Rainbow Dash groaned, flopping down on her bed, tired body sagging against the mattress. The pegasus was absolutely wrecked—but she wore a confident grin nonetheless. It had been a satisfying, full day of work redirecting a bout of storm clouds that had been drifting in towards Ponyville from the east, and Rainbow was a sore and sweaty mess. As she felt the chill of the night begin to creep along her spine and combat the dull heat buzz leftover from her hard work, she wrapped herself up in her blankets and nuzzled the pillow, letting her heavy lids close.
Perhaps tonight she'd finally get some real rest.
There was a mountain. There was a hill. A tree. A forest. The sky. A single cloud. A foal laughing. The color orange. The color blue. Orange, then blue with stripes. The snippid scent of the Sweet Apple Orchards after a rainstorm. The color purple. A single brick, laying alone in a field. A pony with a wing sprouting from her forehead and two horns protruding from her back. A pair of antlers. Three pegasi with glowing goggles and dark suits, leering out from the shadows of some dark castle ruin. A great beam of red light. The skittering of a thousand legs, the shuffling of gossamer wings, and the feeling of warmth being dragged from her body...
And suddenly, it was like she had fallen into place, perfectly penciled in her panel. She blinked, the light far too bright to make out any shapes around her. But she could feel a warm, loving presence nearby, and the light that blinded her warmed her as well. She was being refilled, after having every bit of heat drained.
“Up you go...” She felt the careful, scooping motion lift underneath her, hard hooves feeling almost like silk in the way she brushed over her. The warmth from her fur and her body heat both gently met with hers, mingling, caressing, binding...
“Look at you,” the voice said. It was clearer than ever, and she could almost begin to see shapes moving through the fog. “You’re so big! And the way you flew today—oh! It was gorgeous, Rainbow! I’m so proud of you...”
She had been thrown into the light; she had no control over it, she had no say in what happened to her. She was dragged—no, she was THRUST by that powerful wave of energy, that felt as if it were the heat of a warm body radiating from beside and all around her. She was laying in the sun, the blue brighter than anything she’d ever seen. She was shooting through it now, that blue expanse; the world was slowing down around her as her heart beat faster, blood and adrenaline and the worst tasting-cocktail of excitement and fear leaking up from the back of her throat—
“Come on! Fly to Mama, Rainbow!”
She slammed head first into a brick wall. She slammed head first into a tree. She slammed head first into the case containing every single trophy and ribbon and award she had ever received and sent it toppling to the ground while her father desperately wrestled her with his words as she screamed and writhed on the floor.
“It’s not so bad; it just looks higher up than it is, is all. You can do it, Rainbow!”
She could count every tooth in the smile; she could see every blade in the grass; she could hear the squirrels chittering and bees buzzing and the birds singing...
And the birds singing.
A single, piercing note sliced through her head, and the world around her crumbled as if it had all been on a single reel of film that had finally burnt out. She could smell burnt toast, painful and familiar, and she couldn’t see anything at all. It wasn’t until a moment later that she realized it was because her eyes had been closed.
So she opened them.
Rainbow Dash hung in the void, an endless expanse of emptiness surrounding her in her entirety. She could see her hooves before her—as blurry and poorly-drawn as they looked.
So I still exist.
Sweet.
Was it sweet, though? She tried to move through the void and found that she couldn’t do anything except twist around, as if she were being suspended in the air on a string. But there was no air, either—when she tried to flap her wings, they just uselessly and flawlessly moved through the empty space. Whatever it was that she was in, she wasn’t going to be able to fly through it in her usual manner.
“Ngggh!” Rainbow’s voice echoed out into the cold darkn—okay, fine. It wasn’t a cold darkness. It didn’t really have any sort of feeling at all, all being told. Rainbow could feel her body, but she couldn’t feel any sort of sensation aside from what was contained within her.
In essence, all she had was her.
“This sucks!” she screamed out into the blackness. Nothing responded. Rainbow grunted, sneering and narrowing her eyes.
“I know I can get through here...” she muttered to herself. “I know I can get out! What would Twilight do? Or Applejack? Or...”
It was all rushing back to her. In a clean, quick swooping motion that felt identical to every time she pulled off a dive just an inch from the ground, Rainbow felt a series of sensations that she knew clearly did not originate from her:
The taste is what hit her first. It was musty, like she had just inhaled the dust from a thousand-year old book directly into her lungs; and then it was tangy, sweet, melting into a delicious, fruity taste that she only was able to achieve when guzzling that first sip of Sweet Apple Cider of the season.
Then it was the smell; the pungent smell of a freshly tilled field, the entrapping odor of lilies in bloom, the scent of freshly baked scones and that tea Twilight always liked... what was its name? Details like that didn’t seem to matter. As soon as she was focusing her efforts on trying to remember about it, she was being strung along towards the next wave.
It crashed upon her, and that was when she began to feel tactile sensation again. A hoof against her mane, a wing against her side, the gentle rhythm of a calm heart soothing her own that never seemed to beat slower than a hummingbird’s. She could feel her wings stretching upward, and she felt true cold—the snow against her face, the bite of the wind along her back as she climbed upwards towards the moon—and she was grateful, endlessly grateful, that she was feeling it all again.
And now she could see them. They were lined all up in rows, standing before her; she was standing in the center of town, just as she had stood so many times before. Every single mare, stallion, filly, and colt of Ponyville had lined up in these rows, almost as if they were a platoon preparing to march off to war.
She could see the faces of everypony she knew—there were all her friends, and Roseluck and Derpy, and The Cakes and Mayor Mare, and Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom, and Princess Luna and that dumbass Thunderlane and...
And...
She blinked again. The pony standing next to Thunderlane was his little brother Rumble. Rainbow opened her mouth, but of course nothing came out; she hadn’t heard a single sound except for the thoughts in her head for quite some time.
The image of the Princess was of little concern now; her friends had parted, two of them breaking off from the other three and walking towards her. Applejack and Twilight were both giving her remorseful looks, their eyes wide and their brows furrowed with concern. She saw their lips move, the two of them glancing at each other now and then.
“I can’t hear you!” Rainbow tried to yell out, but found that there was still no sound. The way everything was, it was as if she were looking at everypony through a telescope from very far away; yet she could see everything in perfect definition as though she were there in the flesh, but they were nothing but images. She no longer felt the sensations on her body, or smelled the scents in her nostrils, or savored the tastes on her tongue, and she hadn’t even heard anything in so long she was more or less used to it at that point.
And so Rainbow watched the surreal scene of Applejack and Twilight’s silent conversation and attempts to include Rainbow within them. They were clearly aware that Rainbow was there in front of them—whenever Rainbow would walk or move, they would react as if she had actually done it.
Rainbow buzzed around them, shouting down as she careened in vulture-like circles above the heads of the rows of ponies and the two who had broken off from them. “STIIIIIIIILLLLLL CAN’T HEAR YOOOOU!”
She landed down again, Applejack and Twilight giving her both the same unimpressed expression. Applejack clutched the bridge of her muzzle with the crook of her hoof and appeared to sigh, before slamming her hoof down with what looked like a decent amount of force and mouthing words clearly, slowly, and desperately to Rainbow. She was moving her hoof up now, pointing towards the sky...
Rainbow cocked her head to the side. She followed the line of Applejack’s hoof up into the sky, and far away, just under the glare of the sun, she could see a small silhouette of a city hanging in the clouds...
She turned back to face Applejack, but she was gone. Twilight as well. She looked up towards the crowd, to see if they too had disappeared, yet before she had the chance to do so, a movement in the corner of her vision caught her attention. With the effort of pulling herself through molasses, Rainbow pivoted to face whatever had moved in her peripheral—
For the briefest of moments, she felt a tactile sensation again—a hoof on her shoulder. The world blinked away, sight having been taken from her at last, but that is when it happened.
The note had returned. But it did not sound like that atonal screech that had cut her in two earlier. This was something different, something more. This note was accompanied by many others... this was a beautiful melody; Rainbow was sure Twilight would describe it as something expertly crafted by the vocals of a pony who spent her Saturday afternoons with The Muses themselves:
”You don’t have to run away,
Run away
Run away
You don’t have to run away
My dear
You have nothing to fear
My dear...
When the sun is gone
I’ll be here
And when the rain has come
I’ll be near
So...
You don’t have to run away,
Run away
Run away
You don’t have to run away
My dear...
You have nothing to fear
My dear...”
Rainbow Dash opened her eyes and stared straight ahead at the wall opposite her for a moment, a weak ray of early morning light cutting down the middle of her room from her window before letting out a feral scream and kicking her blankets from her body so hard she nearly busted her hooves taking off the foot of her bed.
There was a thunderstorm that lasted all that day, and well into the night.
Author's Note
