To Rainbow Dash, a cloud was so much more than rain.
One day, while looking for a spot to nap, Rainbow Dash found a cloud unlike any other cloud she had ever seen before. With no prompting from pegasi hooves, it had shaped itself into the perfect shape of a bed, complete with a little divot on top where the small of her back and wings could rest. Dash’s years of shaping clouds into beds to nap on gave her unique accreditation to determine whether or not clouds were perfectly bed-shaped or not. This one was.
She flew around it several times, poking it experimentally to test its elasticity without deforming it. Initially, she thought it was a prank. Clouds didn’t just happen like this. There must be some spell attached to it, rigged to zap her with lightning. Or there was an airbag hidden inside waiting to explode when she laid down.
Much to her surprise, there was nothing in that cloud but two hundred and sixty gallons of water shaped from the chaos of the free winds into something unbelievable.
She retreated to a nearby imperfect cloud, rolled herself up in it until her rainbow mane was all but invisible, and staked the cloud out. Clouds that perfect didn’t just happen, she reminded herself. This was a total anomaly. It actually spooked her to watch it float around, effortlessly outshining all the other clouds in the sky.
Being Rainbow Dash, she eventually gathered up her courage and approached the cloud again. With feathers puffed and napping muscles primed, she settled in to the strange little slice of heaven.
All her worries melted the moment she settled down. The cloud was soft, but firm enough to withstand the rustling of her feathers. Cool, but only as cool as her own warm body needed it to be. The edges bowled up slightly, obscuring the green mass of the earth below her.
All around her was clouds. All above her was sky.
A vision danced behind her eyes--a shade of bright liquid blue with points of white--and she fell asleep.
When she woke up, it took all her resolve to not spread her wings and burst the cloud apart like she normally did. She took flight delicately, without disturbing the thin pony-shaped imprint she had left behind in the cloud.
“Wow,” she muttered as she cracked her neck.
She made it nearly halfway back to her house before pausing. She looked over her shoulder, but the cloud was lost in the wild blue yonder behind her.
Something primal and inarticulate clawed at her heart. It teetered on the brink of a thought, but the words wouldn’t come. The words never seemed to come when they mattered most. This happened often, but Dash never felt fully acclimated to her own shortcomings, even the minor ones like this. The consequence of a competitive spirit.
She thought of the cloud, lost forever among a sea of other clouds. Similar, but set apart. The whole would move in slowly, assimilating the perfect one until it was just another part of an imperfect whole. That nap was so good. One of the best. And now it was gone.
A chill flew down her legs. So much more than rain. She turned back towards her house, then back towards the direction of the cloud. So much more. Lost. So much--
She closed her eyes and shook her head. A vision danced behind her eyelids. A dreamscape of bright liquid blue and points of white.
Her wings unfurled, and she took off in the direction of the cloud, kicking every other cloud she could find along the way. Long after the rainbow streak behind her had vanished, the dissipating ghosts of so many clouds lingered.
She found the perfect cloud exactly where she had left it, mercifully undisturbed. Too scared to push it around for fear of denting it, she resolved to blow it around by gently flapping her wings.
This begged the question: what was she going to do with it?
Taking it home seemed like the most logical answer. She set off in the direction of her cloud home, pausing every few lengths to give the cloud an extra flap and keep it in motion. The trip would be much longer than she wanted it to be. Good things come to the patient, she reminded herself.
After two hours, she had made it approximately halfway home. While pausing to catch her breath she noticed she was not too far away from Twilight’s friendship castle.
She dove with intent to drop by and say hello, but paused halfway between the sky and the ground to consider the cloud she left above her. If a gust of wind took it, it would take hours to track down. If another pegasus got their hooves on it, getting it back may be impossible.
She climbed to the cloud, positioned herself above it, and gently flapped it towards the ground. As she labored, she noticed Twilight open the door to her balcony, a steaming mug of something dark and stormy in hoof.
Dash maneuvered the cloud until it hovered motionless a few lengths above the balcony. From below her came the sound of hoofsteps on crystal and a voice tinted with the slightest hint of honey-sweet incredulity.
“Is that my raincloud?” Twilight asked.
“Your what?”
“My raincloud,” Twilight repeated. “The one I ordered for today.” Dash gave her a blank stare. “The one you delayed twice already?”
“Oh. Right. Because of all those really pressing matters.” Dash glanced at the cloud. “What did I say those were again?”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “How long will it be until I get my rain?”
“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll get that storm very soon--but not before you check this out!” Dash pointed to the cloud triumphantly.
Twilight looked at it, then back to Dash. Then back to the cloud. “Ooo-kay.”
“Look at the dimensions.” Dash made the shape of a square with her hooves. “Perfect. The divot on top. Perfect. The ratio of H to 2-Oh. Perfect!”
“I think you’re mixing up your hydrogens and oxygens again.”
“ Who cares about the H’s and O’s? It’s the perfect cloud!”
“If you kicked it, would it rain? Because that would make it really perfect.”
Dash placed herself between the cloud and her friend, assuming a defensive stance. “No one’s kicking this one.”
Twilight threw up her hooves in frustration. “Dash, I really need this rain. The castle grounds is host to the Equestrian Sculpture Gardening Society’s annual gala--”
Dash tuned out and went back to thinking about the cloud. She fantasized about taking another nap when suddenly a tiny bolt of magic lept from Twilight’s horn and nipped her in the rear.
“Hey!” Dash cried, rubbing the smoldering spot of impact. “What gives?”
“What gives,” Twilight said, “Is I’ve had to water a dozen delicate flower sculptures by hoof every day because you won’t make it rain.”
“If they’re so delicate, you should water them by hoof anyway.” It was a lie, and not even a good one. Pegasi-produced rain fell softer than wild rain. Even the ground-pounders knew that. Twilight gave her a searing look. “Okay, okay, so maybe I slacked a little with the rain. I’ll get the rain to you tomorrow--how’s that?”
“Depends.”
Depends?”
“Yes.”
“Depends on what?”
“The gala and the judging panel is tomorrow. If it rains during the event, the happy nature of the sculptures will be offset by the gloom of the rain. Do you know what kind of negative psychological impact that could have on the attendees?”
“About as negative as getting zapped,” Dash muttered.
Twilight wagged her hoof. “Can you get it by tomorrow morning? Please?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
The edge went out of Twilight’s voice. “Thank you. And I’m sorry for zapping you. That was mean.”
“I’m sorry for forgetting the rain. That wasn’t very cool of me.”
Awkward silence enveloped them.
“Sooo...” Twilight glanced at Dash’s prize. “Perfect cloud?”
“Prefect cloud,” Dash replied. Pride edged its way onto her face.
“Can I try it?”
Dash bit her lip and looked at the floor. All that pride disappeared like so many rainclouds being disassembled underhoof. “Uh...”
Twilight’s face went blank. She turned around and walked into the castle. “Well, I’ve got a gallery to water. See you tomorrow.”
Relief washed over Dash. With the proverbial magic bullet dodged, and her wings feeling more refreshed than ever, she decided now would be the perfect time to catch another nap on her perfect cloud.
When Dash woke from her nap, an image from the other side stuck in her brain. It wasn’t a thing so much as a texture, an overpowering array of white lights bursting through a blue background. One speck gave way to a hundred, and a million, and before she knew it she was awake again, lying belly-up in the sun. Her vision swam with spots. When she rubbed her eyes, bruised blues and greens shifted through the black, then bleached out.
“Trippy,” she muttered. Probably just the sun in her eyes.
As she floated, her mind wandered to Twilight’s flower sculptures. As long as she got that rain, she couldn’t be mad.
Dash reminded herself to be careful in assuming what her friend was thinking. With Twilight, it was never just rain, but the storm and the system as well.
With her foolproof plan patched together, Dash began the arduous process of flapping her cloud over to the castle. When she finally arrived, she nestled it gently in between two crystal pillars and collapsed on the crystal balcony, utterly spent.
She liked the castle. It had room inside for flying, but most importantly the crystal surfaces remained otherworldly cool, even in direct sunlight.
Twilight found her snoozing on the balcony a few minutes later.
“I could hear you snoring from down the hall,” she said, nudging Dash gently.
“M’sorry,” Dash yawned. “You take one nap, you take more naps.”
“Do you have my raincloud yet?”
Dash shook her head. “I wanted to see the scluptures.”
“The ones you’re supposed to water?”
“If I water them, can I see them?”
“Yes.”
Dash saw spots and paused to rub her eyes. “Can I see them, then water them?”
Twilight sighed, but nodded and motioned for her friend to follow. Down several unearthly cool corridors they went, Twilight plodding along and Dash flapping silently behind her.
Dash found herself glancing behind her, hoping to catch a glimpse of the cloud moored outside. After the first hallway curved, she lost sight of it. The lack made her anxious. A bead of sweat formed on her brow despite the otherworldly cool.
Finally, they made it to a large outdoor terrace jutting from the back of the castle. Twelve colossal flower sculptures were arranged in a semi-circle around the edge of the terrace, with room around each for observers and judges to loiter. Plaques with explanations printed in tiny fonts stood in front of each sculpture.
“I don’t think you’ll need to read those,” Twilight said, noticing Dash linger on the nearest plaque. “Flower sculptury is predisposed to the classical. The whimsy of the medium lends itself averse to the more radical presentations of the postmodern sphere.”
Dash noted that most of the sculptures were, in fact, not radical. Most were shaped like ponies in boring heroic poses. A few were shaped like nothing.
Her eyes grazed over the first eleven. Had these not been nationally-recognized and protected pieces of art, she may have grazed over them for a quick snack, too. Then she came to the final sculpture in the row and paused.
This sculpture was shaped like a painting, about two ponies long and one pony tall. The border was a frame of thin, intertwining branches. Inside the frame was a flower painting of sorts, a three-dimensional effort with peaks and valleys corresponding with different bursts of color.
The colors were familiar. Sky blue flowers dominated the canvas. Delicate white buds broke through in pointillistic clusters.
It reminded Dash of her dream, of clouds, of tiredness in the afternoon. “What’s this one called?” she asked.
“That’s a judge-favorite. It’s a representation of the classical element of quintessence. The threads that held the ancient world on its course. Made of blue hydrangeas and queen anne’s lace.”
“Huh.” Dash leaned in to get a better look at the plaque. “Says here it’s called ‘Ayy-ther’.”
“Very good! Aether is what holds the sun and moon in orbit.”
“I thought it was the princesses.”
“They’re like the motor. Think of aether as the rudder.”
Dash returned her eyes to the painting and tried to imagine rudders. “Ayy-ther,” she mouthed.
She couldn’t, in fact, think of rudders for very long. The strange similarity of this sculpture to the stuff of her dream started to unnerve her. The points of white reminded her too much of the moment of falling at the end of a dream, when her mind exited the unseen and crashed back to earth. All the endless scenes of dreams wiped clean by the demands of morning (or afternoon, more often than not). What about dreams made it so her mind had to scrub them? Why?
Twilight said something. It didn’t register. Dash was getting closer now. The sculpture filled her vision. Blue and white flowers tickled her nose. Why was she here? She didn’t like high art. She didn’t care about sculptures. So why? Her curiosity seemed to stem from the dream. Perhaps her answers was there. But it was the nature of dreams to disappear like thin bands of mist burned away by morning light. It was there. She knew it. The answers. The questions. One could work in lieu of the other. Was it ‘why was she here?’ Or ‘Why she was here’?”
Dash felt a hoof on her shoulder. She snapped out of it and turned around. "What?"
"It looked like you were going to eat the sculpture,” Twilight said.
"I wasn't," she said reflexively.
"Your mouth was open."
"I wasn't gonna!"
"I know. But still."
Dash groaned. “Whatever. I’m not even hungry, anyway.”
“Maybe, but my flowers are pretty thirsty,” Twilight quipped.
“Don’t!” Dash warned. “Don’t even think it.” Twilight raised an eyebrow. “I’m gonna do it tomorrow, okay? Just chill out.” Twilight lowered her eyebrow slightly. “Chill out more.” Twilight lowered her eyebrow further. “More.”
“Rainbow.”
“What?”
“Do you want to be alone with the sculpture for a bit? Art spurns company, y’know.”
“No, I might eat it.”
Before Twilight could reply, Dash leapt into the air. Pumping her wings hard, she circled the castle until she found the cloud floating where she had left it. It wasn’t safe here. It wasn’t safe anywhere. Why did Twilight have to show her that stupid sculpture?
It was never just rain with that mare.
The more Dash flapped and flapped, the more she realized she wasn’t going to make it home. She had spent too much of her precious energy arguing and not enough flapping. She sighed angrily as she paused her trek. Wonderbolt. Element of Harmony. Still not strong enough.
Dash did some tricky mental math in her head. If she was five miles away from her house, and she could flap her cloud at two miles an hour, then it would take two and a half hours to complete her trip. But if the wind shifted, the time would go up or down. And if her house shifted, the time would go up or down. And depending how the two moved in relation to each other, the time would shift more still.
She snorted at the thought of further calculations. When did math ever keep her from her goals, anyway? She started out again anyway.
But she felt the inevitable drag of gravity bite into her wings. Each flap grew evenly less powerful as time went on. She dared not push the cloud any harder, though. If she flapped as hard as she could, she risked blowing the cloud to bits. She did that, sometimes. Just blew the things right to smithereens. Normally that didn’t matter. She could just get a new cloud. But she could not, absolutely could not get a new cloud. Because this cloud wasn’t like all the other clouds. This cloud was perfect.
Rainbow Dash’s right wing cramped.
She fell in a slow corkscrew, shouting curses and trying to rein in the awful spasms. When wings cramped, they cramped hard. Everything from her shoulder to her lower back seized up. All the while, she continued to fall.
When she regained her balance, she rose awkwardly to the cloud and flopped on it. The divot, the softness--was truly perfect. Maybe she didn’t need a home. Maybe she could just live on this cloud forever. No one could stop her. Pegasi were flighty by nature. What pony could argue if she wanted to live the rest of her life up here? Rain? There was no rain if you flew high enough. Sun? There was no sun under the shade of cloud cover. Company?
She looked longingly at the blank face of the cloud. No, company was not something it seemed able to give.
She sat there for some time, staring blankly into space and massaging her wing, waiting for her stresses to depart. Thoughts of trophies and Tank filled her head. Leaving the world behind was something intrinsic for pegasi. So was napping. So were finding clouds to nap on.
She shook her head. What was she thinking about again? It was so easy to think herself in circles without anything making sense. Nothing seemed to make sense right now. That was the appeal of the cloud in the first place. It made sense. It was perfect.
She was back where she started. She continued anyway.
After about an hour, the only thing that had left was the light. Out in the west, the sun was falling. Soon it would be nothing but oranges and pinks, and shortly after that it would be nothing. Nothing but dark.
Maybe she really could make this her new home. Each passing minute made the idea seem less and less crazy.
What she ought to do was test it out. A trial run of outdoor living. It so happened to be nighttime. What better way to test out her new digs than spend a night under the stars? It could be the first night of the rest of her life.
Despite pure perfection beneath her, she tossed and turned for a long time before finally settling into an uneasy sleep.
While she slept, she returned to the place from the flower sculpture, the blue aether with shimmering white dots all around her. She tried to brush them away, but found they were actually far away. Very far away, by the looks of it. As far as stars.
“Where am I?” she said aloud.
“I dunno,” another voice--her voice--replied.
“This place is weird. Like, really weird.”
“It’s a bit of a heebie jeebie fest,” replied the voice.
“You said it.”
She was quiet for a time. Distant wind echoed in her ears, though none came close enough for her to feel it in her primaries. Vaguely, she wondered if it was actually the sound of the blood rushing in her ears.
“Any idea what those are?” she asked, pointing at the lights.
“I dunno,” the voice said again. “They’re pretty far away.”
“But you should know, shouldn’t you?”
“Why do you think I have all the answers?”
“Okay, no need to get mad.”
“I’m not mad,” the voice--her voice--replied, an honest rebuke. “Are you mad?”
“No. Just confused. I’ve been seeing this place a lot lately. There’s this cloud--and the sculpture. Have you seen that sculpture?” Dash struggled to recall the name. “Ayy-ther? Athenaeum?”
“Dude, I dunno.”
“You keep saying that. If you say ‘I dunno’, usually it means you do know but you’re too chicken to say it.”
The lights flickered angrily. “Who’re you calling a chicken?”
Dash clamped her lips shut until the lights returned to their baseline glow. She took another experimental swipe at one with her hoof. She had about as much luck as a child trying to pluck a star from the sky.
“What’s gonna happen?” Dash asked. “When I wake up, I mean.”
The sky lightened somewhat. “Oh, that’s an easy one. It’s going to rain.”
“Really?” Dash laughed. “Twi’ll be happy to hear that.”
“Oh yeah, it’s not just gonna rain either. It’s gonna rain the perfect rain. Exactly what she needs. Two hundred and sixty gallons of rain, minus the hundred or so that’ll fall on the ground. Couldn’t have planned it better.”
“Nice!” She held up her hoof. “Way to go!... you...” She put it down.
Dash enjoyed the moment of quiet preceding a job well done. It was a feeling she knew well. Something nagged at her, though. Something was left unsaid. It was tension, excited tension. Like Pinkie Pie barely containing a secret, threatening to explode-kind of tension.
Suspicious tension.
“Hey,” Dash said. “How exactly is the perfect rain gonna get there?”
“I’m glad you asked,” the cloud replied, “cuz that’s the best part. You’re gonna deliver it.”
“Uh.” Dash looked around. “There aren’t any clouds out here, dude. I cleared ‘em all.”
“Not all of them.”
Dash snapped her eyes up. The lights rushed towards her, coalescing into a teardrop shape. It hit her square in the belly and went right through. Pure electric sensation rushed outwards from where the light touched her. It was warm and wet and smelled like hydrangeas and queen anne’s lace.
When she woke up, the ground was miles above her. The sky hummed softly, almost imperceptibly--the sound of rushing wind many miles away.
Sometime during the night, she had rolled so her head lolled off the cloud’s edge. Pegasi never fell while they slept. But some got pretty close.
As she regained her bearings, she took note that morning was fast approaching. Twilight still needed her rain. She looked around the sky, but there wasn’t a cloud in sight--well, except for one.
Guilt had a way of hitting hardest in the morning. When the body lacked energy, these thoughts slipped in unannounced. Energy was a luxury she squandered on silly things like arguing with her friends. A tired mind revealed what an active one ignored, though never plainly.
Give in, her mind said. There was no making sense of these thoughts. In one moment they cried for her to give into Twilight’s pressure and kick the cloud. In the next, they begged to give in and forget her friend. They sounded so similar she could hardly tell them apart. Give in. Give in.
The dissonance killed. Both paths felt wrong. Purely wrong. As wrong as rain falling up.
The thought of rain falling up reminded her of a dream she had. Was it just now or a long time ago? If Twilight were here, she would probably say something about how water did technically fall up when it evaporated. Then it formed clouds, which she needed for her flower sculptures.
How much did she need? Two Hundred sixty gallons? Dash prodded the cloud experimentally and recoiled in horror. Her years of finding the minimum amount of cloud in order to cover her areas without having to exert the extra effort of dragging large formations around gave her unique accreditation to determine whether or not clouds were exactly two hundred and sixty gallons.
It was never just rain. It was two hundred and sixty gallons of rain.
On a terrace nestled on the outer exterior of the Ponyville Friendship Castle, Twilight Sparkle lugged a fifty-gallon water jug into position. In her magical grip floated a single half-gallon watering pail--the only one she could find in the entire castle. When the castle had grown out of the ground, it had sprouted not just the finely-styled exterior terrace but also decorative curtains, outdoor patio furniture (which was now moved to the side, with scratch-marks on the tile to prove it), and even accompanying attached half-baths.
But no watering cans.
As she eyed the sculptures one by one, she did some mental math in her head. Twelve sculptures, each requiring between ten and thirty gallons of water. One and a half full hundred-gallon barrels of water would probably do the trick. If she went over, she had lugged all that water up here for nothing and would have to spill it over the side of the terrace. If she was short, she might just throw herself over the railing instead.
As she pondered her prospects, something hit her square in the back. She let out a yelp and turned around only to find herself still alone on the terrace.
Another something fell beside her. Then a third. This one hit her in the backside. She looked up, raising the watering can instinctively.
It started to pour.
