way back to Cloudsdale. She had a place lined up already. Even gave me the address.” She jerked her chin up to the sky. “City’s scheduled to come by this way in a couple weeks. She said she wanted to meet up, and to write her too.”

Write them. Twilight fidgeted. She opened her mouth. Meet her. “Um... Pinkie told me about a new recipe she wanted to try out the other day. Maybe you could ask her to hold off for...”

Rainbow slammed the envelopes back to the ground and rolled to her feet.

Twilight clenched her eyes as Rainbow walked away. Stupid! When she opened them again, she spotted a bundled strip of cloth Rainbow had left behind, its two ends twisted around themselves as if they each wanted to embrace something that wasn’t there anymore. Twilight gasped, and she spotted another pair of twists a few inches later, and a third after that, closer to the center. “They gave you their wedding band?”

Rainbow snorted. “Can’t figure out why. Worthless thing. Guess they wanted me to remember how bad they screwed up.”

“I doubt that’s the reason.” Twilight prodded it, almost lifted it up, but stopped. Rainbow had sat down a few feet away, her wings mimicking her shoulders in slumping down, and her feathers joined her gaze in resting on the ground. Twilight looked back down at the contorted cloth—what it held together already undone and unsalvageable. That wasn’t an issue she could help now.

She tossed it away.

Rainbow lifted her eyes back to the sky, though the rest of her body did not follow their example. “I don’t get it. We were happy up there. All three of us. I know we were.” She rubbed her temple. “I haven’t been able to think about anything else all week.”

Twilight rested her head on her shoulder. “Tell me.”

Her head gave an almost imperceptible shake. “I don’t even know how to say it. Everything’s just stuck in my head like sand in your feathers. Racing my Dad. Winning the first time. Every time I raced at the Academy they were there!” Rainbow pounded her hoof. “Right there! I can still hear them screaming for me! And all that time they couldn’t stand each other? It doesn’t make sense!”

Twilight focused her eyes on the towers of Canterlot Castle in the distance. “Life changes, Rainbow. I used to be happy at home with my family. Then I was happy at the school, alone with my studies. I thought I understood the world until I came to Ponyville, and I learned that I understood nothing. Now I’m happy here with all my friends.”

She put her hoof on Rainbow’s. “We can’t know what’s in our future, but if your heart tells you that you were happy together, then I believe you. I know they were happy when you were in their lives. Just like I am.”

Rainbow tore away from her and headed up the hill, her sudden absence leaving a brief chill on Twilight’s coat that worried at her mind. Rainbow stopped and looked back at her. All of her. Her violet eyes swept over Twilight’s entire body, and settled on her face. “Are you?”

Twilight frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You saw their wedding photo.”

“And?”

“And the first thing you thought was how young they were.” Her hoof tapped against her temple. “Have you tried to think about that? They’ve been together longer than we’ve been alive. Over half of their own lives. And they’re stopping.” She scowled at the ground. “Because they don’t know what to do.”

The words took Twilight back to that night, back to that room. Back to Rainbow’s kick of the table, and the claim—almost an accusation—she threw in her parents’ faces. “Do you think they gave up?”

A slow nod was her only answer.

Twilight went to her and lifted her chin with a hoof. “Then we won’t.”

Rainbow laughed. “That’s too simple a plan coming from you.”

“Simple and easy never meant the same thing.” Twilight lowered her hoof and pressed it into the soil. “I made a choice, right here on this hill, to trust you. I opened myself up to you more than I had to anypony else, and you haven’t let me down yet. I didn’t make that decision lightly.”

“I know.” Rainbow’s hoof brushed hers. “That was when I fell for you, you know. I mean, we had a few dates before then, but I knew how much that meant to you. And I won’t ever let you down.”

“Good,” Twilight said, lighting her horn, “because I’m not doing this lightly either.” She levitated the cloth over to them, and a whip of her magic straightened out all of its wrinkles. “One day, we’ll be twice as old as we are now, just like they are. We’ll have to face that future. Together.”

Twilight looped the cloth around their necks, bringing Rainbow’s blushing face closer, and she fastened a knot inches away from them. “I trusted you, and you repaid that trust by standing by me at my weakest moment, when I was most frightened of what my future might be. You gave me that future just by being there.”

Rainbow chuckled, and her eyes jumped back and forth between Twilight’s and the two ends in her grasp. “And now here we are, talking about the future again. Because of me. Again.”

“Yes.” Twilight shifted her grip to create some slack, and tied the second knot. She felt Rainbow’s cheeks burn hotter. “We’ve seen the challenges that future will make us face together, and we’ve seen the consequences of failure. I think we’re stronger for it.”

Rainbow coughed to the side, failing to be discreet about her studying the ends of cloth. “So... uh, we don’t have a third.” The red in her face drained away as quickly as it came. “Do we? We don’t right? Not yet.”

“It’s in our future.” Twilight lifted a hoof as she let go of her magic, and the ends of cloth fell over it and curled back on themselves, taking the same shape they had held for so many years, longing for the moment to come in which they were joined again. “I don’t want to give up, Rainbow Dash. Do you?”

Rainbow’s hoof joined hers—sealing the ends between them. “I never give up.”