The Eye of the Nebula

Introduction

The sun beat down on soft, puffy clouds, scattered like white islands through the azure sky. Far below, an unfamiliar landscape became one single green blur. With the wind in her ears, Rainbow Dash felt the freezing, thin air and grinned. She passed in a blur over a lake and its deep rippling waters. Soon it was far behind her.

She flew until nighttime. It was her favorite time to fly. She slowed down, gliding effortlessly, feeling each air current and instinctively adjusting her wings to it. Eventually she gazed upwards at the crystal clear Equestrian sky. In the absence of city lights she could see billions of stars, planets, colorful nebula, and even a milky arm of their own galaxy. She had seen them countless times, but they always amazed her. Still, she gave them next to no thought, turning her thoughts instead to her own life and ideas. She soared through the darkening sky, quietly humming a familiar song. This was flight, and flight was what she lived for.

For a moment, Dash thought she heard a faint rumbling. No, not heard, but felt. She tried to force the thought from her mind, but the rumbling grew louder and prevented her from doing so. When the sound became almost unbearably loud, she whipped her head around and saw only a fiery light, immediately followed by an unbelievably sharp pain in her right wing. Crying out, she tumbled from the sky unconscious.

She had been extremely high up, and luckily so, for when she came to, she was only a few hundred feet from hitting the ground. Her entire right side felt like it was on fire, but she somehow managed to half glide, half flail through the dark to her home. She knew that she was lucky for being hit so near to her home, but afterwards she remembered almost nothing of the trip. The pain overcame her. The last thing she remembered was a bright, fading light far off in the distance.

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A dim light shone through one of many dark windows. The smell of age and dust hung in the air. Twilight Sparkle, half awake, squinted in the candlelight at Astronomy through the Ages, and roused herself from her brief doze. She trudged over to her telescope and peered through at the beautiful sky with its billions of stars, colorful nebula, and galactic haze, the same sky that Dash saw that very night. Yet she saw it differently. To her it was not just a beautiful sight, it was an invitation to learn, to explore the beginning and the end.

She sighed. That was enough work for tonight. She decided she would sleep on the balcony. A pale, white light shone from her horn as she carefully grasped the burning candle and made her way outside. As she drifted into deep sleep, she gazed up at the night sky, full of so many shining wonders. The candle went out on a breath of wind.

Her tightly scheduled sleep did not last long. Within minutes, Twilight was started awake by a deep rumbling noise. She leaped to her feet, instantly awake, and raced to her telescope. She focused it with her magic and managed to get a glimpse of a giant, fiery ball moving at an unbelievable speed towards the west. Hardly believing her eyes, she watched as it raced beyond the horizon. There was a bright flash of light when it hit, somewhere off in the wastelands. Any hope of sleeping tonight was gone, and she knew it.

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A third pony lay on her roof that night. Her eyes were closed and she was wearing ostentatiously large headphones, the best that bits could buy. She wasn’t exactly rich, but if there was one thing that she cared about more than anything, it was music. Vinyl Scratch, better known to some by her stage name, DJ PON-3, also sat under that same night sky. She was not looking at it, however, because she was lost in her music.

Contrary to what most ponies thought, she was not just a lover of dubstep, rock, and hardcore genres, she also had a soft spot for classical music. She had only ever told Octavia this; she was the only one who would understand. It had a calming effect on her, and as she sat outside feeling the breeze on her mane and gazing at the shining sky, letting her mind wander, it was exactly what she needed to listen to. When she looked up, she imagined that the universe was simply one giant symphony. To her, this explained why each creature in Equestria felt a deep connection to music. It was her primary language.

She opened her eyes and saw a bright and beautiful light fade off into the distance. Not giving it much attention, she pushed it from her mind and continued to rest. A few minutes later, she realized that it would be no use to try not to think about the mysterious light, it was too interesting to ignore. Vinyl decided to give it up until morning, however, and called it a night. She slept on the roof with her headphones still on.