“Rainbow Dash, is something wrong?” Fluttershy set down her cup of tea and turned a concerned gaze to her companion. The two were meeting in Dash’s cloud house for a sleepover—a fairly regular event between them, where the old friends could have some one-on-one time together. For the past few minutes, they had been sitting on the living room couch, making small talk. But Rainbow Dash’s usual vibrant energy had been replaced with confused introspection, and Fluttershy had noticed.
Rainbow shook her head and forced a smile. “Nah, I’ve just got stuff on my mind.” She took a gulp of soda and tried to look convincing. Fluttershy saw through it immediately, however, and tried again.
“Well, do you want to talk about it? I’m here to listen, if you have something to say.”
Rainbow Dash sighed and nodded. “Yeah, but… I dunno, it’s… not easy to talk about.” Fluttershy waited, knowing her friend would elaborate soon. “I’ve been thinking about—about death. Ever since Tank's hibernation. Because, well, what if it wasn't just a winter nap? What if he'd died, instead? And... that got me thinking... what happens when I die?” Rainbow paused, uncertain of how to continue.
“Everypony thinks about death sometimes, Rainbow Dash.”
Rainbow Dash stared at her coffee table, and lifted a hoof to absently trace the spirals of cloud. “Well… I don’t want to die.” She took a deep breath. “The idea of just being gone… it’s really…” She trailed off, half searching for a word, half not wanting to speak the one that fit.
“Scary?” Fluttershy supplied gently.
“Yeah.” Rainbow nodded, sighing as she took another gulp of her drink. “I feel like I don’t have enough time to do what I want to do in life before it ends. I’ve come so far already—I’m a Wonderbolt, for Celestia’s sake—but I’m not ready to just—” she flailed her foreleg—“just disappear, like clouds turning to mist in a strong breeze.” She paused for a moment. “I kinda get why you’d want to be a tree. I mean, they can’t move, so they’re like the opposite of Wonderbolt material, but they live basically forever. Unless somepony cuts them down, they don’t have to worry about anything. They’ve got all the time they need.”
Fluttershy nodded. “And they’re so strong, and they make wonderful homes for all the forest animals, too,” she said. “When I die, I’m going to become a tree.”
“Huh?” Rainbow cocked her head at Fluttershy, momentarily distracted from her melancholy. “You mean like re- rein- um, being born again?”
Fluttershy smiled serenely. “Close, but not exactly.” She took a sip of tea, and held her cup in her hooves, letting the warmth soak in. “Do you know what the Whitetail Woods is, Rainbow Dash?”
Now, Rainbow was even more confused. “It’s a forest, duh.”
Fluttershy shook her head. “No—well, yes, technically, but it wasn’t a forest to begin with. The Whitetail Woods is actually a graveyard.”
“Ew…” Rainbow shook her head in disgust. “So, every time we do the Running of the Leaves, we’re actually galloping over dead bodies?”
“Everything is made of dead bodies, Rainbow Dash.”
Rainbow stared at Fluttershy, and pressed a hoof to her friend’s forehead. “Are you okay, Flutters…?”
Fluttershy giggled, which did not ease Rainbow’s concern at all. “No, listen to me. The matter that makes up our bodies is ancient, created by stars, or Faust, or both, whatever you believe in. We were made from the dust of the Earth—which was in turn made from stars, some say—and when we die, our bodies are slowly decomposed into the same nutrients and vitamins that are absorbed by roots to feed plants. And from there, our atoms are spread throughout the whole world. Even the trees die someday, and when they do, they undergo the same process.
“’We are dust, and to dust we shall return,’” she said softly. “I heard that somewhere, and I think it’s absolutely true. But it doesn’t have to be scary.”
Rainbow wasn’t convinced. “How is that not scary? You just told me that I’m made from dead stuff, and I’m going to die someday, no matter what.”
Fluttershy set her teacup down. “Because it means two things: that you are much older than you know, and that when you die, the body that you leave behind will exist forever, growing in other living things. No matter what happens to your spirit, you will help the rest of the world to live and grow stronger, and you will continue contributing to it for as long as there is life on Earth.”
“Okay… but what’s this about the Whitetail Woods being a graveyard? You said it wasn’t originally a forest.”
“I’ve been doing research,” Fluttershy said proudly. “After Tirek returned, I wanted to find out more about Equestrian history. I didn’t know anything about any of the villains we've faced so far, and I wanted to be prepared for any other big returns. And do you know what I found out?”
“Whitetail Woods is a graveyard.” Rainbow said flatly.
Fluttershy nodded. “Apparently, when Princess Luna became Nightmare Moon the first time, she destroyed huge chunks of the Castle of the Two Sisters.” She looked down, her voice growing sad. “It killed a lot of ponies. The Northwest Tower fell, and anypony who was in it or under where it landed…” She trailed off, unable to finish her sentence.
“Princess Celestia gathered all the ponies who had lost friends or relatives in the disaster. All of Equestria was shocked and grieving, including the Princess. She invited everypony who had experienced a loss recently to a big, open field to hold a special memorial service. And… everypony in Equestria showed up. Even some foreign dignitaries, and citizens from their countries, came.
“Together, they buried the bodies they were able to recover. As a symbol of hope and new life, instead of placing a cold, heavy stones at the heads of the graves, they planted trees. And then, everypony planted a tree of their own—sometimes more than one—to symbolize their personal loss. They all worked together, forming bonds in their shared grief. And like the trees that gained life from the death of those ponies, relationships flourished. Before long, the nation was recovering.
“I don’t think any of those ponies completely got over the loss of Princess Luna, or their loved ones. But, like the trees and the wandering tribe of homeless deer who quickly moved in, they found new ways to live out of those deaths. Life beyond death, life after death—it’s the classic resurrection story, just subtler, and real.”
“You sound like Twilight,” Rainbow laughed weakly. “You’ve been reading too much.”
“But do you see what I’m saying?” Fluttershy asked, leaning forward and putting her hoof over Rainbow’s.
“I don’t really get it,” Rainbow admitted. “But it is kind of comforting, in a way. I still don’t want to die, though.”
“Well,” Fluttershy said, “you probably aren’t going to die anytime soon. But my advice is, don’t worry about death—it’s inevitable; there’s nothing you can do about it. If I worried about dying all the time, I’d spend my whole life hiding under my bed, and then I’d miss it. So instead, I focus on making my life be what I want it to be, so that at the end, I can look back and be happy with what I’ve done.”
“And then you’re going to be a tree?” Rainbow cracked a half-smile, the weight in her stomach lifting a little.
Fluttershy smiled back. “Yes, when I die, I want a tree planted over my grave. Just like the ponies in Whitetail Woods, except that I want to be buried at my cottage, so that I can continue to provide a home for the animals who live there. Do you know, Rainbow...” she sighed. "I've buried a lot of animals. They don't live long anyway, and when they get sick, they sometimes don't recover. And every time an animal dies, I bury it under a bush, or a tree, of some kind. I think Applejack's family does the same with their dead; they are buried in the orchard, and the trees that mark their graves are said to hold a little bit of their personalities."
“Huh… well, I want a much more awesome burial than that,” Rainbow said. By now, she was really smiling, and creeping toward a grin. “Maybe I should have the Wonderbolts fly me way up into the air and then drop me, from high enough that I make one last Sonic Rainboom before I ‘take my rest’.”
Fluttershy hugged her friend. “That sounds just like you, Rainbow Dash. And hopefully, you’ll have plenty of time to plan it in more detail.”
Rainbow hugged her back. “Yeah. You too, Flutters.” She broke the hug and raised her soda can, which Fluttershy met with her teacup. “Here’s to a long life—and to new life, after that.”
Author's Note
This was a random idea that came to me last night, while I was listening to sad music (just for sad music's sake). Once I figured out what characters I wanted to use, it all just sort of fell into place.
I know there's a gaping hole in this story: what happens to our spirits, our souls, our personalities, after we die. I didn't address that for two reasons: first, it would have taken the conversation in a different direction from where I wanted to go, and second (probably more importantly), I have no idea. There are an unlimited number of possibilities, but the truth is that while we are alive, we can't know what it's like being dead (literally, not metaphorically, which is a whole other conversation). So, while it's interesting to ponder, there isn't much point to wondering except for mental expansion. I've decided that what matters to me, while I live, is life--what I do in life, so that if it turns out that after death, we just cease to exist, I'll at least have done something to change the world for the better. It doesn't have to be big, as long as it's enough to make someone else's life better than what it otherwise would have been. We are infinitesimal, tiny creatures on a grain of sand hurtling through space--we really don't matter in the universe, except to each other. And that is what makes life meaningful.
