Rainbow Dash Develops Apple Palsy
Rainbow Dash was, without question, the fastest and toughest mare in Equestria.
Rainbow Dash was, without question, going to die crispy and alone.
An endless desert stretched out in front of her, the sun beating down on her body with unrelenting mercilessness. She would have moved to find shade; she would have. But she couldn’t, stuck upright exactly where she was, nailed onto a cross. She’d long ago lost track of how long she’d been up there, staring out at the unending, unforgiving desert in front of her. Long enough that the nails had stopped hurting, whatever that meant for her. Everything else still hurt, though, so maybe it didn’t matter.
How did this even happen? What did she do that ended up with her nailed to a cross in the middle of the desert? How did she even get to the desert? Wasn’t she in Ponyville? Maybe it was Dodge Junction? Appleoosa? She couldn’t remember, and trying to remember hurt anyway. All she could really remember was that she was going to die, crispy, alone, and friendless.
Maybe not friendless. She had friends. Where were they? They weren’t nailed on crosses next to her, so maybe they were ok. Maybe they were even looking for her. That sounded like the sort of thing they would do. She’d never leave any of them hanging — or crucified — and she knew they wouldn’t abandon her either. Be nice if they hurried up, though. At least to bring her some water.
She was thirsty. She was so thirsty. But the only thing in front of her was an endless desert, not a drop of water in sight, and so she had no choice but to bear it. Would she have even been able to drink with how dry her throat was? Maybe not. Did it even matter? She wouldn’t have been able to find out without any water around. No friends to bring her any water either, not yet. Maybe they’d show up soon.
She coaxed herself into turning her head to the right. It hurt. It should have taken her half a second. It felt like it took half a minute, not that it mattered. There was nothing to see over there except for rock. The side of a cliff or a mountain or something, as uncaring and unforgiving as the sun overhead and the desert all around her. She thought about turning her head back to the left, and decided not too. What was the point? It would just hurt, and there would be nothing to see.
At least there were no vultures picking at her. Assuming she would’ve even felt them picking at all, with how much everything hurt. A small part of her wished that vultures would come and start picking at her. Maybe she could grab one with her teeth, and only let it go if it would go get water for her. That was how Fluttershy did it. Or maybe it wasn’t? She would have to remember to know, and remembering hurt.
Maybe she was being punished by some kind of higher power? Maybe she did something bad. So bad that some higher power nailed her to a cross and stuck her in the middle of the desert until she learned her lesson. Maybe she wasn’t being punished, and was stuck in the desert, nailed to a cross because some higher power thought it would be funny, and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe it was part of a scientific experiment, but that sounded dumb, because what could somepony possibly learn by doing that? She would have to think to figure that out, and thinking was just like remembering, and that hurt.
Maybe she wasn’t going to die. Maybe she was already dead. Maybe she was dead and she was really bad in life; too bad to go to the Elysium Fields, but not so bad that she got stuck in Tartarus, so they nailed her soul to a cross and stuck it out in some kind of soul desert so that the soul sun could burn away all the bad stuff and let her into Elysium. That sounded like the most plausible explanation.
An ear-splitting, cacophonous screech sounded to her left. Slowly, painfully, she convinced her head to turn in its direction, and she saw them. Her dear friends. Somehow, someway, they’d found her, and they had water and she wasn’t already dead. She wanted to laugh. She even wanted to cry a little bit. But she couldn’t; she’d been on the cross too long. All she could do was stare at them dumbly, wishing they’d hurry up and get her down.
Applejack and Twilight Sparkle, meanwhile, watched Rainbow staring at them — splayed out on her self-heating cloud bed — through the doorway to her cloudhouse bedroom (courtesy of the latter’s cloudwalking spell) with great concern. A glass of cold water hung in the air next to them, suspended by Twilight’s magic. Twilight watched with great concern, at the least, for this was not the sort of behavior she’d come to expect from Rainbow after the kind of drinking she did the night before. She would groan, complain, and even whine a bit, but she would never just stare despondently the way she was! Applejack, meanwhile, had seen exactly this sort of thing many times before. “Yup,” she whispered, “She’s got the palsy.”
Twilight pulled her attention away from Rainbow for the moment. “Palsy?” she asked, also whispering.
“Yup,” Applejack replied with a nod. “Apple palsy. S’what happens when you drink too much applejack.”
Twilight looked back at Rainbow. “Really?” she asked.
“Yup. This ain’t even the worst I ever seen somepony. Cousin Cinnamon Crisp had it so bad, he tried to eat lit dynamite.”
Twilight felt her heart cracking into pieces. Poor Rainbow!
Her brow furrowed.
“Wait a minute,” she said, drawing Applejack’s attention. “The hinges on her door are made out of clouds.” Twilight looked Applejack right in the eyes. “How did they squeak?”
Applejack’s eyes turned upwards and she canted her head to the side.
Her brow furrowed.
