Via Equestria

Chapters

Prologue | Ponyville
Stage 1 | Brightshadow Hills - Whitetail Wood
Stage 2 | Brightshadow Hills - Blackhoof Bayou
Repose | Opera Concordia

Prologue | Ponyville

“Isn’t this exciting? Are you excited? ‘Cause I’m excited! I’ve never been so excited! Well, except for the time I—”

“Hey, R.D. Tone it down a lil’, will ya?”

Rainbow Dash’s gaze fell from the pre-dawn stars to the five ponies sitting on the grass below her. What was up with all of them? They were giving her the kind of look you’d give a pony with an extra head.

… Had she grown an extra head? She checked. Nope. She was still the one and only Rainbow Dash in Equestria with one noggin.

“What’s the big deal, Applejack?” The cyan-coated pegasus backstroked through the air as if it were a pool. “You’ve been talking about this day as much as I have. It’s gonna be the biggest race of the year!”

Applejack doffed a well-worn stetson with a resigned smirk on her face. “Well sure, sugar. I can’t wait to hit the road myself. Y’all just need to conduct yourself with a mite more grace ‘n’ discretion instead of struttin' around like an overfed rooster." The orange earth pony let her eyes drift apart as she bobbed her head back and forth, her ponytail bouncing beneath her chin like a straw-colored wattle. “All I’m hearin’ is a bunch of cluckin’. Bawk bawk, bawk bawk!”

“Hey, who’re you calling overfed?”

While the rest of her friends lapsed into a round of giggling, Rainbow held a hoof to her mouth to conceal the huge smile spreading across her face. She couldn’t help it, though. The only reason they were all there, together, in the pre-morning meadows just outside of Ponyville, was her, no bragging at all.

She’d known Applejack would be on board from the start when the first posters for the Summer Solstice Steeplechase appeared in Ponyville’s main square. One of the most athletic earth ponies Equestria had ever seen, Applejack had dominated last year’s Running of the Leaves with Rainbow (so long as nopony counted the very end of the race). So it only made sense that the applebucker’d be interested in being a worthy racing partner to Ponyville’s Iron Pony-in-residence. No sooner did Rainbow blaze her way to Sweet Apple Acres with the rolled-up poster in her teeth did Applejack sign on for the long haul.

Twilight Sparkle had gotten into it by surprise—the lavender unicorn had been helping Applejack graft a few limbs in the eastern orchard when Rainbow came along. All you had to do was throw that straight-maned egghead the slightest hint of travelling along Equestria’s oldest road, and the rest took care of itself. Rainbow felt her mind melt every time the unicorn rambled about visiting ancient pony ruins or piped up with some historical tidbit about the Equestrian Way, but Twilight was still a friend. Things just went better with more friends.

That, and she was good at racing, too. Fifth place out of a pool of fifty in her first contest ever? Rainbow had to respect her effort.

Going around to the rest of her friends, Rainbow had no trouble getting Pinkie Pie to join up —that girl would take any excuse to hang with the Dash. The big surprises, however, came from Rarity and Fluttershy—the former, stifled and shut-in by her girly boutique, decided a tour of the country would revitalize her creative drive, and the latter, friend to all living things and scared of even more, thought she could pick up a few hard-to-find medicines for the animals she tended to at her cottage.

Gathering medicine. In a race. Seriously. Rainbow Dash didn’t know any other pegasus who missed the whole point of racing as badly as that. But of all the friends she had, Fluttershy had been hers the longest. She’d sooner give up a month of flying than to go without her best friend from summer flight camp. Well... maybe she’d only go a week... or three days...

“I’ve got a great feeling about this,” she said, her rose eyes moving between each of her friends. “We’re all gonna do amazing out there, I know it.”

“Because I came up with everypony’s workout schedules and routines.” Twilight raised a hoof to her chest, smug satisfaction crossing her features. Then she pointed at Rainbow. “But you didn’t even keep to yours.”

“Hello?” Rainbow protested amid the subsequent snickering. “Do you even know who you’re talking to?”

“Right, right, Miss Best Young Flier of Equestria.” A magenta aura shimmered into being around Twilight’s horn, summoning a rolled-up sheet of parchment from her saddlebag. A small flick of her head scattered the dew from the grass before her, and there she laid the parchment flat.

A double portrait of the Equestrian Princesses spread across the top: Celestia, tall and regal, cast her gaze toward the stylized sun decorating the eastern limit, while Luna, dark and determined, looked to the crescent moon adorning the west. Between the length of their mutual vision lay the shape of the kingdom itself, crossed through with the points, shades, and lines representing the cities, natural domains, and the roads that bound the kingdom together.

One such road advertised itself with a gold line as it traversed the kingdom in a grand, wavy circle. The Old Road, the Evening Ring, Route Unity—it acquired names as often as it sloughed them off, yet the worn signposts still standing along its paving-stones continued to bear its true title.

“The Via Equestria.” Twilight’s voice was barely a whisper. “When I was a Canterlot filly, I always dreamed of walking along it someday.” She traced a part of its path with a reverent hoof, looked up, and smiled at the others. “And in less than a few hours, not only am I going to be racing on it, but I’m going to be racing on it with the best friends a pony could ever ask for.”

“Yee-haw!” “Aw, yeah!” “Whoo-hoo, haha!” “You’re too kind!” “Yay!”

“Looky here,” said Pinkie Pie, materializing over—no, onto—Twilight’s shoulder. The curly-maned mare pointed her hoof at a gold-and-purple stripe overlaid on the Equestrian Way. “We’re gonna be passing through the Brightshadow Hills. That’s right next to my family’s rock farm! It’ll be like visiting home!”

Applejack chuckled. “I dunno if we’ll have time to visit your folks, Pinkie.” She indicated a similar stripe passing over a caricature of a slate-colored mountain. “But I sure can’t wait to test my stuff against Starsweep Peak. My grand-pappy climbed it when he was my age.”

“I’m looking forward to visiting the Sable Shore Coast, myself,” said a demure voice. Everypony parted for Fluttershy as she stepped forward, her long, pink mane spilling over half of the map as she pointed to a third stripe on Equestria’s western boundary. “I’ve always lived in the east, and I hear the ocean on the other side of the kingdom is just lovely.”

“It’s a good thing we brought Princess Luna back, then,” Twilight concluded, bucking Pinkie off of her shoulder. “This is the first time the Princesses have organized this race in over a thousand years. My old professors back at the university are all chomping at the bit for anything I might collect for them along the way,” she quipped, rolling violet eyes in opposing directions.

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes for a different reason. She hoped Twilight wouldn’t slow the rest of the group down if she had to stop and take notes along the race course.

The warm braying of brass horns played a fanfare in the aqueous, lightening air, accompanied by the thunder of snares and bass drums. Entranced by the melody, Rainbow Dash lifted her head and looked around her. Out there on the meadow, she and her friends were but a small pinch of colored confetti in a Manehattan New Year’s Eve party, and their competition all but carpeted the rolling hills as they all turned their heads to the north. A pale, crescent-shaped stage rose from the grass there, its posterior edge traced with high pennants of dark purple bordered by sparkling orange. Royal crimson curtains hung between the pennants, and pairs of gray-coated unicorn guards in golden armor stood before them on both arms of the stage.

The curtains in the center parted as spotlights were brought to bear upon them. Through the division stepped two ponies: one of them with a white coat tinged with the slightest hint of pink, while the other’s matched what remained of the night as it retreated from the impending dawn. Their manes undulated like clouds of pastel and inky ether respectively, their wings unfurled with fractal elegance, and the tips of their spiraling horns pointed up at the fading stars. The crowns upon their heads, the first golden, the other jet black, spoke for their role in Equestrian society.

“Princess Celestia! Princess Luna!”

A sky-raising cheer erupted from the meadow. Rainbow Dash and her friends stomped their hooves and let their happiness bolster their cries—even Fluttershy was pumping her forelegs up and down in the air.

The Princesses paused on stage with regal composure while the cheer continued before they acknowledged their welcome with perfectly measured and synchronized nods. Urged on by her sister, Princess Luna stepped to the front of the stage, taking a moment to survey the field before her. She smiled in satisfaction, then drew herself up to her full height and spoke.

“Citizens ofEquestria! Wewould liketo extendyou—”

The dissonance of the Traditional Royal Canterlot Voice scourged the ears like the bellowing of an out-of-tune pipe organ on fire, but it ceased amid a scattering of strangling noises in the crowd. Several ponies close to the stage had actually fainted. Rainbow Dash glanced at her friends, and, except for Fluttershy, who was quaking behind her wings, they were all giving Princess Luna the same two-headed pony look she’d gotten not minutes earlier.

“Wha—? Again?” The princess was heard consulting with her older sibling in a state of confusion. She seemed to catch on soon afterward—her ears flattened with her shoulders. She cast out an apologetic expression and cleared her throat. “We would like to extend you our warmest welcome,” she continued, the deranged organ overtones absent from her voice this time, “to the first modern Summer Solstice Steeplechase!”

The Princess’s new words coaxed a round of applause from the audience as another blast of fanfare issued into the air. Sincere as the pounding of hooves on the earth was, everypony could tell the second wave lacked the same spirit as the first. But nopony had fled in panic, and there was a reasonable chance that the Princess had stopped doing that weird thing where she referred to herself as more than one pony. All in all? She wasn’t doing half bad.

“Greatly does it gladden our hearts to see you before us this day,” she said as she paced the stage in front of her sister. “The undertaking you face over the coming week is a hallowed tradition dating back to the earliest years of our reign. Long ago, we had just secured the paths of the sun and moon in the sky, your forerunners laid down these roads so their children, and their children’s children, could enjoy safe and speedy transit throughout the kingdom.”

Princess Luna’s words gained volume with confidence as she spoke, and her wings crept by degrees from her sides in the increase of her fervor. “Your Princesses found great delight in the resourcefulness of their endeavors. In honor of their tireless toil, we decreed that on the last week of spring, any pony who wished to do so should race over those splendid roads, and prove their athletic spirit to the entire kingdom.

“Though my absence forced this wonderful tradition into a brief hiatus, today, you shall return to its proud roots! Today, you shall prove yourselves to the world! Today, you shall rekindle this great legacy of yours, and shine it into the dark and mysterious strands of the future forall of your childrento cherish!”

Princess Luna had become quite airborne by that point, her forelegs thrown upward while grumbling banks of thunderheads covered the sky. Suddenly and achingly aware of the silence, she cast one blue eye down at her subjects, beholding little else but petrified cringes on their faces.

Rainbow Dash couldn’t see it from this distance, but the way Princess Luna’s body sagged suggested that she had a hay of a blush on her cheeks. With a flick of her head, she dismissed the clouds to the opposite ends of the earth, and she lowered herself back down on the stage to a smattering of cowed applause.

The younger Princess wilted, and no pony was sure of what to do until she started back up again. The next words to emerge from her mouth sounded as if they came from a mare not that much older than Rainbow. “Or...” She put on the kind of smile such a mare would make if she were caught break-dancing to a polka record. “We could all just run a good race and have... fun?”

“You said it, Princess!”

Pow!

A rousing cheer exploded from the field of ponies following Pinkie Pie’s solo outburst. In the instant it took Rainbow to turn her head toward her friend, Ponyville’s blue-eyed party pony was already hard at work firing poppers and fluorescent balloons high into the air. Where she got them from, or how she hid them until she deemed the time was right, Rainbow would never kn—

Oh, wait a second. Pinkie simply pulled them out of her humongously poofy mane. Boy, that had to be convenient.

As the last flakes of confetti drifted out of her vision, Rainbow Dash turned back in time to watch Princess Celestia take to the stage. The cheering redoubled, even from Rainbow and the rest of their friends. Seeing the solar royal in person—well, Rainbow always had a little poetry within her, and she’d describe the experience as if she were witnessing the sunrise. It filled her with warmth and good feelings, which was why she compared Princess Celestia to the sun.

There. Poetry. To think most ponies struggled to come up with it.

Princess Celestia won the audience’s silence by raising her gold-shod hoof off of the stage. The quiet she commanded was absolute—the morningjays paused their twittering; the very breeze swirled to a stop. Who dared preempt the Regent of the Sun when she desired to speak?

Princess Celestia cleared her throat with a slight smile and closed her eyes. The sight of it pasted the most ridiculous grin of anticipation across Rainbow’s face, and she gestured spasmodically at her friends—this is happening! This is totally going on!

“My little ponies! Luna and I are most blessed by your presence today!”

Somewhere behind the meadows, a tree heard Princess Celestia speak. It tore itself free of the grass and tumbled backward over the hills. For the ponies, only their utmost love for their Princess kept them rooted where they were. Luna’s speech was one thing. This—this—

Well, anything that could stun Pinkie Pie into gaping, wide-eyed silence worked on a different level.

Only one pony appeared to have enjoyed the spectacle, though the exaggerated diameter of her eyes suggested she had been caught just as much off guard as the rest. But when Princess Celestia looked back toward her little sister, a quivering smile was creeping across her face, and she stood a little taller. Her relief radiated from her like ripples in a golden pond that washed over the assembly, calming their fright as quickly it had risen.

Princess Celestia, for that matter, carried on without the Royal Voice as if it had never existed in the first place. “As this is the first Summer Solstice Steeplechase in well over a thousand years,” she said, “Luna and I decided to take you to the places of our past, back before our ascent to the throne. The stages that lie before you all carry our memories in the stones that lie along them—but we hope that you’ll find your own memories to take with you, too. Perhaps they may even bring you closer with your own ancestors.

“Furthermore—for those of you who have done your research—”

Somepony squealed next to Rainbow Dash. The pegasus wasn’t going to name names, but if a certain violet-eyed unicorn ever found a way to join the Wonderbolts -- well, there was always the Cloudsdale Speed Chess Cavalry.

“—you will know that the Steeplechase only ran stages during the day.” Princess Celestia nodded at her sister. “So, in honor of Princess Luna’s return to Equestria, we are introducing night phases for the first time in the history of the Run. I think this brings some long-overdue balance to the whole race, and I think those ponies who signed up to be their teams’ night racers will enjoy Equestria under quite the different light.

“You all know the rest. I wish you all the best of luck, and look forward to witnessing your speed, agility—”

“And intestinal fortitude!”

“Ponies these days say ‘guts,’ little sister.”

“Egads—they do?”

“We look forward—” said Princess Celestia, struggling to maintain her composure, “—to witnessing all of those things out there on the stages. Those of you who are racing in today’s day phase, please make your final preparations and gather by the starting line. The Summer Solstice Steeplechase begins in just a few minutes!”

“Yeee-haw! It’s on, girls!” Applejack whipped off her stetson as she bounded into the air, her exclamation but one in a sea of hundreds as the Princesses retreated behind the stage. Rainbow Dash hadn’t been surprised that her friend had signed up to carry the first stage of the race. The only challenges the farmpony didn’t charge into head-first were those beyond her ability to handle—and even that didn’t always stop her from trying.

“Indeed it is, Applejack,” said Rarity, ducking a wild swing of the earth pony’s hat. “But do be a dear and save your energy for when we’re out on the course today, will you?”

Applejack replaced her hat and turned to the unicorn. “O’ course, sugarcube. I gotta admit I’ve been lookin’ forward to runnin’ with you since our little switcheroo at the Social.” Suddenly, the earth pony arched an eyebrow. “If you don’t mind me askin’, though—when’d you change into that whole get-up?”

The unicorn took a step back in shock, sending peristaltic waves rippling through the expansive layers of fabric and gauze covering everything from her neck down. “What, this old thing? Just now. Why do you ask?”

“No offense, hon, but you look like Pinkie Pie tried to stuff you into a triple-decker cake on the way to the cotton candy machine. It’s a bit—”

“‘Frou-frou?’” Rarity’s lower lip protruded as she poked at the pink, billowy ruffle encircling her collar. She sighed. “There’s no telling how much business I’ll lose if I don’t advertise my wares out there, but I suppose you’re only trying to be practical.” Her horn emitted a periwinkle glow along with her outfit. Quick as breathing, the outfit levitated off of her body, folded itself into a neat rectangle, and disappeared into her saddlebag.

Rarity turned to her racing partner. “Satisfied?”

Applejack tilted her head and lifted a front hoof off the ground, sole up. “I reckon a track suit won’t do us any harm. Gosh if it ain’t yellower than a daffodil in spring, though.”

“Don’t forget about your numbers, girls,” said Twilight. As fast as an osprey diving in and out of a pond, she used her magic to affix two sheets of paper to both Applejack and Rarity’s haunches and stepped back.

“Oh, stars. Thank you, Twilight. Those poor timekeepers wouldn’t know how to score us otherwise.” Rarity looked over her shoulder, and smiled at what she saw. “Hm. Of course we’d be team number six.”

Rainbow Dash blew a raspberry with her lips. “I don’t care what number we have as long as we come in first place,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“This ain’t all about winnin’, partner,” said Applejack, flattening her brows.

“Sure it is.” Rainbow shifted her gaze between her friends. “We defeated Nightmare Moon ourselves when she threatened to plunge all of Equestria into eternal night. Who’s to say we can’t win a little race?”

“They’re not exactly the same thing,” Twilight observed, a look of caution darkening her features.

“Take it easy, all right?” Ponyfeathers, why was everyone jumping on her case so suddenly? “I guess I’m trying to say that I’m gonna be giving it my best when I’m racing out there, and I want everyone else here to do the same.”

A mass of poofy pink pony dropped onto her back as soon as she finished speaking. “Hahaha! Don’t you worry your pretty little mane off, Dashie! Of course everypony’s gonna be giving it their bestest effort out there.”

Rainbow grunted. Maybe her other friends weren’t as concerned with winning the race as she was, but then they weren’t concerned about joining the Wonderbolts. If she were part of the team that took home the first Run championship in over a thousand years, there’d be no way the greatest flying team in all of Equestria could pass her over as a candidate for initiation.

She let the matter go for the moment. Deep down inside, she knew Pinkie was right. None of her friends were quitters or do-halfway-ers.

“Group hug, everypony!” chirped Pinkie Pie, yanking all five of her friends in close. “Let’s all wish Applejack and Rarity good luck during the day!”

Rainbow, Twilight, and Fluttershy chimed in at once. “Tear ‘em up!” “Do your best!” “Be safe!”

“Good luck, you two!” finished Pinkie. “We’ll all see each other again when we get to Brindlebrook Valley.”

“And good luck to you and Fluttershy in tonight’s phase, Pinkie!” Applejack replied.

“Thanks, Applejack-attack!”

“Whuh?”

“All right, everypony, let’s leave these two to get ready.” Twilight squirmed her way out of the collective embrace and signaled the rest over toward the southern edge of the field, where an airship waited to shuttle non-racers to their next destinations.

“First place,” called Rainbow over her shoulder.

“Don’t even worry about it,” Applejack called back, making her way northeast.

Much to her surprise, Rainbow wasn’t. She’d seen firsthoof the chops both ponies possessed when they set about accomplishing something, whether it was harvesting whole orchards of apples in one week or making twelve dresses in just as much time. They couldn’t possibly start the race off on the wrong hoof. Grinning, she turned back around and followed her friends up the airship gangplank.

Stage 1 | Brightshadow Hills - Whitetail Wood

By rights, Rarity had absolutely no business running about outdoors. The thought of her manicured hooves brushing against the wild, dewy grass and bare dirt would have sent her to the spa for a full day of Princess-level pampering. There was the countryside, and then there was Canterlot, and the fashionista had her choice carved into an iron slab.

Yet here she was on the brink of a race that would spirit her throughout all of Equestria at the side of a most unlikely ally. Applejack—how the mere name grated on her ears! The farmpony was as earthy as earth ponies came, and she had no head for the subtler points of, in her words, “gittin’ along with the ponyfolk”. Sweet Celestia, she probably bathed only once a day.

But Rarity couldn’t help but grin as she approached the starting line. Nothing had brought her and precious little Sweetie Belle together more than that “Social” Applejack and her family had cooked up. And stars above—what she had taken to be a one-time fling had planted in her the kernel of a new line of fashionable exercise apparel. Her decision to sew herself this training ensemble (and not just a “track suit”, dear Applejack) the very next week had turned out to be incredibly foresighted now that she was here.

Now that she was here, she wanted to run.

“How are you feeling, darling?” she asked her ensemble-less partner.

“Hoo, nelly,” Applejack beamed, throwing a little tap into her gait. “Look at all these other ponies competin’ with us. There’s gotta be at least two hunner’d participatin’ in this phase alone, or else you can call me a daisy’s auntie.”

“There, now. The only flower in your family that you need worry about is dear little Apple Bloom.”

“That was nice. Much appreciated, Rarity. ” Applejack suddenly jabbed her in the shoulder. “Land alive, would you look at this?”

Rarity grumbled under her breath from Applejack’s uncouth display of camaraderie. They had stopped before a verdant, undulating forest bridging the horizons, its canopy teeming with the twittering of rousing songbirds and the chatter of squirrels. A chain of tall, dome-shaped hills rose behind the trees, casting their contours against the warming glow of the sky.

A wooden scaffold spanned the wide, stone-paved road leading into the woods, with a painted white stripe serving as the starting line running just beneath the scaffold. The large, cloud-blue banner stretched above the stripe displayed the name of the Summer Solstice Steeplechase’s first venue for everypony to see.

← S T A G E 1 →

D A Y • B R I G H T S H A D O W H I L L S • D A Y
WHITETAIL WOOD • WHITETAIL WOOD • WHITETAIL WOOD • WHITETAIL WOOD

Applejack whistled. “I can’t believe it’s almost been a year since Rainbow and I raced each other here.” The farmpony frowned amid the throes of recollection. “Let’s just hope this competition doesn’t tempt her to cheat this time. I worry that that filly cares more about winning sometimes than what it takes to win.”

“I don’t think you should worry about her. She won’t be racing until tomorrow, after all.” Rarity gathered her mane back into a ponytail and snapped an elastic over it. “There. How do I look?”

“My stars, missy. That’s some getup you’ve got there.”

“Thank you kindly, Applej—” Rarity paused. Her friend was standing in front of her, but the voice she’d heard came from behind. She turned around.

The best word she could summon for the trio of earth ponies appearing behind her was “rustic”—literally for the so-colored stallion on the left. His muscular build reminded her of Applejack’s older brother, but the newcomer diverged from his counterpart by wearing his sand-colored mane cropped close and his tail docked. The mare on the opposite end had some sturdiness to her, too, but the slight sheen of her chocolate-tinted coat and her neat almond side-braid hinted at some refinement. She also wore moon-sized spectacles, the poor thing, though they did bring out her pale orange eyes.

The drawling remark on Rarity’s “getup”, however, had come from the yellow-eyed mare in the middle. Her coat was the color of road dust, and although denim was not a material the unicorn normally gave the time of day, the blue fabric did form a reasonable collar along the mare’s neck line. A tan-colored mane fell freely on one side of her lanky body.

“Oh.” Something about the way the mare stood there caused Rarity’s tongue to tumble in her mouth. “Thank you.”

“Honest to goodness,” the mare replied, “where’d you come up with the notion of wearing a lil’ scene like that?”

With her back turned on Applejack, Rarity failed to notice the sudden venom boiling behind the farmpony’s eyes. The unicorn did, however, wonder at the look the newcomer was giving her—they were both taller than the average mare and all but stood muzzle to muzzle, but she could not shake the feeling that she was somehow being looked down upon.

“It was just a little idea I had,” she said, putting on the warmest smile she could manage. Everypony was a customer, after all—they just needed to learn they were one in the first place. "The fabric is a special material that repels dirt and water while keeping your coat cool and dry as you exercise. I'm simply giving my newest product a test run, if you will."

"Izzat so?" The mare broke out into a smile of her own, one that Rarity rated as about as warm as the far side of the moon.

"A—Absolutely."

Rarity picked up a snicker from the stallion to her left. What did he find so funny?

"She looks like one o' our lemons went and sprouted hair, don't she?" he blurted.

What? Rarity’s ears reached temperatures reserved for branding livestock. Did he just say—?

"Meyer!" The mare turned on her brother like a landslide. "Don't you go insultin' our produce by comparing 'em to fancy-dancin’ mules, you lunk!"

Rarity was not slow by anypony’s standards—especially after suffering through Twilight’s training regimen—but it took her more than the span of a few blinks before she realized the chastised stallion was not his sister’s true victim.

“That’s all y’all get to say, Lemon Tart!” An orange hoof yanked Rarity back before she could launch into a tirade of her own. Applejack shoved her way past the unicorn, digging into the dirt between the two mares. “I didn’t think the organizers allowed rattlers like you to compete in this here race.”

“Still nothin’ but shortness and spunk, ain’t you, Applejack?” The taller mare grinned down at the farmpony with enough teeth to give a shark pause.

Applejack tossed her head. “Get.”

“We’re goin’,” Lemon Tart purred, raising her tail high as she turned away. “ We’re goin to beat ya’ll silly, of course. Take care of the mule out there, will ya?”

And that was that—the denim-collared mare and her siblings slithered off to the far side of the starting line. Most of the racers had arrived at the line by then, and ponies clogged the air with jokes and words of encouragement like they hadn’t seen anything (and if they had, what business was it of theirs? Rivalries happened). As the general mood of the staging area lightened with the sky, Rarity tapped Applejack on the shoulder with her thoughts about as bright as the center of a quagmire.

“Of all the things she could have called me—a mule? She had to compare me to a mule?”

“Rarity?” The farmpony didn’t bother to look back. “Whinin’s not exactly the most productive thing you could be doin’ about now.”

Rarity fell back, stunned. “Whining? I am not whin—”

“Racers, take your marks!” called a race official on the scaffold. He then bowed in deference to Princess Celestia as she touched down next to him.

Still seething from her encounter with that Lemon Tart and her roughshod posse, Rarity shot her partner an unmistakable look: we’re talking later. She would burn her boutique and wear pug boots if Applejack didn’t have some prior run-in with those hooligans to discuss.

With the last racer packed into the peloton, Princess Celestia walked to the middle of the scaffold and raised her head. Her horn suddenly flared with a soft gold aura. Even Rarity, always the paragon of decorum, couldn’t help but gasp as the Princess took to the air with a powerful sweep of her wings.

Rarity’s heart counted down with the wing beats, watched as the Princess’ horn grew brighter with every stroke.

Three.

Two.

One.

The Princess threw her front legs high into the air, her horn glowed white hot—and a flood of hot light surged between the span of her wings like a gospel.

Cheering and hollering, two hundred ponies thundered into the underbrush.

***

She was only a few miles into the heart of Whitetail Woods, and Rarity knew closing Carousel Boutique for the week had been the right call. Despite the tree cover, the sunlight found ample places to penetrate the canopy, casting what would have been a somber forest into a warm tapestry of trees, brooks, and stones no weaver could hope to duplicate. Greens like creek emeralds rushed past her in tandem with the russet earth beneath her hooves. If only she had the means of capturing half the vibrancy of these hues for her fabrics! The breeze teased her nostrils with notes of pine and pollen, and the thrumming of hooves around her echoed the pounding of her heart.

She was not all that surprised to find herself near the leading edge of the peloton—with the road this flat this early in the race, breakaway groups would find themselves absorbed back into the pack in no time at all. For the moment, everypony ran together—including the likes of Lemon Tart and her kin.

“The mind can only imagine where you met such... charming specimens,” Rarity aired, cresting a small rise in the dirt road.

Applejack shot a glare at her agricultural rival. “Lemon Tart there runs an operation called Golden Envy Orchards, and her lemonades are regular contenders at Hocktoberfest.” The farmpony’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “Well, her folks got caught bustin’ up the competition last year—breaking barrels, saltin’ pots, all that—their top honors got stripped and went to a lil’ outfit called Sweet Apple Acres.”

Rarity made an impressed noise. “I still remember the party Pinkie threw for you that evening. I’ve never had so much cider in one night.”

Dirt sprayed up from under Applejack’s hooves as she led Rarity around a corner. “Darn tootin’. And it was all because of this pony, right here, who was keepin’ an eye on those varmints. Why, it wouldn’t surprise me if they tried to get even with me for that.”

Rarity nodded. “What do you think they’re up to?”

“I think they’re up to no good,” Applejack replied, her face set. “Keep your eyes about you—Springpost Hill’s coming up in a little bit. I bet you a bushel of apples that’s when they’ll make their move.”

Rarity opened her mouth to speak—and kept it there when she heard somepony scream behind her. Her eyes flicked to her left, and only the dumb momentum of her limbs kept her moving forward.

She had had a nightmare in which a dress for an important client exploded in her sewing machine. Snarls of fabric—brown and yellow and olive and periwinkle and Celestia knew what else—erupted from beneath the needle, ruining everything. The nightmare had, of course, come from the notion that she’d even consider matching such discordant colors together in one outfit, but the ruptured bunches of cloth from her dream bore no small resemblance to the ponies on the opposite side of the peloton—those in front had crashed to the ground, and those behind them tripped and fell on the growing pile.

“We should help them,” she shouted.

“No can do,” the farmpony spat back. “Look who’s tryin’ to crawl away there.”

Rarity followed Applejack’s gaze to a trio of earth ponies emerging from the pile-up as spotless as champagne glass—they didn’t look for a second as if they’d been caught off guard or hampered by the crash. The smirk on Lemon Tart’s face and the slant of her eyes almost suggested she expected it to happen...

“Hey, now!” Applejack hollered. “Couldn’t even wait for the first hill before you started sabotagin’ the competition, could you?”

The rival glared back as her family broke away from the pack. “That wasn’t us, sugar!” she yelled over her shoulder. “We don’t need to cheat to beat you!”

“Why, that little—!” Applejack’s eyes crossed as she fumbled for words. “It couldn’t be any more obvious that she was lyin’ through her teeth, Rarity. That’s why we gotta keep runnin’—I caught ‘em cheatin’ once before, and I’ll catch ‘em at it again! C’mon!”

“A—Applejack!”

The earth pony simply lowered her head and forged onward.

The trees of Whitetail Wood retreated to both sides as Springpost Hill’s granite slopes rose into view, and a new breeze picked at the sweat on Rarity’s brow. Only her impeccable sense of decorum kept her from tearing her training ensemble off, but it was getting toastier by the second. The ground kicked up beneath her hooves, and little streams of pebbles trickled past her as she and Applejack pursued the Lemon family.

And to think I complained when Twilight sent me up and down all of those stairs in the library, the unicorn thought, her lungs feeling like paper bags. “Applejack, do you think you could slow down a little bit?”

“Not a chance, sugarcube!” Steam puffed from Applejack’s nostrils. “I’m not gonna lose ‘em!”

“You’re going to lose me if you insist on pursuing this barbaric grudge of yours!” Digging deep, Rarity drew even with her partner. “Ugh, you may not consider this to be much work with your applebucking and all that, but I’m getting a little tired—”

“Rarity—” Applejack gave her a sidelong glance, her voice even. “Save your breath. You’ll need it for this hill. Now keep up, will you?”

Rarity called to mind the old saying: one’d sooner move the earth before they could move an earth pony bent on some pursuit. Falling in behind Applejack, she concentrated on matching the rhythm of her partner’s gallop: cah-da-duk, cah-da-duk, cah-da-duk, cah-da-duk. As they stormed around a rising hairpin, Rarity peered over the edge of the road and saw the peloton fragmenting into clumps below her.

Twilight Sparkle’s voice floated into her head from another night in the library: “This book, The Perfected Particulars of Pony Pursuit, says that races truly begin on the hills, where ponies gain or lose the most on these sections alone...”

Rarity looked toward the top of the hill. Despite its modest status as a “grade three” climb, the purple and gold pennants planted at its summit towered above her like the eyes of a snake, the coiled road its body, and it gazed upon her as if deciding whether to devour her then or later. Lemon Tart and the rest of her breakaway group were kicking up dust some two switchbacks ahead.

The unicorn turned a ferocious red as something bumped into her from behind. She turned to look, a scathing retort burning on her tongue, only to realize it was Applejack flattening her hat against her fundament.

“You’re daydreamin’ and they’re gettin’ away!” she cried. “Focus, Rarity—I need you to stay with me!”

Rarity disengaged herself in indignation. “I’m going, I’m going!”

But could she keep going? Could she really keep up with the pace Applejack demanded of her? They had yet to pass through the first third of the stage, and her legs were already aching. Her tendons only tightened with every gallop, grit began to congeal on her tongue, and, worst of all, her ensemble was gathering dirt at the cuffs!

She had to relent. She had to make Applejack understand. She had to be clean!

And yet she still galloped. And galloped. A new voice piped up in her head, one she only heard with her back pressed against the wall. Relent? This wasn’t, to use another one of the farmer’s quaint colloquialisms, her first rodeo. She may not have fit the definition of a traditional marathon mare, and she was certainly happier trimming selvage edges in her boutique than split times in some sweaty physical contest—but banish it, she knew how to push herself.

Had she not succeeded in sewing over ten dresses a day for Hoity Toity, Canterlot’s premier fashion authority, and his “Best of the Best” Boutique that one week?

Had she not, despite Sweetie Belle’s best efforts to stymie her fabric supply, created and delivered twenty caped robes for a Trottingham client in one night?

Well, then! If Applejack wanted focus, let her witness the focus of a professional. Setting her jaw, Rarity pressed ahead. Every bend in the road was just another hem to close, and she was in “the zone”...

“D’at-choo! Ahht-choo!” Ugh, what was with this dust all of a sudden? It was getting all in her mane and everything!

“Bless you.”

“Thank you, dear,” Rarity replied, nodding at Lemon Tart’s sister. “Would you simply believe how messy it gets out in the coun—trabazawah?” One double take later, Rarity confirmed her eyes were not playing tricks on her. She was neck and neck with the same chocolate-colored mare who’d stood by that unsavory lemon farmer at the starting line. So, if she was here, so was—

“Lisbon!” Lemon Tart’s voice cracked the air like a whip. “Haul those haunches up front this instant!”

“Coming, sister!” The bespectacled mare shot Rarity a strange look before peeling away from Rarity.

Thoughts ground together in the unicorn’s mind like an ill-set needle striking the plate, and it took her several moments to set her brain back in working order. If Lemon Tart had left Applejack and her behind, but she had somehow spoken to one of her siblings—

Gold and purple pennants flashed in the corner of her eyes as the road sloped down from her hooves. She saw more ponies waving flags off to the sides or sitting on folding chairs in front of camping tents, and all of them were looking back at her, cheering and thrusting their hooves into the air.

Rarity shook her head—she often forgot about her surroundings whenever she put herself in “the zone”, but look where it got her!

Applejack came up and bumped her on the shoulder. “I knew you had the hustle to catch ‘em at the top! We should stick to ‘em like a cutie mark on the downhill and make our move when we get to the Greyhart River.”

“What? Why don’t we just make our move right n—”

Gravel skittered beneath her front hoof before she could finish speaking, and her leg shot toward the heavens as the rest of her tumbled forward. Just before the road could give her face the peel to end all exfoliations, however, somepony bit down on her tail and hauled. She slid to a stop just inches from a drop large enough to dwarf Ponyville Town Hall. It all happened so quickly that she didn’t even have the time to squeak.

“Speed don’t matter if you fall off the course,” Applejack snapped, spitting Rarity’s tail out of her mouth. The sudden fury in the earth pony’s eyes could have reflected a lightning bolt in a cyclone. “Gettin’ down in one piece is the goal here, Miss Fancy Pants!” Applejack’s voice softened as she turned to go. “And try and stay on the road this time? I don’t want you gettin’ hurt.”

One last look over what could have been her last step, and the heat drained away from Rarity’s face. As always, Applejack was being the sensible pony. “Well,” the unicorn sniffed as the two started down the road again, “You don’t think it’s possible that somepony just... tripped back there, and that Miss Lemon was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

Applejack shook her head. “Cheaters are like wax apples. The whole point’s for them to present themselves all nice and pretty, but they’re still fakes when you bite into ‘em. Why on earth would you even think Lemon Tart wasn’t cheatin’?”

Rarity recalled the look that mare—Lisbon, if she remembered correctly—had given her back at the top of the hill: the way her head dipped, the way those orange eyes grew huge and her pupils small when her sister called. That meant something. Sweetie Belle was calamity wrapped in the shape of a pony at times, but she never stopped looking up to her big sister.

“I’m just saying we should give them the benefit of the doubt for now,” she offered. “Innocent until proven guilty. That sort of thing.”

“Uh-huh. Can we get back to racin’ now?”

Rarity rolled her eyes. The explanation was there inside her head, and she knew it was inside the earth pony’s, too. The Lemons had some family issues to work out, and if there ever was a pony who knew how to solve domestic problems, it was the stubborn orange mare galloping in front of her.

***

They heard the river before they saw it: thunderous and swollen like a stampede of desert buffalo. The sun had crossed its zenith in the sky, yet further upstream Rarity could see the water did not shine in the light but churned and boiled with dull, gray silt.

“I hope the bridge is still there,” Applejack said. “There was that flood upriver last week—I don’t think folks up there’d ever seen something that bad!”

Rarity had nothing to say to that. She kept her eyes where Lemon Tart’s family had pulled ahead of the peloton by a considerable margin. A hairpin some ways off curved beneath the edge of the bluff overlooking the Greyhart River, and Lemon Tart was the first pony through the corner.

“Ain’t that just like her, pushing her brother and sister like that,” Applejack continued. “Mark me, she’s gonna run ‘em into the ground by the next hill.”

“Goodness,” said Rarity. “Where have I heard that before?”

“We’re pacing ourselves,” said Applejack as she watched the rest of the pack turn into the hairpin. “There’s the differen—”

The road heaved beneath their hooves without warning, like sompony was pulling out the carpet from under them. Rarity heard noises cannon fire and the tumble of loose boulders, followed by a forest-shaking splash. The look on her face matched Applejack’s as they glanced at each other—open-mouthed confusion—and they hurried to catch up to the pack.

They didn’t get far. The moment they rounded the bend, Rarity’s horn was pointing straight at another pony’s rump. She slid to a stop within a whisper of visiting pointed ruination on the unwitting mare, and the seamstress withdrew before the other could notice what had almost come upon her.

The pack had stopped in the middle of the road, and most of the ponies were either murmuring among themselves or pointing further along the way. A substantial number of pegasi flapped about in the air, some of them with other ponies in their hooves.

Rarity didn’t take long to figure out what the problem was. She craned her neck and saw the road a hundred feet ahead as it descended toward the riverbank. The hundred feet of road in between, on the other hoof, would have been like a bouncer who didn’t understand that his job allowed some ponies to pass—except there was no road to speak of. The Greyhart River thrashed and whirled in the newly-made gap.

“What happened here?” asked Rarity.

“Are you blind?” A stranded unicorn jabbed her hoof forward. “The road’s collapsed!”

“Oh my, I must have missed that little detail—” Rarity ground a hoof into her forehead. Barbarians were free to act as they pleased, but she was a lady and she would continue to speak like one no matter how dire the circumstance. Ladyship, however, had no laws against scowling at those who deserved it. “I mean—how did this happen?”

“Do you even have to ask?” Applejack yanked Rarity’s head further downriver.

A stone bridge spanned the river some hundred yards off, its breadth just sufficient for two carts to trade splinters if they tried to pass each other. The top of it could not have been more than a couple of inches above the water, and the current surged over it in several places.

Three moving shapes in the middle of the bridge caught Rarity’s eye, which she had no trouble recognizing as the Lemon siblings. Their closest competition, all pegasi, were even further behind than before.

“Still feel like defendin’ those no-good nellies?” Applejack demanded while jumping down to the rubble. “You can’t tell me Lemon Tart had nothin’ to do with this.”

“You honestly think they demolished the road?” demanded Rarity.

“My brother can tow a barn if he sets his mind to it, and that hulk over there’s on his level at least. C’mon, we’ve got to get to the bridge!”

“And how do you propose to do that if you’re not a pegasus? Hm?” She suddenly wished she had Rainbow Dash with her. “Teleporting’s against the rules, if that’s what you were thinking.”

“Then do this! ‘Scuse me, pardon, comin’ through, beg pardon...”

“Applejack! What are you—” The nerve of that pony, walking away from her like that! What did she hope to accomplish by wading her way to the front of the pack? Why, if she didn’t know Applejack any better, she would have said that the farmpony was gonna jump for it—

“Oh Celestia!”

Rarity caught a glimpse of a stetson and orange haunches launch above the other ponies. Instinct took over from there—she hardly felt herself shoving pony after pony out of the way while she clawed her way up front. Her own voice sounded distant to her: “Move aside! Out of my way!” Celestia smiled upon her as she burst onto the very edge of the road, tottered for a terrifying moment, then stabilized.

She saw nothing but rubble sloughing off into the river.

“Over there!”

Rarity followed where the earth pony beside her was pointing. Broken roots as thick as a pony protruded from the exposed bluff. An orange mare used them as stepping stones, bounding over them one after the other with gazelle-like grace.

“Applejack!” Rarity called once the farmer touched down on the other side of the gap. The gall—! She’d have to see a dentist if she kept grinding her teeth like this all race.

“Your turn, Rarity!” Applejack yelled back. “I’m no good over here if you don’t finish the race with me!”

“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to try that!”

“Then stop stallin’ and find another way to get your purty lil’ rear over here!”

“Ugh! You—you—!” Her voice dropped to a dark mutter. “Talk to me like that, will you? Very well, then.” She looked next to her and saw opportunity right away—a tall, silver-coated pegasus, and a stallion, to boot.

“My good sir...” Rarity sidled up against her mark and ran a hoof along his neck line. “I was wondering if a stallion as strong and handsome as you would—”

“Get lost, toots!” The stallion unleashed one of the most atrocious Broncox accents the fashionista had ever heard upon her. “It’s my teammates and no one else!” He swept up a green earth pony in his hooves and kicked off across the gap.

“Calabash! Cretin! Crustacean! How dare you speak to a lady like that?” Rarity shook her hoof after the hooligan, but he gave no indication of having heard her. “And how dare you ignore me, you—!”

“Rarity—!”

“I know, Applejack! Give me a moment here.” Scanning over the rest of the pack, Rarity found nothing but frowns and shaking heads from the rest of the pegasi on her side of the gap. They had no idea how powerful an enemy she could be. But, she had to put the issue to rest for the moment. She looked down at the river once again, struck by a sudden hunch not unlike the ones that came about from the spell she’d created to find gems for her apparel.

A hunch? Now was hardly the time to expect a thirteen-thousand carat diamond to come to her rescue then—but she did notice the roots of what looked to be a sizeable tree sticking out from the river. She glanced up to estimate the distance of the gap versus the probable height of the tree. With luck...

“I need all unicorns in attendance front and center immediately,” she barked. “Every other pony, stand back and give us room. We’re going to lift that tree out of the river and make us a bridge.”

“Are you kidding?” piped up a unicorn Rarity recognized as the one she’d nearly impaled moments earlier. “We can’t possibly lift that thing up here!”

Rarity stomped over and pressed her forehead against the dissident so hard that she would undoubtedly feel the dimple in her personal space for weeks afterward. “There was once a time when unicorns lifted the sun on a daily basis!” she snarled. “I’ve heard nothing but ponies being nasty and unhelpful to each other all morning, and I don’t want to hear any more complaining from this moment on. Not from you, or any other pony here. Understand?”

Squeaking in terror, the pinned unicorn nodded.

“Help me lift this tree.”

A line of unicorns scrambled to the road’s edge. Standing in the middle of them, Rarity pointed out the tree they were to raise from the river and cried, “All right, on three! One!”

Hooves dug into the ground.

“Two!”

Beads of sweat gathered on Rarity’s brow.

“Three!”

Perhaps she needed to consider a side career in motivational speaking. Either the tree hadn’t caught itself under anything when it tumbled into the river, or else her little tirade had inspired the ponies working with her on the line. But the bridge-to-be shot out of the water almost like a torpedo, wreathed as it was in a rainbow of unicorn auras. It turned over in the air, water gushing out of its foliage, before it crashed down to span the gap in the road.

“Whoa-a-ah!” Rarity dug her hooves into the road as her hold on the tree fizzled—one whole side of it teetered over nothing but air. This wasn’t good. In the corner of her eye, those she’d recruited to help her bucked and bit with the rest of the pack as they all tried to clamber on the tree at once. Rarity’s horn flared alone, and she slammed the tree against the bluff as hard as she could manage.

Brutes. Here she was, channeling the spell preventing them from an untimely swim in the river on her own, and they couldn’t at least give her a “thank you” for her troubles?

“Heeeeads up, y’all!”

“Whaaa!” “Ouch!” “Hey!” Every exclamation followed a smacking sound like a pony tackling other ponies—which, when Rarity looked up, was what was happening. Applejack’s hat bounced up and down as she charged up the tree, launching stallions and mares alike straight into the air.

“C’mon, sugarcube!” Without so much as a by-your-leave, Applejack slammed onto the ground behind Rarity and pushed up against her rump.

“I’m up, I’m up!” Rarity cried. No words—no words to describe her violation, her burning indignation! Applejack might as well have suggested green was a good color for her mane or dropped in on her while meeting with important Canterlot clients—oh! Rarity found her second wind chasing that harlequin down the tree either because that mare’s will-do spirit had rubbed off on her, or so she could wring that country bumpkin neck like a rag the moment she could get her hooves around her.

However lost in her haze of rage as she was, though, she couldn’t miss the sudden tremor shooting beneath her hooves for the second time. She heard the terrible clash of rock on rock, the scrape of something massive against the bluff, and another titanic splash.

“Don’t tell me that was...” Rarity shut her eyes for a moment as dread pooled inside her. She knew what she’d find if she looked behind her. Whatever she did, no matter how tempting it was to look, she had to refrai—

Banish it, she looked.

Though everypony who’d needed it had crossed it by then, the tree had plunged back into the river with its roots pointed downstream, the ledges it once rested upon carved off by the unrelenting water. With the current sweeping it along like it was a feather brush, Rarity couldn’t help but see it more like a battering ram.

“Double time, Rarity!” Applejack hollered.

“It’s gaining on us!”

“Then run!”

Rarity tried. The slope of the road, the wind whipping past her ears, her stomach floating against her spine as her momentum continued to build—her hooves flashing over the ground as she struggled to keep them under her body—and all the while, the tree sliding in from the edge of her vision... she couldn’t do it. The roar of the river went quiet. Her lungs seized in place, trapping her heart against her ribs. Everything gained bright, sharp outlines, everything fell into focus—she saw everything.

Applejack tucked into the turn feeding into the bridge and slid sideways, prompting her to do the same. Every bump of her hooves on the road kicked up little puffs of dust in which she picked out individual grains as they floated across her eyes. Coiling her legs, she pushed off the ground and forged ahead, even as darkness filled one side of her vision.

“Jump!”

A sonic wave passed through her body without her hearing it, and gray shapes buckled and melted away before her. In the air, a storm of leaves and branches brushed against her hind legs. They found more of her—her flank was covered in an instant, and more of them raced up her neck, her cheek—

And then the leaves vanished, a flooded bridge snapped back into place in the center of her eyes. Her hooves touched solid stone.

“Rarity!”

The unicorn blinked. There was Applejack galloping at her side with the most unbecoming grin plastered on her face. Rarity shook her head, feeling some lingering blurriness in the corners of her mind. When she looked ahead for the end of the bridge, she saw nothing but forest before her—the Greyhart River tumbled behind her by several yards and counting.

“A-Applejack?” Rarity’s jaw bobbled as she dug for the words she wanted to say. The farmpony spared her the hassle.

“You should’ve seen yourself back there!” Applejack whooped. “I was terrified either you or me was gonna trip up somethin’ fierce on the way down—I can’t even believe how fast you were haulin’, missy! That tree o’ yours hit the bridge as soon as I got on it, and the jump you made for it right afterwards—! I want you in the next rodeo that comes to town!”

Something flopped onto Rarity’s head—the top edge of her sight went dark and she sniffed a hint of sweat. “Eeek! What in Equestriaaaa—”

Hat.

She was wearing Applejack’s hat, she realized. Next to her, Applejack flashed her a wink. “Not bad,” she said. “I reckon you’d knock the regulars dead with that look.”

“I never!” Try as she might, Rarity couldn’t summon any vitriol into her voice. She was far from tired—on the contrary, even after the river crossing, she’d never felt this way since the day she’d spent flying around Cloudsdale after Twilight bestowed her a pair of temporary wings. The corners of her mouth tugged upward. “It’s sweaty and sure to damage my beautiful coiffure—but I suppose I can wear it for a while if it’s getting heavy.”

“I guess I’ll have to take that!” said Applejack, following the road as it curved to the right. “Ready to make up for lost time?”

***

Curving like a dragon’s back against the early afternoon sky, Autumnpale Ridge never once ducked out of Rarity’s sight as the Equestrian Way lead her through Whitetail Wood. The miles passed in moments, it seemed. Applejack was much more pleasant to run with when all she concerned herself with was running—she’d tell Rarity to watch as she charged along the side of a curving berm with her legs parallel to the ground, and logs along the edges of the road turned into springboards for aerial spins and flips. Her rodeo-honed athleticism played second fiddle to nopony Rarity had ever met. She tried one of Applejack’s stunts for herself—Applejack told her to stand on the far end of a fallen trunk, and the air she’d achieved when her friend pounced on the other end carried her over a creek by a good several yards.

Her elevated mood couldn’t last for long, however. Much to her surprise, she and Applejack were passing ponies well before they reached the foot of Whitetail Wood’s second grade hill climb. Many of them were pacing themselves for the steeper slope ahead, their heads held high and level, but the others—panting, dripping with sweat, crawling in one case, even... Rarity had no delusions regarding her stamina. She was running on adrenaline and an uncluttered mind, but not even Twilight’s conditioning anticipated she’d be fishing trees out of rivers and holding them up. Like the Autumnpale Ridge, Rarity’s wall was there in the distance—only she couldn’t know exactly how far off the latter lay in wait for her.

Celestia willing, it stood somewhere around the finish line—preferably well behind it.

“Ready for the climb, partner?” Applejack tilted her head at the orange-and-purple banner marking the start of the climb. The sweat on her brow kept her forelock pasted on her head, but she still managed to flash her friend a conspiratorial grin.

“I can only hope so, darling.”

They passed beneath the banner, though its presence there was more ceremonial than functional. Rarity knew the climb had begun when the road turned from paved stone to a wooden walkway and bucked upward like an enraged bronco. The change of pitch certainly felt like a kick to the ribs, and her legs faltered for the first few strides. She kept them pumping and pumping even as her shoulders and haunches threatened to cramp. The clatter of her hooves on the boards matched only by the pounding in her ears.

Springpost Hill had been far from a prance through the daisies. If this was the start of a “grade two” climb and she was feeling this way—in her mind, her wall advanced several miles forward, doing whatever passed for the wall equivalent of mad cackling.

Focus, Rarity, she told herself. Take in the sights, get back in the zone. Remember why you’re here. Here the pitch of the road worked to her advantage as it drew her gaze skyward—

Rarity never stopped dreaming of rising into the upper echelons of Canterlot society. If her continued correspondence with Fancypants was anything to go by, her dreams had yet to fail her. And yet she emerged from such humble origins. The daughter of a stay-at-home mother and a hoofball coach on the outskirts of Ponyville, there had been a time when she’d been perfectly happy playing in the forests west of town. She’d stick wild blossoms in her mane and weave skirts out of the leaves because she was the Jungle Queen of Shadowblossom, and she’d paint her cheeks red and charge through the woods waving sticks and hollering at the top of her little filly lungs, her brave warrior-princesses at her side...

“Hey, Rarity?” Applejack was looking up at the incoming climb with a distant smile on her face. “I don’t know if you happen to remember this or anythin’, but—”

“Oh, yes, ‘Wild Apple’. You bet I remember.”

The spark in Applejack’s green eyes flared like a bonfire. Then she threw her head back and unleashed a howl of war that echoed all the way back to the years of their shared fillyhood: “Ay-yiyiyiyiyiyiyi!”

Had they not been busy running at that moment, Rarity would have hugged Applejack and never let go. Back in his school days, Big Macintosh had spent a season on her father’s hoofball squad, and the colt’s apple-butted little sister often found herself at the unicorn’s place while the team practiced out back. Rarity had earned her cutie mark by that time too, but that didn’t stop her from inviting the other filly into the woods to play.

The forest of those fillyhood days had since vanished in the name of development (clearing the space that would later become the grounds of her Carousel Boutique), but Rarity would never forget the treehouses she and her friends had built in there once upon a time. And, here at Autumnpale Ridge, those memories were returning to her. The ponies stationed at the former outpost had lived in airy, spiraling towers hollowed out of the trees. Sturdy, curving walkways connected these towers together in the light of bright, bough-hung lanterns in every color of the rainbow, and flowering vines ran all up the towers’ exteriors. The pennants indicating the top of the climb were nowhere to be found, presumably residing somewhere on the hill above the foliage.

“Stars, Rarity,” said Applejack. “Why’d you have to get so up and fussy ‘bout your own appearance and stuff? You were perfectly happy gettin’ into worse messes alone than Apple Bloom does with her friends.”

“I...” The words were there, loaded in her lungs and ready to fire for the hundredth time in the name of presentability and etiquette. Pulling that trigger came to her secondhoof, like sewing two backstitches at once, and she would have pulled it then—and then she imagined she caught a glimpse of her filly self peeking out at her from one of the towers. Little Rarity scampered when Older Rarity took a second look, of course.

The fashionista chuckled. If only she’d known about this place sooner—what would have been different? She saw Little Rarity standing at the edge of this forest fantasy world, her jaw slack and her huge blue eyes wide with wonder...

“What do y’think we’ll find at the top, Shadeflower?” somepony broke in, bumping into her side and out of her reverie.

Shadeflower. What a ridiculous name, a child’s name—the only name she could have used back then. “I dunno, Wild Apple!” Fillyhood exuberance and malapropisms rushed back to the forefront of her mind. “Maybe the Princess is in trouble, and we’re gonna go rescue them!”

“But we rescued Princess Celestia last week!” Wild Apple protested, her green eyes flashing with mischief. “We’re royalty too, y’all know! She doesn’t rule over us!”

Shadeflower shook her head as any jungle queen would when declining a suggestion from her war council. “That doesn’t matter,” she squeaked. “If Princess Celestia’s in danger, then the sun doesn’t rise for the entire world! And that includes the Jungle of Shadowblossom, too!”

“How do you even know if the Princess is in trouble, though? It’s not as if we’re hearin’ anypony screamin’ for—”

“Help! Beggin’ your pardon, can you stop for a moment and help?”

The illusion shattered—Shadeflower and Wild Apple were sucked off their hooves and vanished into the past, returning Rarity and Applejack in their place. Grown mares once again, they exchanged looks as if to ask, “did you hear that, too?”, agreed, and hurried further on.

Like Springpost Hill, Autumnpale Ridge slashed its way upward in long chains of switchbacks and spirals. Unlike Springpost Hill, the nearby trees twisted—turned upon themselves, even—as Rarity and Applejack climbed higher. Tall ferns began to grow up at them from the ground, and mosses and vines snaked down from the canopy with increasing frequency. The air congealed around their coats, and their hoofsteps didn’t carry quite as far into the woods as before. As they leaned into a section of walkway wrapping its way up outside a tower, the pleading voice from before returned.

“Only askin’ a minute of your time, sir—no, please don’t go—!”

Rarity frowned. That somepony’s accent flicked her ear in a familiar way. “That can’t be...”

“What’s that, sugarcube?” asked Applejack.

“I don’t know if you’re going to like this,” said Rarity as she reached the top of the tower. A plank and rope bridge bowed across the next gap, feeding into a blind corner, and she all but forgot herself as she charged across its length. She turned the corner—

“Please, could y’all stop an—oh, I’m sorry.”

“Lisbon?” Rarity skidded to a stop.

The chocolate-colored mare looked away and motioned Rarity to pass by. She was alone. “I-it’s fine, Miss Rarity. I wouldn’t want to hold you up. Go.”

Rarity raised a brow. “Lisbon, darling—” She put her hoof on the mare’s shoulder. “What happened?”

“Never you mind her type,” Applejack cut in, swatting Rarity’s hoof away. “It ain’t our business to fall into some kinda trap.”

“W-we’re not cheaters,” stammered Lisbon. If her ears flattened any more than that, she could have swept the walkway with them. “But your friend there’s got a point. I’d rather not inconvenience you—”

Snarling, Rarity hooked her hoof around the lemon farmer’s neck and pulled her in until their eyes were almost touching. “Now you listen here, young lady. Applejack may have some legitimate grievances against you and your kin, and perhaps I am being played for a soft-hearted simpleton. But if I recall correctly, you and your family were here to win this race, and if that’s still the case, lagging behind has got to be one of the strangest ways to go about winning I’ve ever heard of. Now—” She squeezed her foreleg against the base of Lisbon’s skull. “—calmly and thoroughly, tell me what happened. Did it involve your family?”

Lisbon’s spectacles only magnified the tears rippling along her lower eyelids. “How’d you know, Miss Rarity?”

“Haystacks, Rarity, let ‘em look after their own.”

“What else could it be?” asked Rarity, shutting her friend out of her head. “You’re not with them right now. Did they leave you behind?”

Lisbon shook her head and sniffed. “No, ma’am.” Her hoof trembled as she pointed toward the outer edge of the corner, where a set of scuff marks spilling into the air confirmed the mare’s story. “My—my older sister fell off.”

Rarity’s stomach dropped into a horrible hole. Releasing Lisbon, she dashed over to the other side of the path, flopped onto her stomach and peered over the edge. The ground was still some several stories beneath her, but a wide, flat bough jutted into the intervening space beneath a partial screen of leaves and vines. She didn’t have to look around for long. Something shifted on the bough below—something the color of road dust.

“Lisbon?” The voice’s owner let out a hacking cough. “Lisbon? You still there?”

“I’m right here!” Lisbon blurted, scrambling over to join Rarity.

“You willy-willow!” Lemon Tart’s strident abuse had no trouble carrying through the thickening forest air. “I though’ I told you and Meyer to keep headin’ toward the finish line! Where’s he now?”

“He’s headin’ there now, sis,” Lisbon called back.

“Now why by Celestia’s holy hair is Meyer the one with the brains? I took you for the smart one!” The lemon farmer groaned as she crawled over to a gap in the foliage where she could glare at her sister more easily. It didn’t take her long to realize Lisbon wasn’t alone. “What in Tartarus is the fancy mule doin’ here?”

A vein twitched in Rarity’s temple. “Isn’t that charming of you?” she fired back.

“I think I’ve heard enough!”

Strong jaws clamped down on Rarity’s tail and dragged her back from the edge like she was a bale of hay. “Hey!”

“Rarity—” Applejack clamped her cheeks between her hooves and gave her such a colossal stink eye that all she wanted to do at that moment was take a long, three-bathtub soak. “—I understand you’re of a generous persuasion, but you can’t let that turn your head all mushy, hear? You’ve no obligation to help those who don’t want your help. Fer cryin’ out loud, ponies like her’d sooner take another shot to the jaw if you lay ‘em out rather than accept a stranger’s kindness. Their pride won’t let ‘em do that.”

“Pride?” Rarity all but spat the word at her hooves. “I’ll tell you something about pride—!”

“It’s fine.”

A hoof touched down on Rarity’s shoulder. She turned around to see Lisbon standing there, her head bowed.

“There’s an aid station a mile up the road,” the bespectacled mare continued, pointing up the way. “That’s all I really wanted. If y’all could tell the medics to come get my sister, that’d be enough. Y’all don’t need to trouble y’allselves over us anymore than that.”

Rarity opened her mouth to protest—and closed it again. Of course. In a race as big as this one, ponies were certain to wander out of bounds or hurt themselves. Rarity remembered passing by a few aid stations earlier in the race—obvious, red-and-white striped affairs that wouldn’t have any trouble getting spotted even in a candy-cane and barber pole factory. When she got down to brass tack, alerting the paramedics to do what they were hired to do made more sense than trying to help uncooperative, mule-headed ingrates on her own.

“Understood,” she said, nodding. “Applejack, you’re not going to argue with that, are you?”

The farmpony adjusted her hat. “I reckon we could drop them a word or two. No tellin’ whether or not they’re game for yankin’ a pony outta the Everfree Forest, though.”

Rarity blinked. The twisting trees, the vines, the thickening air... “You can’t be serious?”

“You need to pay more attention to things, girl,” said Applejack, starting up the road once more. “It was there on Twilight’s map this morning. Autumnpale Ridge touches the Everfree Forest. Why else would you think this place used to be an outpost?”

“Ah baa...” Rarity stumbled. She looked over her shoulder at Lemon Tart’s little sister. The way she sat there on the road, her back arched and her head hung low, as if she didn’t know what she’d done wrong despite her genuine best intentions—

“Sweetie Belle.” Her little sister’s name left her lips before she realized it was even there. She turned around, eyes focused on the road ahead. “We’ll have to see what they say,” she said, following after her friend. “And if they refuse—”

Applejack looked back at her, her brows lifted as if to say, “yeah, what?”.

“You won’t be able to stop me from going back there, even if you break my legs.”

“So, are you gonna need those casts now, or later? I reckon you should answer ‘now’, since we’ve got the wrappin’s here and you’ll save yourself a lot of pain for the last few miles.”

Of all the worst possible things the aid station could have done—Rarity almost wished she had her fainting chaise nearby. The front flaps of the tent had been pulled closed, a hoof-written sign strung up between them:

WE WILL RETURN SHORTLY

A large number of reports have closed our station
as our staff are currently escorting injured contestants
from the race course. We apologize for the inconvenience.

“C’mon, Rarity.” Applejack pressed against Rarity’s shoulder as other racers overtook them. “You know this ain’t the worst of news. The paramedics’ll probably find Lemon Tart on their inbound sweep and take her up, too.”

Rarity brushed her friend’s hoof away. “I can’t believe they wouldn’t even leave out a notepad or something for us to write on,” the unicorn ranted. She stuck her head through the flaps. “Is anypony in here?”

“Rarity! There ain’t no staff on hoof here!” Applejack’s hooves hooked over her shoulders and began to yank her back. “Trust ‘em to their job, okay?”

“They should’ve prepared for this!” Rarity screamed. She lashed out with her hind legs—the blade of her hoof barely grazing Applejack’s flank. “Let me go!”

“Only if you’re headed toward the finish line!”

Rarity whirled on her friend. “The finish line? Why’s that so important so suddenly?”

“It’s more like why’s it important you don’t waste your time on a lost cause!” The farmpony slammed her hooves on the walkway hard enough to leave impact craters. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere ‘cept where we need to go!”

“You know well where we need to go, Applejack!” Rarity leveled her horn at her partner’s throat. “I will ask you to move nicely once, and if you do not comply, I will remove you by force.”

“You ain’t gonna bust through that pride o’ Lemon Tart’s, I guarantee ya!”

“That pride thing again, huh?” Rarity dragged her hoof on the walkway, preparing to charge. “You know, I was interrupted before I could make my point earlier.”

“That’s ‘cause your point matters less than a skeeter in a bog.” Applejack advanced upon the unicorn. Every stern hooffall sent tremors up the latter’s legs. “She ain’t gonna break.”

Rarity’s riposte was precise as she advanced in turn. “That’s just the issue, dear. The three of us have had our days with pride. As I recall, it didn’t go very well with two of those ponies, and the third looks like she’s on track for having the same kind of day. You remember what happened with you?”

“I do,” Applejack snorted. “Ain’t important.”

“Well, I recall you spent an entire week trying to harvest every apple on your farm by yourself, and you only managed to clear half of it. You were glad to have our help after that. Then I went off insisting I make us all not one, but two dresses for last year’s Gala, and the things I came up with almost torpedoed my career before it even began!”

“Thanks for openin’ old scars, Rar’.” Muzzles collided and pushed against each other. “Mighty generous o’ you, ain’t it?”

Rarity’s face flushed with open rage. “More like telling the truth, darling! Sometimes we have to swallow our pride, and she’s going to do that right now and accept our help.”

“Not a chance! We’re marchin’ to that finish line and settlin’ this once and for all!” Applejack dug her hooves in and pushed.

“Is that what this is all about, then?” Rarity’s hooves slipped backward over the wood despite her greatest efforts to remain in place. Applejack had the lower center of gravity. If she was going to prevail, it had to be—! “Is this about beating those rivals of yours?”

“That’s exactly what it’s all about!” Applejack dislodged Rarity from her stand and was now forcing her backward at will. “We need to beat those cheaters once and for all to show them that deceit and dishonesty will never work! We need to win!”

Applejack’s final words echoed through the trees, and everything stopped. The leaves stopped, Rarity stopped, the forest light crystallized around them. She had cast no spells, nor had she done anything to prepare this moment ahead of time. She had laid one trap and one trap only, acquired in desperation—

The farmpony’s eyes drifted off toward the horizon, and her jaw descended by shades over the next several moments. Then her face hardened, and she spat to the side. She knew what she’d said.

“Applejack.” Rarity tipped her hoof under her friend’s chin with a relieved smile. “Perhaps you need to pay more attention in the morning, too. You sounded just like Rainbow Dash for a moment. Think a minute on what that poor pony behind us needs now.”

Applejacks’ reply was slow to come, even as more ponies passed them by on the walkway. “I messed up, didn’t I?” She wouldn’t look Rarity in the eye.

“Don’t we all?” With a gentle hoof, the unicorn turned Applejack back down the path. “I don’t expect you to forgive Lemon Tart for her atrocious manners or whatever underhoofed gambits she pulled at some brew competition. All I know is that I see a family in trouble, and I know firsthoof how good you are for getting families out of their troubles.”

***

“You made it!”

Pow!

“Whuh-huh!”

Pinkie Pie blinked. There was nothing else in her life like inhaling the fumes of a freshly-fired party cannon, and she made a point of savoring the smell of every shot. The papery confetti, the bitter notes of balloon rubber—they were there, all right, but the air had also acquired another aroma with this last volley. An aroma like—atomized cake? And there’d been that splattering sound, too. That wasn’t normal.

Just a few yards beyond her finish-line fortification, a pair of cake ponies stared at her with confusion in their eyes—“Oh, wherefore should we be cake, fair Pinkie Pie?” she thought she heard them say. “Wherefore? Wherefor-r-r-e?”

All right—she knew real ponies lay beneath the globs of vanilla sponge cake, butter frosting, and glazed berries. She just didn’t want to admit that she’d loaded the cannon with the wrong kind of round by accident—again. Plus, cake ponies were a lot more fun to think about than real ponies, and science would back her up on that someday.

“Pinkie Pie!” Twilight Sparkle leveled a pointed glare at her friend as she trotted out with a pair of floating terry towels. “I apologize, ladies,” she said, wiping the pastry-puffed ponies down with a flurry of quick, efficient strokes. “Congratulations on a good race.”

The two mares—both pegasi—stormed off toward the timekeepers’ table for their results.

As soon as they were no longer paying attention, Twilight stormed over to Pinkie Pie with one of the frumpiest scowls the earth pony had ever seen. Fortunately, she knew how to deal annoyed customers: unrelenting, up-tempo perkiness.

“Hi, Twilight! Wow, that was really nice of you to help those ponies clean off all that cake. I hope they enjoyed it, though. I mean, how it tasted. I’m sure they got to taste some of it. See, I baked super-special ‘Congratulations For Finishing The Race’ cakes to last us through the week, but I guess I could always whip up some more as we go along. Do you think you could get me into the airship galleys later? I’d also like to bake those ponies a ‘Sorry I Blasted Your Faces With Cake’ cake just so they don’t feel left out, you kno-hmm? Imm gmm hmm gm mm mmm mmm mm mm...”

She hardly noticed her lips had turned into a sealed zipper by that point until Twilight spoke over her. “Pinkie—”

“Mmmm?”

Twilight groaned. “Listen. You’re doing this for Applejack and Rarity once they get here, right?”

“Mm-ggmm!”

“Just nod or shake your head. Thing is, Pinkie, you’ve also been doing it to ponies you keep thinking are Applejack and Rarity but aren’t—and you’ve been at this all afternoon.”

Pinkie Pie’s mane hovered in place while her head bobbed up and down, like a woodpecker, even making the noises woodpeckers made when they pecked on trees. Woodpeckers sure made funny noises. Ta-ka-ta-ka-ta-ka-ta-ka—

“I’m gonna make this clear, Pinkie,” Twilight growled, sliding her hoof under her friend’s chin. “I had two organizers come up to me earlier—big, unpleasant stallions—and they were threatening to disqualify us from the rest of the race if I didn't stop my team from assaulting our fellow competitors like this.”

“Hey, wait a second! I thought I was the team leader here!”

Twilight glanced up at the colorful pegasus perched on a small cloud just a few feet away. “Rainbow Dash, I was the one who filled out the registration paperwork for everypony, figured out who was racing with who for each phase, and, lest you forget, helped everypony get themselves in shape before today. What have you done to lead the team?”

Rainbow made a swatting motion with her hoof. “I delegated those duties to you ‘cause that’s what leaders do. Duh.”

“Ugh.” The unicorn turned back to Pinkie. “As I was saying—”

Pinkie unzipped her lips as she spotted something behind Twilight’s shoulder. “Hold onto that thought for a moment, would you? You might want not wanna be in front of the party cannon in a second."

“Pinkie, I—!”

Plucking one of her signature Pinkie Pie party shells out of her saddlebags, she swung the back end of her cannon open and stuffed the round inside in one fluid sweep. Slapping the cannon closed, she squatted behind her sights to line up her next shot.

Lock on! “You made it!”

Pow!

“Uwagh!” Twilight dove out of the way just as a blast of glitter and balloons exploded out of the barrel.

The party shell’s celebratory contents settled on two ponies Pinkie Pie recognized and two she didn’t, though she reckoned the latter would sort itself out soon. “Hey, Applejack! Hey, Rarity!” She bounded over to her friends just as they crossed the finish line. “Boy, you sure took your time getting here. But hey, at least you brought some new friends!”

Before she could say anything else, however, a swift rainbow contrail rushed between her and the arrivals, resolving into the crouched form of a Rainbow Dash on a short fuse. “For Pete’s sake, Applebutt! What took you so long?” Her rose-tinted eyes flashed over to the tall denim-collared mare hanging onto the necks of Rarity and the stocky mare she didn’t know.

The former’s head hung low, her mane was tangled and full of leaves, and her back leg was wrapped up in some yellow fabric Pinkie knew she’d seen from earlier. When she’d started the day, Rarity’d been wearing some kind of exercise outfit—she wasn’t wearing it anymore. Dirty smudges covered most of her white coat.

They must’ve had a huge adventure out there!

“And could you explain why in Equestria you’re dragging these two along with you?”

“It’s a long story, Rainbow,” Applejack replied, her country twang breathy and faint. “You’ll have to ask Rarity, though—I still have no clue what that filly was thinking on the Ridge.”

“What?” Rainbow whirled on the unicorn in a blaze of color. “You brought them here? Why?”

Rarity impaled the pegasus with a glare so intense that, for a moment, Pinkie felt her own blood catch fire. To say Rarity had caught Rainbow off guard was understating the issue a little—she was more using a moon laser to vaporize a parasprite.

“You should be asking why would I feel compelled to help others who’ve clearly been hurt without anypony around to help them.” Hey eyes shifted for the briefest of moments to the apple farmer by her side, who simply pulled her hat lower over her eyes.

“Yes,” Rarity continued, “I stopped because this mare needed my help. I was able to provide it. That’s all you need to know for now, young lady. We can discuss this once we are on board the airship for Brindlebrook Village, but for now, you will let this matter rest.”

A hoof, chipped around the edges and scuffed over with dirt, darted around the back of Rainbow’s neck and hauled her in. “Applejack and I have had a very. Long. Day. Do not make it longer.”

Rainbow swallowed. She couldn’t nod her head fast enough.

“Thank you.” Rarity allowed the pegasus to totter off toward the airship before turning to her guests. “I apologize, dears. Rainbow Dash is quite the competitive pony.”

The stocky mare emitted a quiet giggle. “There’s a lot of ‘em ‘round these parts, ain’t there?”

“So it seems,” said Rarity, casting another glance at Applejack. “Lisbon, darling, it’s been fabulous getting to know you on the way over here. If you ever need another pony to talk to, please feel free to come see us. We’ll all be happy to have you.”

“Uh-huh! Would you like a cupcake?” Pinkie all but pounced on her cue, zipping over to her saddlebags and returning with a chocolate-frosted special with coconut shavings and crumbled toffee. The other mare all but jumped out of her coat at Pinkie’s random act of friendship.

“Let her be, Pinkie,” said Rarity, pushing her cupcake away from Lisbon’s face. “She’ll take you up on that later.”

“Okie dokie!” Chomp. The cupcake vanished inside Pinkie’s mouth in a surge of gooey, chocolatey bliss. “Mmmmm...”

“It’s really nice of y’all to offer,” Lisbon added, looking between Pinkie and her friends with a tired smile. “I think it’s best that Lemon and I go off and look for Meyer, though. We’ve got some family things to talk about.”

“Very well,” Rarity replied. She unslung the taller mare’s foreleg off of her neck and helped Lisbon keep her steady and upright. “There we go—oh, oh—all right, we’re good. You should probably take her to the aid station to have her looked at. I think she’d like a proper bandage around that tendon instead of strips from my clothes.”

With her bigger sister secured, Lisbon nodded at the unicorn. “Thank you, Miss Rarity.” She looked over at Applejack, too. “Thank you too, Miss Applejack. For givin’ my sister an’ me a chance to make it out here. We won’t forget y’alls kindness.”

The apple farmer glanced at her from the corner of her eye, then tilted her head the slightest of fractions.

Pinkie Pie couldn’t help but sigh as she watched Lisbon and Lemon disappear into the herd of milling ponies beyond the finish line. Still, she had Applejack and Rarity with her, and she took what she could get every time. She bounced over to them and drew them up into a big hug along with Twilight, who joined moments later. No matter how a pony’s day went, anytime, anywhere, it always got better with a hug.

“What was that all about?”Twilight asked.

“It’s quite the story.” Rarity exhaled a breath she seemed to have been holding for a while. “But I think it worked out. I won’t say Applejack and Lemon Tart there were getting along at the end, but the way they carried on at the start—! And as for Lisbon there...” The unicorn paused for a cultured chuckle.

“Yes? What about her?” Pinkie piped up.

A spark gleamed in Rarity’s eyes. “Did you notice that collar Lemon Tart was wearing earlier? For such crude material, it was actually quite fetching.”

Twilight’s brows furrowed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Lisbon made it for her sister, the darling,” said Rarity as everypony withdrew from the embrace.

“Tha’s right,” said Applejack. For the first time that afternoon, the corner of her mouth ticked upward. “Turns out Lisbon there wants to go into fashion. Heh. Would you believe the things in this world...? And she’s a fan of Rarity’s, apparently.”

“Wowza!”

“That’s amazing!”

“Yep.” Applejack poked Rarity’s side while she wasn’t paying attention. “Not too shabby for her and her frou-frou profession.”

“Hey!” Rarity’s objection was swift and decisive: she tipped the earth pony on the ground.

“You’re just full of surprises today, ain’t you!” Applejack lapsed into full-throated laughter, and everypony joined in with her soon after.

“You two should head to the airship and get some rest,” said Twilight after the commotion died down. “There’s a full service spa on it and everything, Rarity. Massages, pedicures, hot baths—you’ll love i—Rarity?” The lavender unicorn blinked at the puff of dust where her friend had stood a moment earlier. She sighed. Motioning Applejack after her, they set off for the airship as well, but not before Applejack held up her hoof.

Turning to face Pinkie, Applejack said, “I said it back in Ponyville and I’ll say it again. Best o’ luck with you and Fluttershy tonight. Try and get through Blackhoof Bayou as fast as you can, though. I’m runnin’ with Rainbow in my next race and I’m never gonna hear the end of it if the team’s in the back of the pack.”

Pinkie Pie saluted. “Yes, ma’am!”

Satisfied, Applejack and Twilight Sparkle departed, leaving Pinkie to pack up her party cannon and do the same. This was becoming one of the best days ever! Meeting new ponies all afternoon, seeing her friends crossing the finish line even if they’d done so dead last, hugs! And she still had her race with Fluttershy that evening—bring it on, she thought, stuffing her cannon into her saddlebags with a grin. Bring it all on!

“Pinkamena? Pinkameeena?”

Pinkie’s ears twitched. It’d been months since she’d last heard that voice. “Inkie?” She slung her bags over her back and dove into the throng of ponies. “Inkie? Where are you?”

“Over here!”

Pinkie all but butted two ponies into the air as she reached the base of the airship gangplank. A young gray mare with a darker straight-cut mane over one side of her face spotted her there, her amethyst eyes wide with panic. She rushed over to Pinkie and hugged her tight.

“Inkie?” Pinkie stroked her younger sister’s mane in an attempt to calm her down. “What are you doing out here?”

“I came to find you,” Inkie blurted into her coat. “You’re the only one who can help us right now!”

Pinkie held her sister out in front of her. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on a second. Is something wrong?”

“Y—yes!” Inkie stepped back and wiped her muzzle on her hoof. “It’s about Papa! He—he’s at home. And he’s fallen terribly ill!”

Stage 2 | Brightshadow Hills - Blackhoof Bayou

She had convinced a fully-grown, hibernating dragon to leave Equestria before its snoring covered the land in smoke for the next one hundred years. She had looked a cockatrice in the eye without turning to stone. She had contested the schemes of a forgotten god and the incarnation of Chaos itself on two separate occasions, the odds stacked against her and her friends until shadows stretched across the land, and she had yet emerged both times with victory beneath her wings.

And now—standing on the lido deck with tired racers filing in past her and fresh proto-racers filing out, her knees were knocking together, her wings cinched against her sides like Equestria’s tightest corset, and the blood in her legs had been replaced with horrid tingling. Her past accomplishments, the moments when she put her hoof down to spite a harsh and frowning world—she found assurance in none of them. There was only the night, the race, and the desolate, crushing certainty of overreaching herself.

She thought about all the ponies filtering out toward the starting line. There had to be hundreds of them. They were all trading lines of encouragement and hoofbumps, tossing bottles of water to their teammates and lending hooves to help others limber up. In their laughter, there lurked no trace of concern of embarrassing themselves in public, no hint of unease at the long miles lying before them.

Perhaps they’d saddled their worries with her as they walked out there into the cooling evening to fret at the fringes of her innards. Not that she blamed them. She was wise to the ways of nature and its preference for the strong despite all of the cute, defenseless animals she cared for at her cottage. She couldn’t turn any of them away—not even the sickest little mousey coughing from its little hidey-hole in the baseboard.

Perhaps, by absorbing their fears into her, she was caring for the other ponies. The strong remained strong while the weak languished. She hung her head, and her long, pink mane curled along the grain of the wood decking. In a way, it was right. She was only performing her part in the world.

“Fluttershy? Dear, is everything all right?”

The pegasus looked up from her daze. There was Rarity standing before her with Applejack all but slung over her withers. The farm pony’s mane hung un-banded from her poll, and her head hung even lower than Fluttershy’s had just the prior moment.

Rarity shrugged with her eyes, a sign telling her not to worry about the mare she carried.

“All right?” Fluttershy’s withers shook like willows as she kneaded the floor with her forehooves. Voice dropped to the shade of a whisper. “No. It’s not all right at all.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m...” Fluttershy put a hoof on the threshold. “I’m afraid I won’t do well tonight.”

To her surprise, Rarity chuckled. “How you do go on sometimes,” the fashionista said, giving the pegasus a light nuzzle. “There’s nothing to be nervous about out there. We came in last for our first race, just so you know. Rainbow Dash can have her thoughts, but are you judging us for that right now?”

“Um.” Fluttershy tried to avoid the unicorn’s gaze. She kept coming back to it, however—there was only the earned tranquility of a job hard fought behind those eyes. “No. I’m not judging you at all.”

Rarity lifted Fluttershy’s chin. “And neither shall we do the same to you, sweetie. So don’t be afraid of failing or having a good time. Remember who you’re running with?”

“Pinkie Pie.” Just saying the name evoked the earth pony’s bouncing, exuberant laughter in her head. Her wings still remained clenched at her sides, but they let their grip loosen.

“Indeed.” Rarity pointed at the gangway leading down to the staging area for the next race. “So go out there and don’t be afraid. If you won’t show yourself the best you can do, at least you can show it to her.”

Fluttershy swallowed a lump that started as large as a volleyball, but ended in her stomach as a sprinkle. While it shrank in her throat, she knew she was still far from ready to run among all of the other ponies out there. She remembered her days at flight camp, of high-diving into the safety cumulus and suffering the laughs of the fillies there. But she knew Rarity was right. Rainbow could say what she wanted. Everypony else was there to run with their friends, and there wasn’t anypony better in the business of friendship than Pinkie, right? “Okay,” she huffed. “I can do this.”

“That’s the spirit, darling. Good luck tonight.” With the hoof she wasn’t using to keep Applejack steadied, Rarity gave Fluttershy a firm hug before sliding her way past the pegasus.

“Where are you going?” Fluttershy called after, abuzz with sudden curiosity.

“The spa, of course,” said Rarity. “My hooves are positively ruined from all of that running, and I think Applejack could use a nice massage to ease her day away. She’s been through a lot, the poor dear.” In spite of Applejack’s weight, the unicorn’s hoofsteps receded into the hall with the rarified grace of a ballet dancer, leaving Fluttershy to confront the world alone once again.

No. Had she not heard anything Rarity’d just said? She wasn’t alone. She had the one pony in all of Equestria for whom the idea of being alone really tore her up inside. And she would be waiting for her to come down, most likely with some kind of specially-crafted cupcake for the occasion in her hoof.

Fluttershy drew breath and exhaled, made her way past the ponies on deck, and began her descent down the gangway.

Locating her race partner turned out to be a rather short adventure. In fact, even she found herself hesitant to call it an adventure—and her idea of an adventure was walking to and from the chicken coop she’d built by her cottage. She found Pinkie sitting near the base of the gangway with another earth mare—pink, poofy curls straight from a cotton candy stand and balloons on her croup juxtaposed with flat-ironed gray and a purple geode. The latter was familiar to Fluttershy, but she couldn’t quite place the reason.

“Balderdash?” Pinkie’s outburst tickled something in the back of Fluttershy’s mind. Her hoofsteps hastened.

“It’s quite serious,” said the gray mare. “He came down with it a couple of days ago while sowing the garnets, and now he’s bedridden and shedding.”

Pinkie Pie tilted her head, her ears still perked as if she’d been listening to the other pony talk about a recipe she hadn’t heard of. “Wait. There’s an ingredient I’m missing here,” she said, completing the simile. “What do you mean, Papa’s shedding?”

Recognition flashed across Fluttershy’s brain. She did know that other pony—that was Pinkie’s sister, Inkie. She came with their other sister, Blinkie, to visit Sugarcube Corner every now and then. One time, Inkie’d brought over something she’d dubbed rock candy, and the most amazing part about it was how it didn’t even taste like rocks.

Confections, however, seemed to be the last thing on the Inkie’s mind.

“We have to keep a broom and dustpan in the room at all times,” Inkie explained while making sweeping motions with her forelegs. “Every time he sneezes, the air fills with his hair. Mama had to take your room ‘cause she kept waking up with tufts in her ears.”

Pinkie responded as Pinkie did when confronted with the dire: she threw her limbs into the air and lapsed into convulsive laughter, turned heads in her direction like a drain funneling water out of a sink. For her part, Fluttershy hunched down beneath the bannister.

Inkie had no such retreats open to her, so she hid beneath her straight-falling mane. “Pinkie, please. This is serious.” She tried to help her sister back up to a sitting position, but Pinkie’s thrashing legs promised her nothing but bruises for her trouble. She backed down. “You can see his skin in places,” she added.

“Really?” Pinkie curled her chin down to look at her sister over her belly. “That’s hilarious! When does he go completely bald?”

“I— I—” Words failed the earth mare, and her purple eyes shifted from side to side in a silent plea for aid. In the hubbub of the staging area, it would have been a fruitless gesture. Fluttershy, on the other hoof, was a pony who embraced silences when she could get them, and she could read them with the disciplined ease of a conductor scanning an unfamiliar score and raising her baton.

“Inkie,” she said, flapping over to the stricken sister.

The rock farmer jumped at Fluttershy’s sudden entrance, provoking a jump of her own out of a weird mix of sympathy and mutual surprise. “F-Fluttershy? Um.”

The pegasus closed her eyes and breathed out. No need for this share-and-scare to go on forever. “What did you say your father had again?”

Inkie tapped her hooves together. “Balderdash.”

Fluttershy straightened beneath the flood of fillyhood memories rushing into her head. She remembered her father directing crash teams through the vestibule of the hospital’s emergency ward. She remembered walking down quiet halls where her hoofsteps echoed alongside his, visiting patients in dark rooms with shuttered windows. She remembered their coats gathering on the floor around their beds...

“If he’s been like this for a couple of days,” she said, looking at nothing in particular, but pulling up her father’s words in her head, “and you’re not showing symptoms, he probably has the non-contagious variant. He’s been sneezing, but that’ll stop with complete depilation, which takes... three to six days...” Fluttershy’s voice trailed off, but it returned with a violent gasp as something snapped new rails in front of her train of thought. “That means we have to get him treated tonight! Otherwise—ye-e-e-ek!”

Pinkie withdrew her hoof from her friend’s shoulder as if it were a provoked cobra. “Uh, Fluttershy? What’s that word you used again?”

Fluttershy blushed hard enough to thaw an acre of permafrost. “Oh. Um.” Her ears folded against her head. “It’s just another word... for... growing bald.” Her last two words went unvoiced, as only her lips were moving by then.

The sound of a chime rang through the air. “Ohhhh. So what happens if we don’t get him treated tonight?”

Fluttershy had been in plenty of situations where she felt like a mouse looking up into the eyes of a lean tomcat. This situation was arguably worse. Unlike tomcats, Pinkie Pie was prone to laughing after getting what she sought. She wasn’t sure what ending she’d prefer. “...” she whispered.

“Sorry?” asked Pinkie.

“...ever.”

Pinkie Pie leaned in close until her mane smooshed against Fluttershy’s. “Say that one more time for your Auntie Pinkie Pie?”

The patronizing title wrenched the words out of the pegasus before she could stop herself, and she said it all at once. “He remains bald forever.”

Before Pinkie could react to Fluttershy’s words—indeed, before Fluttershy could brace herself for her friend’s response, such was the precision of the interruption—the royal fanfare blasted through the breezy evening, and Luna, Regent of the Moon, glided down from the sky onto the starter’s scaffold. Fluttershy took advantage of the moment to grab Pinkie and haul her toward the crowd collecting before the starting line.

← S T A G E 2 →

N I G H T • B R I G H T S H A D O W H I L L S • N I G H T
BLACKHOOF BAYOU • BLACKHOOF BAYOU • BLACKHOOF BAYOU • BLACKHOOF BAYOU

The week before the Summer Solstice Steeplechase departed from Ponyville, Twilight invited her friends to the library for some take-out sushi from the new Neighponese place down the road. Of course, it was a ploy on her part to sit them through an extensive presentation on the different stages of the race. It was brutal. Rainbow Dash fell asleep before Twilight had gotten through a quarter of the way through her first slide tray of three. The pegasus roused at the end of the presentation to find curlers in her mane and her legs jammed into a hooficure block—it was to her undying regret that she forgot Rarity had brought along her makeover supplies.

“Hey! Let me outta this crazy thing!”

“Tut tut, dear, I’m still filing your hooves.” Rarity’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve needed this.”

“Can we please get back to the matter at hoof?” Twilight asked, floating her projector into Spike’s waiting arms. “We need to decide what stages we’re going to run, and who’s going to run them.”

“‘What stages we’re gonna run?’” Applejack tried her best to ignore the mascara wand flicking at her eyelashes. The downward plunge at the corner of her mouth suggested she was not succeeding, and the glare she leveled at Rarity could have bent metal. “What in Equestria are you talkin’ about, Twi? Why not run all of ‘em?”

“We might want to save our energy,” Twilight replied, popping a piece of enoki tempura in her mouth. She swallowed and continued. “Smaller teams like focusing their marepower on certain segments of the race, since there are other ways to win than competing in the general classification.”

“Gesundheit.” Pinkie Pie slid a box of tissues toward Twilight.

“That wasn’t a sneeze,” the unicorn protested. “The general classification is the only limited category in the whole race. Teams must run all seven stages of the Summer Solstice Steeplechase to qualify.”

“Shoot, why not do that, then?” Rainbow piped up. Noticing a spoonful of green tea ice cream hovering by her muzzle, she opened her mouth and accepted the chilled, creamy confection on her tongue. The spoon slid back out in a periwinkle-colored aura to match those surrounding Rarity’s horn and the mascara wand—the fashionista was firing on all cylinders tonight.

One by one, everypony else nodded their heads—Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Fluttershy, but only after quite some time. Twilight knew a consensus when she saw one. She pulled out a scroll with some lines and boxes on it and checked something off with exaggerated gusto. “Right, then,” she said, setting the scroll aside. “Then all that’s left to do is figure out who’s racing with whom.”

“I call daytime!”

“I’m with Rainbow, y’all!”

“And I shall go with Applejack.”

A pickled radish and carrot roll fell from Pinkie Pie’s hoof onto the floor. The look she gave Fluttershy and Twilight said everything. “Uh. What just happened?”

They shrugged in open-mouthed loss. For the first time in recent memory, reality turned the tables on Pinkie by skipping past her like a stone strapped to a two-stage rocket. In the meantime, Applejack folded her ears and groaned, but she exchanged a hoofbump with the unicorn on the quiet. They’d spent more and more time together since the Social, it seemed.

“What’s up, Fluttershy? You’ve been kind of quiet tonight.”

Both the voice at her side and her hoof splashing into a puddle shunted the pegasus’ thoughts back to the present. Though she wasn’t running in last place, the better part of the peloton thundered on in front of her. She tossed her forelock behind her ear, and there was Pinkie, galloping along with a subdued look on her face.

“Have I been too quiet?” Fluttershy cringed. She couldn’t believe how boring a race partner she was being, what with her space cadet thought routine just then. Pinkie had every right to be disappointed with her. “I’m sorry. I— I was just thinking about last week at Twilight’s.”

“No worries!” Without looking behind her, she snatched up her tail and rummaged through it with a hoof, producing a tiny cupcake with cane sugar lattice for her friend. "Why do you think ponies use pennies for somepony else's thoughts?" she said, even with the cupcake bouncing in her hoof. "Pennies are okay, but they're yucky and I think my friends' thoughts are worth a lot more than some yucky old penny. But what if we had thoughtcakes? What if we gave ponies cakes instead of pennies? I could change the whole game!"

The stricken expression on Fluttershy’s face could have given pause to a charging hydra. To her undying relief, her friend got the hint and zipped her lips. Taking Pinkie’s thoughtcake off her hoof, Fluttershy flicked it into the air and swallowed it in one bite. It was delicious, with a rich, almost truffle-like gooeyness in the center contrasted with the caramelized crunch of the sugar strands.

Pinkie wanted to hear her thoughts, did she? She could try her best to express herself, Fluttershy supposed. “I thought I was going to be terrified of running through a swamp at night,” she said, chasing out the remnants pasted to her gums with her tongue. “And yet, here I am. It’s far from what I imagined it would be back at the library.” She took a moment to cast her gaze around her environs. “It’s...”

The course of the Summer Solstice Steeplechase’s second phase took racers almost to water level—the turgid flow of Blackhoof Bayou had seeped over the paving stones twice in the opening miles, and Fluttershy still had bits of wet leaves stuck to her fetlocks. Flickering firefly lanterns peeked out from hollowed trees both near and distant from the Via Equestria, casting their light over flooded copses of water lilies, horsetails, and reedmace. Fluttershy filled her lungs with the under-tree air, and the odors of peat and watercress swirled in her nostrils.

“Well—” The words tumbled in her head like down feathers, too flighty to capture and lacking in substance. She was never the kind of pony who could speak at will, and she settled for her old fallback. The circumstances would convey her point anyway. “Just listen.”

The clattering of her hooves on the paving stones made plenty of noise, and the pack ahead rumbled like the Canterlot Express—but not even the galloping of three thousand ponies could have drowned out Blackhoof Bayou’s backing soundscape. Bullfrogs croaked for mates from sequestered, grassy nests until their calls were thick enough to wade through. At hoof level, the chirping of crickets overlapped and meshed in ribbons of atonal song. Dragonflies as big as an eye thrummed near every lantern. And, concealing themselves in the thick canopy overhead, loons pitched their whooping calls against a whippoorwill’s soliloquy in the distance.

From the several seconds of comparative silence that ensued, Fluttershy surmised she had just blown Pinkie Pie’s mind. “The animals sound so much different here than they do back in Ponyville and back home,” she explained, by way of apology. “They know we’re here—but they’re not concerned about our presence. They’re doing what they always do. It’s a lot of hard work for many of them, especially for that whippoorwill—” She tilted her head into the pockets of darkness beyond the lanterns’ reach. “—but it’s meaningful work, and they’ve been up to it even before we came and built through here.”

Pinkie glanced at her out the side of her eyes. “Aaand you got all that from a bunch of ribbit, ribbit, creeeeek, creeeeek, woo hoo, woo doo?”

In a word? “Yes.”

“Wowza.”

Fluttershy frowned. The lifting of Pinkie brows couldn’t have been anything else but a sign of admiration. But, by themselves, they seemed a little less... Pinkie than usual. And though the earth mare galloped along with a solid smile on her face, it wasn’t like her at all to leave things at a single word. “Is everything all right, Pinkie?”

Pinkie laughed. “Of course everything’s all right, silly,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

It was all there in her tone, even if the party-philic pony didn’t realize it herself. Just beneath the layer of superficial ease, a more somber current bore her words. Fluttershy couldn’t bring herself to follow up. “No reason,” she mumbled.

“Okie dokie.” Two words this time, but still far short of the average.

A chill seeped into Fluttershy’s gut. Was it something she said? Pinkie’d started the race in whatever passed for her normal state of mind, and had rattled along at full power right until Fluttershy opened her mouth about the Bayou and its denizens. Pinkie’s silence was probably her sinking into boredom. Not an unexpected result. Fluttershy knew she was a very boring pony.

Then again, Pinkie was also the type to bounce back with some other topic one could only find beyond the line where earth meets sky. Her silence sat in Fluttershy’s stomach like a primed grenade.

Before she could start counting the seconds in her head, the road hooked to the left as if gravity had grown bored of lying in the ground. Blackhoof Bayou’s tree cover had choked out the sky mere seconds beyond the starting line, and the Via Equestria’s meandering course had a rival only in Rainbow Dash’s attention span during lessons at flight camp. Both of those paradigms vanished in that instant—just as Rainbow got fed up with her instructors and tore off on her own in a blazing, colorful trail, the road snapped straight with enough violence to tear the canopy above it in two. Hundreds of stars twinkled against the deep, purple void, and a crisp wind poured down the rift into Fluttershy’s face.

Just a mile off from where she was, an immense plateau sprung up from the waters of the bayou. Sprung—yes, she had no other words to describe its sudden apparition. The stairs in Twilight’s library and Ponyville Tower? Sure, they were difficult to climb flight after flight, day in and day out. On the other hoof, the plateau ahead had to reach at least halfway up to Canterlot’s lower districts. She’d never tried to climb that high on hoof in her life.

“Oh!” Pinkie began bouncing up and down. “Oh! Oh! I know that place!”

Fluttershy turned her head. “You do?” She could feel her throat clenching already.

“Yeah! It’s Bighorn Bluff!” Pinkie jabbed her hoof straight ahead. “Papa took us up there all the time when I was growing up on the farm. High quality slate deposits, you know.”

The pegasus’ vocal cords snapped shut. Breathing became a little harder for it, she noticed. How could Pinkie be so at ease approaching such a scary-looking climb? There was no way in Equestria they’d prepared enough for this moment. Her galloping accused her in monosyllabic hooffalls: Cladda-clop, you will fail. Cladda-clop, you will fail. And the more she continued, the more she ran, the louder the accusations came.

It wasn’t only her galloping, too. Pinkie’s galloping added its voice to the condemnation. The ponies in front turned their duet into a full-blown choir. All of them sang the same part.

Cladda-clop, three hundred times over.

You will fail.

She snuck another glance at Bighorn Bluff. She could end it at any time. All she had to do was put her hooves out in front and stop. Nopony was telling her to do otherwise, and there wasn’t any shame in acknowledging when she was in over her head, right? Pushing herself beyond her limits was dangerous, and everypony was doing her a favor by telling her to turn back.

All right, all right. She fixed on a spot in the road ahead and counted down the gallops. Three, two, one. Her legs extended for landing, and she closed her eyes.

Three seconds later, her hooves were still carrying her along the road. She opened her eyes again and looked back at her aborted stopping place. How had she—? There must have been some kind of mistake.

She picked a new spot in front of her. This time, she would stop. And three, two, one—

Okay, she didn’t stop. If anything, she was moving faster.

Something was going horrendously awry. Her next attempt at stopping blew past her like a moth in a hurricane. Pinkie and the galloping choir remained in her ears, their chant the same as it ever was, underscored with the bayou’s background chatter. All of the important sounds were accounted for.

Remember who you’re running with, Rarity’s voice echoed from nowhere.

Fluttershy gasped. No—not all of the important sounds had been accounted for.

“Um, Pinkie Pie?” She waited for the earth mare to turn toward her. A moment wandered by when she realized what she was about to say, and to whom—but it too passed into the night. She had to say it. “You’re not talking.”

“Oh?”

If Fluttershy had to guess, the look on Pinkie’s face was only about twenty-five percent Pinkie, which was to say she still had a smile to beat a quarter of the Ponyville census. “You were telling me about how your father took you up that hill when you were young,” the pegasus said.

“There’s good slate up there,” said Pinkie.

“I believe you.” Fluttershy gulped. Why am I so confrontational tonight? “Does your father still go up there?”

“Mm-hmm.” Pinkie looked into the sky as if she saw reminders in the stars. “He takes Inkie and Blinkie up there on the third Monday of every month.” Her jaws parted slightly in concert with a forward flick of her ears. “That’s today!,” she exclaimed. “He’d be up there at the top—and I bet he’d be waiting to cheer me on there.”

Fluttershy couldn’t miss the implication if it were a stranded ladybug in a swollen gutter. “Except he’s at home. Sick.”

Pinkie snorted. “Yeah.” Her Pinkieness dropped to about ten percent, which involved a subtle deflation of her mane and tail. Subtle was the word—they still maintained enough curliness to cushion Equestria against a meteor impact.

“Well...” Fluttershy skimmed through her memories of making hospital rounds with her father. One memory stopped her mid-search like a donkey-in-a-box: her father’s hoof in a dark room, cradling a flower with four pale, tapered petals and thin, shaggy fibers growing out from the middle. She remembered him bringing it to her nose for a sniff, and it gave off an odor she didn’t encounter for years afterward—it returned to her after a day with Applejack and her dog by the river, when Winona pounced on her after a swim.

“What if... and, try not to get your hopes up, since it’s very rare—” Fluttershy bit her lip. No, this wasn’t the way to break it to Pinkie. “I mean—remember when I said your father had to get treatment tonight?”

“Of course. If he doesn’t, he’s bald forever.” The earth pony’s lips scrunched up, but she couldn’t keep it down—she made a noise like the air escaping from a cola bottle. “Hee hee.”

Focus, Fluttershy. “The good news for him is that, though it’s hard to find, the cure grows right here in Blackhoof Bayou.”

“The cure?”

“C. hirsutica,” the pegasus recited. “Father liked the M’Eirelander name for it better, though: hair o’ the bog.”

“Hair o’ the bog?” Pinkie burst into a fit of giggling so intense that she had to hop through the air while her front legs clutched her ribs. “That’s a much better name for it, yeah!”

“It’s supposed to grow in low, swampy areas like this,” said the pegasus. She gave Pinkie the quick version of what it looked like. “As long as you keep your eyes peeled, chances are we’ll find it and get it to your father before he loses all his hair.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Hmmm.” Pinkie looked into the sky in thought. “One sec.” And before Fluttershy could stop her, the earth pony skated off into the bayou, kicking up crests of water as tall as Applejack’s older brother.

Fluttershy froze in the middle of the road—she couldn’t leave Pinkie behind while she was off searching, could she? But there was the pack up ahead, and it was pulling away from her with every passing second. The rumbling of their hooves was fading in the night, and soon she would be left all alone in the shadows. Hopefully Pinkie wouldn’t take too lo—

“I’m back!” a voice shouted in her ear.

“Aaaaah!” On nothing but instinct, Fluttershy lashed out with her wings.

Crak.

“Ow-wo-wow! Fwuddershy, whud wuf thad for?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I didn’t think you’d be back so soon! Here, let me look at it.” Fluttershy tried to peel Pinkie’s hooves off of her muzzle, but to no avail. “Are you okay?”

“Iff fine.” Pinkie pushed the fretting pegasus away. Crossing her eyes and tensing, she pushed her crumpled muzzle back out with a pop. “There we go! No harm done,” she beamed, turning to wring out her tail. Two minnows, a frog, and a sparrow floundered out with the water, dispersing to their respective elements moments later, the sparrow chittering with indignation. Fluttershy was still trying to figure out that last one when a hoof waved in front of her face.

“Hello in there?” Pinkie asked. “I said I think we found what we were looking for.”

Fluttershy blinked. “You found something?”

“The hair o’ the bog,” Pinkie reminded her. “Four pale petals, hair in the middle, smells bad? Here, you take a look.”

The pegasus’ mind still lagged behind reality by a shade or two, which only made everything worse when she caught up to the present. When Pinkie snapped her discovery out into the open, she had done so beneath the light of a lantern.

She had only ever seen the plant in darkened rooms back at the hospital. If you exposed hair o’ the bog to light—

“Hey, Fluttershy? What’s happening?” Noticing something was amiss, Pinkie Pie brought the flower up close to her eye. A powdery blackness spread from the tips of its petals, rippling its way down to the sepals, and the blackened bits crackled and floated away on the wind. Soon, Pinkie was looking at nothing but a clean hoof. Blinking, she brought it to her muzzle and gave it an experimental lick.

From the way her eyes rolled in different directions, the taste wasn’t up to Pinkie’s standards. Her tongue poked out like a mailbox flag.

“You have to keep hair o’ the bog in the dark, Pinkie,” Fluttershy explained, guiding Pinkie’s hoof back on the road. “If you expose it to light, it disappears just like that.”

“Really now?” Pinkie tapped the road in thought. Then she gasped, and Fluttershy knew the smile on Pinkie’s face would visit her in a very bad dream someday. “Hold on,” the earth mare said.

“Pinkie—!” No use—Fluttershy found herself addressing empty air while she heard splashing in the distance. Then—

“Hi again!”

And once again, Pinkie Pie whipped out another hair o’ the bog in the light. Fluttershy had just enough time to count its four petals before it too charred up and blew away into the night.

“That’s cooool.” Pinkie poked her formerly occupied hoof. “Does that happen every time?”

Fluttershy didn’t even have the breath to mount an argument before the earth pony skittered off again. She could only look on like her hooves were chained to sinking cruise ships as Pinkie returned with a third blossom. “Please—stop...”

“Zwoosh!” Pinkie watched the ashes fly away again. “Gee, I could keep this up all night!”

All... night? Terror was a studded band squeezing Fluttershy’s heart. She tried to focus her gaze on Pinkie, but the earth mare trailed afterimages behind her with every bob and nod of her head. Her lips were making words, and Fluttershy couldn’t hear them. When Pinkie slipped off and returned with hair o’ the bog number four, the world around the flower collapsed into colors as if it were a wet painting being dragged across a window. The flower itself remained defined and in focus, the hairs in its center sharper than the finest needles Rarity kept in her boutique.

“Hair o’ the bog’s an extremely rare thing.” The words of Fluttershy’s father echoed in her head. “You just don’t find more than four of it at a time, so we’re always careful to save up what we can get...”

“—couldn’t find any more over there. Still—this is so much fun, Fluttershy! Here we go!”

With a sound like a million candy wrappers crying out at once, the last hair o’ the bog curled in on itself, turned dark, and dissolved in the breeze. Fluttershy and Pinkie watched it drift away in silence.

“That was fun,” said the latter, casting her eyes down the road. “Oh, razzleberries! Everypony else is super far ahead, aren’t they? Good thing I found those flowers so quickly, or else we’d be in trouble, wouldn’t we?”

As Pinkie dashed off to catch up to the peloton, Fluttershy took one last look in the general area where her friend had found the flowers. The same sparrow caught in Pinkie’s tail flitted onto the road in front of the pegasus’ hooves, tilted its head up at her, and twittered.

“Because she’s Pinkie,” Fluttershy answered. “I’m one of her best friends, and I still can’t keep track of all of her favorite Tuesday morning breakfast meals.” She sighed. “I just don’t know about her sometimes,” she concluded, galloping off after her friend.

***

Did they call it Bighorn Bluff because it was that good at calling out the unprepared and out of shape? There wasn’t any other sensible explanation—the incline departed so steeply from horizontal that if she turned over and lay on her back, she’d slide all the way down to the bottom. As she reached another hoof out in front of her and dragged herself up to it, her head started swimming like a guppy in a Mixmarester.

“Whoaaa.” Pinkie Pie crawled up next to her. Her tail had lost some of its curliness a mile ago, and her mane slid beneath her face and the road as she moved. “I guess they meant it when they called this a grade one climb, huh?”

“I had no idea ponies could be this cruel to travelers,” the pegasus whimpered. Gritting her teeth, she pumped her wings and winched herself back onto her hooves, and she helped Pinkie Pie stand on hers, too.

“Thanks,” she said. She took one glance at the two of them, standing on that road in various degrees of dishevelment—Fluttershy’s mane was splitting like knobbly vines and Pinkie was still a little damp from her earlier treks into the water—and she let loose with one of her heartier gigglesnort fits. “We both look kind of out of it, don’t we? Hang on, I think I still have a thoughtcake in here for some on the go energy.”

Whipping her tail in front of her, she opened it up like a purse and rummaged through it, pulling out a pinwheel, instant disguise glasses, a party popper (with a hair trigger, apparently—it just missed going off in her face!)... “Ah ha! Here you go!”

Fluttershy cringed. Pinkie would have to put some thought into transporting her latest innovation—most of the frosting had smeared off, the paper was dripping, and that was definitely a tangle of pink hair lying across the top. “It’s okay,” said the pegasus, nudging the treat back at Pinkie. “I think I’ve found my second wind, anyhow.”

“Works for me.” Pinkie popped it into her mouth and trotted after her friend. “Mm, mmm—ghhk!”

“It looks like we’re almost at the top,” Fluttershy continued, ignorant of the subsequent gagging behind her. “I can see the pennants from here.”

“P-tah!” Pinkie scrutinized the soggy clump of pink hair she’d spat on her hoof. It must not have been as exciting as she thought it would have been. She let it fall to the ground. “And look—” hooking her hoof back down the road— “we must’ve passed half the competition back there. Everything’s going really well right now!”

Against all odds, everything was. Fluttershy looked over her shoulder—clusters of pastel colored spots strung all along the ascending path told her that she and Pinkie were far from the only members of the Trouble with Death Disguised as Slopes Club. Granted, they still had to deal with the half of the field ahead, who were carving their way up the switchbacks like master chefs. Still, Fluttershy knew she was once again trying her best to stay in the race, and that effort was what mattered most, regardless of its outcome.

“Hey, you hear that?” Pinkie’s ears swiveled toward the summit.

Fluttershy listened. They were faint, like tiny rivulets trickling down the side of a house, but she could make out what they were: cheering ponies. She also thought she heard the blaring of horns and stamping applause, whistling, the buzz of whirling ratchets—

Oh no.

“P-p-p—!”

Fluttershy took on a swift trot—anything faster than that would earn her the premature attention of her friend, and it was better that Pinkie was distracted so some distance could come between them.

“P-p-p-p—!”

It was a futile gesture of self-preservation. She could only pray. She closed her eyes and braced herself.

“Paaaaarty!”

No given resident of Ponyville walked outside their door without memorizing contingency plans for at least seven different kinds of disasters (though such plans often summed to running, hiding, screaming in hysterics, or some combination of the three). The town also had the dubious honor of being the only locality in Equestria to include a levee for “mundane hazards” in the municipal books.

Depending on the calamity du jour, healthcare in Ponyville was either mind-blowingly competent or served less use than bandages made of tacks and fire, so it paid to develop a measure of resilience on one’s own. You never knew just what kind of menace could come speeding at you at any moment, whether it was an errant Rainbow Dash bailing on yet another one of her aerial stunts, or—worse—Pinkie Pie en route to a party. So, as Fluttershy’s ribcage collapsed into a hoop from the supersonic doom ramming into her hindquarters, a small corner of her mind reluctantly admitted she would be all right afterward.

The road disappeared beneath her in a smear, the wind roared in her ears. Every turn she screamed past hauled her to the brink of blacking out. She sailed over the edge of the road several times, with nothing between her and the ground but hundreds of feet of air, only to be yanked back each time. She couldn’t tell if Pinkie was holding onto her so much as she was holding onto Pinkie. Ponies yelled after them in their wake. When Fluttershy tried to shut her eyes, nausea pooled in her stomach.

If it were possible to die of fright, she could’ve entered the Summer Lands three different times from this episode alone. Pinkie Pie was en route to a party. Only by Celestia’s grace had nopony perished for it, past or present.

They crunched to a halt—that’s what it felt like to Fluttershy’s bones, at any rate. Pinkie all but dropped the pegasus on the ground as she stood up on her hind legs, hooves thrown into the air. “Hello-o-o, Bighorn Bluff! Are you ponies ready to get down and party?”

The pennants marking the peak of Bighorn Bluff were still spinning from where Pinkie shot past them. When Fluttershy’s head stopped spinning with them, she saw the great host of campers planted just off the sides of the road. They had pitched colorful, sloping tents and had set up campfires as tall as houses. Many of the revelers wore beads, blew into whistles and party horns, or danced to the raucous riffs blaring out of a gramophone somepony had thought to bring with them. Sparklers and strings of firefly lanterns were everywhere.

And so was Pinkie. In one corner of Fluttershy’s eye, a circle of ponies pitched the party mare up and down like it was her birthday—in another corner, her hooves perforated the ground like the needles of a sewing machine, each step in perfect synchronicity with the stallion hot-hoofing it across from her. She spun on her head while balanced on top of somepony’s tent. She destroyed a pony in checkers with a horde of triple-decker super kings. She drank all the punch.

The crowd couldn’t get enough of her. They hurled beads and flowers in her direction as she dove into a filly pool from a log three stories tall. Cartwheeling into an outdoor kitchen, she slapped together a seven-layer dip in six seconds and ladled it out with chips in even less. Even some of the racers she and Fluttershy had passed were cresting the top of the bluff and stopping—stopping—to watch what Pinkie would do next. She was truly in her element.

Fluttershy couldn’t have been further out of hers if she were a fish on the surface of Pluto. She dropped to the ground with both hooves over her head as two pegasi alighted on either side of her.

“Is that...” The mare on Fluttershy’s left gasped. “No way. No way. Flits, check it out. That’s Pinkie Pie.”

“Oh, gosh. It is,” said the other mare. Her voice was a little on the nasal side and instantly familiar. “Hang on, sis. I gotta take a photo. Ponyville pride!”

Fluttershy peeked out from beneath her forelock just in time to watch the light purple pegasus pull out her camera. No. It wasn’t just a camera. Calling it a camera would have been the same thing as calling a killer whale a dolphin: technically accurate, but nopony would believe it. The lens mounted on it was as big as a pony’s head and had more rings than a multiple divorcée. Fluttershy estimated such a pony could pool her settlements to pay for one and still need to put part of it on credit.

The dragonflies decorating Flitter’s haunches were no coincidence. She didn’t have kingdom-wide fame like Photo Finish, perhaps, but those in the know spoke in whispers of a shutterbug in Ponyville who excelled in capturing agile, elusive subjects in the four corners of a frame.

Fluttershy had a print set of her hummingbird collection.

“Hey, Pinkie Pie!” Flitter’s sister hailed the bubblegum blur throwing it down in the middle of a dance circle. “Pinkie! Over here!”

Pinkie’s neck stretched high into the air, spotting her addresser a moment later. “Cloudchaser! Oh my gosh, I’ll be right there!” And she was—she dropped below the heads of the ponies around her, popped back up not two feet in front of Fluttershy, and immediately turned to gab with Flitter. “Whoa, baby—you switched to a Neikon, huh? I’m a Cannon kind of filly myself.”

Flitter turned one of the rings on her lens. “Neikon makes the better glass now. They acquired a fluorite quarry out in Seijimare last year, and the optical clarity is huge.”

Pinkie nodded in appreciation and continued talking shop while Fluttershy looked on in silence. She’d never seen a camera in Pinkie’s loft, ever, but that wasn’t stopping the earth mare from pointing out all the features on Flitter’s new lens. When it came to knowing every pony in Ponyville, after all, Pinkie never boasted. She just did.

“Hey,” said Cloudchaser, bending down to Fluttershy’s ear. Her voice was on the husky side of things and surprisingly pleasant to listen to. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Pinkie got that flower she’s wearing, do you?”

Fluttershy rubbed a little crescent in the ground with her chin before the other pegasus’ words reached through to her. Irises crashing to the size of pennies, she glanced up at Pinkie’s mane, just behind her right ear.

Of course, hair ‘o the bog was far from the only flower to grow in Blackhoof Bayou, and Pinkie’d had enough of them thrown at her this evening to perfume a city block. Fluttershy had absolutely no reason to believe that the blossom nestled just behind Pinkie’s was her father’s fateful cure—Dr. Sundown had all but ruled out that possibility years ago. It was much to her surprise, then, that she looked expecting a hair o’ the bog to peek back out at her like a pitiful orphan in some Manehattan alley while his friend looted her saddlebags—and it was even more to that surprise that she found that exact orphan in Pinkie’s mane. Er, flower—with regard to the orphan. Pinkie’s mane was a mane and didn’t enter into the simile (unless it served as the alley)...

Focus, Fluttershy! She was getting way off track, and she wasn’t even wearing saddlebags. She remembered Cloudchaser had asked her a question. “I—I honestly don’t know,” she said. In the meantime, Pinkie looked like she was wrapping matters up with Flitter.

“So you don’t mind if I take a quick photo of you in action, right?” asked Flitter, lining up her camera. A trio of flashbulbs sprang out of the camera’s body like hydra heads in miniature, filament fangs ready to bite and tear.

The orphan simile returned to relevance with shocking speed.

“Fire when ready!” said Pinkie.

Time slowed. Sound deepened and echoed. Flitter’s eye moved behind the viewfinder at a glacial pace. If Fluttershy didn’t do anything, the result would be obvious. She tried to speak up, tried to get their attention before it was too late, but the words stuck to the insides of her lungs and her hoof wouldn’t reach up to Flitter in time.

Was this it? She’d failed Pinkie’s father once before. Could she explain herself to him if she failed twice, just because his daughter didn’t know any better than to follow a simple rule of handling?

She had only one choice, which was to say she had none. There was only the promise of pain as Flitter’s hoof applied pressure to the shutter. Power coiled in her hind legs and lashed out, driving her into the space between camera and subject. For a frozen moment, her insides encased with the frosts of fear, she stared down the barrel of the lens and into the photographer’s eye behind it, magnified and predatory.

The world detonated with a click.

Splotches of red danced on a field of burning white that wouldn’t fade even with her eyes shut, cancelling direction. She didn’t even feel herself hit the ground a moment later. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t hear—she was trapped in a box with at once too little light and far, far too much of it. Without instructions from her insensate brain, her hooves floundered as they tried to regain their footing. She could tell nopony was rushing over to help her back up, at least, and that was good. From the way she’d acted out just then, ponies were probably putting her below a starving dragon on the list of animals one didn’t approach without body armor and a DNR.

For the moment, though, Pinkie and her hair o’ the bog were safe, and that was the important thing.

“Hey, Fluttershy! They’re taking pictures over there, too! C’mon!”

The pegasus’ sight returned to her just in time to catch her friend’s tail melting into the crowd toward a small knot of waving admirers, all of them with cameras of their own. Her stomach didn’t sink so much as it drilled into the earth and found lava. Her body took over from there. She knocked aside clumps of dancing ponies and uprooted tables, chairs, and tents in her wake. She didn’t even hear the angry shouting directed at her from behind, her only concern at the moment still some distance out in front of her. As Pinkie lined up to pose for the other cameraponies, Fluttershy threw herself through the air, her front hooves outstretched—and crossed into the line of fire.

Click.

“Hello,” said the ground as it received her cheek. “Nice of you to drop in.”

Pinkie helped Fluttershy stand back up again, brushing slate dust off of the pegasus’ face. “Gee. I thought that modelling career of yours had put the kibosh between you and cameras. But not tonight, I see! You’re really throwing yourself into these pictures, and I’ve never had so much fun in the past hour or so! C’mon, girl!” Pinkie jammed Fluttershy’s cheeks between her hooves and carried her away. “There’s tons more ponies out there who’d love to take your pretty face home with them!”

Every time Fluttershy tried coming back to her senses, Pinkie Pie would drag them somewhere else for a new photograph. She was a spirit chasing her body through a laughing world, dying and returning to life beneath the hot gaze of flashbulbs. She remained lucid long enough in between to do what was necessary: a shielding hoof here, an outstretched neck there—but she was faltering.

“Pinkie...”

Pinkie hopped onto her shoulders and did a hoofstand. Somepony took a picture.

“Pinkie,” Fluttershy repeated, louder than the first time.

Her friend still didn’t seem to hear her as they both flowed into a tango dip. A rose materialized between Pinkie’s teeth. More pictures.

“Pinkie, please.” Tears were forming in the pegasus’ eyes, both at her friend’s obliviousness and her own inability to call attention to herself.

“Hey, Fluttershy, open those wings!” With no other warning, Pinkie hoisted Fluttershy high into the air, higher than the heads of the ponies around her. Between the myriad splotches dancing across her vision like tears in the fabric of reality, she saw most all of them had cameras leveled in her direction.

Was this it? Was this her final moment—to be at once the center of attention and ignored? She’d lived that life before—or, she’d died that death; they were one and the same thing on the runways of Equestria’s fashion community. Everything was decided for her: her clothes, obviously, how many leaves of lettuce went into her afternoon salad, the atom-tight train schedules between Manehattan and Seaddle and Los Pegasus, the exact number of photographs Photo Finish let the gallery take before spiriting her off to a different stage...

They’d put her to sleep in the softest beds in Equestria and wondered why she carried herself in such pain. She had a firmer bed back home, which helped realign her spine after a hard day of working with her patients—but of course they didn’t know that. They couldn’t have. She had been the center of attention, and she’d never felt so ignored in her life.

She would do anything to keep that nightmare from happening to her again.

Anything.

She bent down, hooking her hooves underneath Pinkie’s forelegs. This prompted the earth mare to look into Fluttershy’s eyes—and the recognition in those shrunken irises was almost good enough to let her out of what was coming next. Almost.

A primeval cry tore itself free from Fluttershy’s throat as her wings rowed her forward into the air. The front of her body rotated beneath her hind legs, lifting Pinkie off the ground, and for one moment made eternal in the scrutiny of all the cameras present there, the both of them were airborne. Then Fluttershy flipped right side up with her hooves wrapped around Pinkie’s ribs, and Ponyville’s premier party pony wheeled over her shoulder and slammed onto the ground. When the dust cleared, everypony had fallen silent, Pinkie’s eyes were staring straight into the stars, and Fluttershy had one hoof planted on her friend’s sternum.

“Pinkie,” the pegasus said in entreaty. “Pinkie—what are you doing?”

“Ha—” She had been silent before that evening. This was the first time she had stuttered. “Having fun?” she offered.

Fluttershy kept her hoof pinned on her friend. “Yes. That’s exactly it. That’s all you’ve really wanted to do tonight: have fun, right?”

“Well, why wouldn’t we want to have fun?” Pinkie tapped Fluttershy’s hoof. “Isn’t that what this race is all about?”

The pegasus narrowed her eyes and brought her head down until their muzzles were almost touching. “It’s about doing what’s important. And on most nights, you’d be right. Rarity convinced me on the airship that you were going to make this night the best thing it could be.

“But this stopped being like most other nights when I learned your father was sick. Now our mission is to get him medicine only we can provide for him while we’re racing, and you’re going off burning it up at every opportunity you can get. Do you want to know how many times I had to keep you from destroying your father’s medicine tonight? I sure would, ‘cause I’ve lost all count of it by now. It’s kind of sad how I’m the one who’s looking out for him when his own daughter can hardly keep track of her own tail!”

Fluttershy saw her words beginning to take root in Pinkie’s brain. It didn’t happen all at once—understanding never did with her when it came to important matters—but it was happening all the same: the widening of her eyes, the slow closing of her mouth, the flattening of ears.

“But that’s just what you normally do, isn’t it?” she insisted, her voice ironclad. “You just let others worry about the stuff that needs to get done while all you can think about is how to amuse yourself in the meantime. Life’s always a party with Pinkie Pie, right? Well, guess what! Sometimes, there isn’t time to party. Sometimes, we have to make sacrifices and get to work. Sometimes, Pinkamena Diane Pie, we have to be responsible!”

To prove her point, the only responsible pony on Bighorn Bluff’s top reached behind Pinkie’s ear and came away with the flower she’d given her life for over and over again to make sure it remained intact. And intact it was—but the tips of its petals had turned a discouraging shade of black.

“This should have burned.” Fluttershy delivered each word separately, just to ensure her friend understood. She dropped the flower onto Pinkie’s face and lifted her hoof, her point made, and she stepped away from her friend to give her some room. The wind blew overhead, oblivious to everything below it.

“I...”

Pinkie had turned away from her to wipe her face, her mane and tail sagging off of her like curtains. Zero curliness—no ruler could have drawn lines as straight as those falling off of her head, and the sight of her friend like that penetrated Fluttershy’s wrath. She felt a mossy feeling dividing in her gut. “Pinkie?” She reached out to the earth pony, the iron in her voice gone—

Pinkie’s tail cracked the air where Fluttershy’s hoof would have been had she not yanked it back in time. The pegasus could still feel the shockwave course up her foreleg like a cold snap.

“I thought we were friends!”

Her very first thought when Pinkie turned around was that her face was melting—tears gushed from Pinkie’s eyes and out her nostrils, and her lips quivered and made strange sucking noises. The sight and sound both bewildered and chilled Fluttershy, and as she opened her mouth to say something—the words lodged in her throat and wouldn’t come unstuck.

“What happened to the ‘kind’ you?” Pinkie sobbed. “You throw me to the ground like that, then you yell at me some more? How did this happen? I don’t—I—!” Without warning, she took off sprinting down the far side of the bluff, her gasps and bawling trailing after her as she descended back to the bayou.

Boom, went the grenade.

“Pinkie, wait!” The words finally came unstuck, and Fluttershy dashed after the fleeing pony. Lanterns flashed in her eyes and were gone the next moment, and her hooves all but devoured the road beneath them. Fluttershy galloped and galloped, passing a few racers along the way to angry outbursts as she concentrated on the one pony she needed to catch, but with herself feeling like half of her chest had been blown out of her skin, she couldn’t get very far.

After several minutes of flat-out charging, with her heart hanging into space and her lungs tattered and ragged, she had to dig in her hooves and stop at the base of the bluff. She peered into the darkness as far as she could, but it served no use.

Pinkie Pie was gone.

***

The music had always been with her.

If Celestia was responsible for singing the sun into the sky, and Luna the same for the moon, then some other tune kept them sailing on in the interim. That song—that cadence, even—sat upon no Canterlot throne, had no windows cast to a colorful glory it never possessed. No pony gave thanks to it, prayed to it, called upon it to be witness, confided in it, died with its name on their lips. Most ponies lived their whole lives without hearing a single note.

Nevertheless, it sang.

She’d first heard it in her father’s piano when he’d free it from beneath its matted velvet cloth in the parlor every Saturday evening and play. The cracks in its soundboard would buzz or go whud. The pedal creaked and only worked above a high E flat. But even though a four-key span in the second octave never made a sound, the song would nevertheless swoop in, owl-like, to perch on the broken strings, and she’d sit on the floorboards and close her eyes while she listened to it thrum in her chest.

The day she earned her cutie mark, she’d dug up an old gramophone and vinyls out in the silos. In the groaning of the accordions and the oom-pah of tubas, she’d heard the song moving through them, too. One day, it asked her to lend it her voice, but the both of them knew the offer was a formality. Pinkie Pie lived every day singing to the song, and in turn she heard its echoes in everything around her.

She was... where was she? She was lying on her back on something soft and smelling a little like canvas. She heard animal sounds in the distance—sparrows and crickets chirping—but the sounds were muffled, as if they were traveling through a sponge. Something cool was draped across her forehead.

Presently a pair of voices filtered into her awareness: they belonged to a stallion and a mare.

“... dehydrated, mild contusions on her back, barely crawling when I found her. Smells like she’s taken a swim or two, too.”

“How kind of you to say that, Orderly.”

“What? Nightingale, I’m just saying—”

Pinkie Pie tried to open her eyes, but the unshaded lantern above her dumped light into her head like the Neighagara Falls. She shut them again and groaned, turning over.

“Hey, she’s awake,” said the stallion. Hoofsteps across a thin wooden floor halted at her side, and a hoof tapped her shoulder. “Hi, there. Can you hear me? Nod once if you can.”

The words took a while as they fought their way to her brain. It was a good thing he didn’t ask her to say “yes”—her throat was a tunnel of straw. Her mane rustled beneath her cheek as she followed the stallion’s orders.

“Good, good.” The stallion’s voice was warm and lively, and seemed ready to trip over itself if he spoke any faster. “Here, keep that towel on your head, okay? All right. Let’s sit you up, now. Nighty-whitey, can you toss me a cold towel? Thank y—”

Splat.

“Ack!”

Now upright, Pinkie rubbed her eyes and cracked them open. She’d been in a cot with a thin cotton blanket over her lower body for the past cupcakes-knew-how long, and the walls all around her were red canvas striped through with white—an aid station. Her legs felt like somepony had forced sand into her muscles, and she left behind a hot spot on the sheets where her back had once rested.

She then noticed the navy pegasus sitting by her cot had a wet towel splattered across the back of his head. Behind him, a gray unicorn poured a glass of water from a ceramic pitcher. “When will you learn to stop calling me those names?” the unicorn asked, setting the pitcher down.

“When you stop reacting to stuff like that.” Orderly chuckled as he peeled the towel off his mane. Taking the corner into his mouth, he twirled it so it folded into quarters before applying it to Pinkie’s back. The effect was immediate: the pain rushed out of the area with her breath.

The pegasus hummed in approval. “Feels good, right? Go ahead and hold those compresses in place for me, if you would.”

Floating the glass over, Nightingale wedged herself by Orderly’s side with a snort and a swift elbow to his ribs. “Don’t listen to a word he says. You’ll thank me for it.”

Orderly didn’t miss a beat. “Those who claim to possess the truth are often those who wish to suppress it.”

“Oh, hush.”

The pegasus gestured at his partner with both hooves, his jaw ajar. See? See?

Defying gravity, the corners of Pinkie’s mouth ticked upward. “You must be awesome friends.”

“It’s more like he’s failed to get a clue ever since we grew up on the same street,” Nightingale explained.

“Uh, ouch,” said Orderly.

They all laughed.

With Nightingale holding the glass for her, Pinkie had to drink its contents slowly—not that she felt like pounding it down, oddly enough. She noticed the two of them share a brief smile, and something glinted at the base of Nightingale’s horn. Anypony could’ve missed it even if they were paying attention, such was the thinness of the gold band resting there. Orderly had one too, which he wore around his neck on a slim silver chain.

The song was definitely there, passing between them like strands of sunlight on a summer breeze. When Pinkie looked real close at the two ponies before her, she thought she could make out a slight glow radiating from their bodies—Nightingale’s red mane gave off its own pleasing light.

“So, what’s your story?” asked Nightingale, setting the emptied glass back by the pitcher. “Running solo?”

Pinkie winced, the memories of that evening welling up within her. The words were out of her before she could stop them. “I was with a friend.”

“Uh oh.” Orderly cringed. “She leave you behind?”

“No.” Pinkie let the hoof holding the towel on her forehead fall away. “I left her.”

“You don’t say.”

Pinkie kept her eyes on the cot. She knew what she’d done, even if Fluttershy had yelled at her like that. In the heat of the moment, right when her friend needed her the most, she’d fled. Who could see that as anything else but plain jane dereliction of friendship duties? Who would want to be friends with her after that?

The sounds of galloping reached her from outside the walls—first muffled by distance, then growing louder and more distinct with every beat. Pinkie’s head snapped up at the tent flap, where the pinned-back fabric created a triangular portal facing out to the road.

“Fluttershy?”

The gallopers sped past the tent without faltering—none of them had the pegasus’ cheery yellow coat. Pinkie Pie listened to their hoofsteps fade before sinking back on her cot.

“Your little outburst there tells me you two are good friends,” said Nightingale, laying her hoof above Pinkie’s heart. Her mouth curved into a conciliatory smile.

“The super-duper best of friends,” Pinkie blurted. Then, as an afterthought, “Usually.”

“You don’t sound like the kind of pony who’s a terrible friend, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“Really?”

“Sure.” Orderly held out his hoof, which had some kind of wood shavings on it. “ Here, chew this, but do not swallow. It’s willow bark. It should help ease some of those aches of yours.”

“What about this ache? Right here?” Pinkie pressed her hooves over where Nightingale’s was resting.

“If you’ll let us be your friends,” said the unicorn, “maybe we can help you with that one, too.”

Nightingale’s words did something funny in that moment. Before, Pinkie had heard their sunlit song passing between them and them only, and the glow they gave off didn’t extend much further than that. But now their song was expanding, the golden current bowing out toward her too, and the song swelled in her ears with the ponderous momentum of the turning moon.

Pinkie threw her front legs wide. The other two got the hint.

“Thank you,” she whispered, pulling them in until their manes covered her head. “Thank you...”

***

The clattering of her hooves on the paving stones made plenty of noise, which was nice to have while she had no other pony racing at her side—the peloton had passed her by several miles ago. But not even the galloping of three thousand ponies could have drowned out Blackhoof Bayou’s natural soundscape. Bullfrogs croaked for mates from sequestered, grassy nests until their calls were thick enough to wade through. At hoof level, the chirping of crickets overlapped and meshed in ribbons of atonal song. Dragonflies as big as an eye thrummed near every lantern. And, concealing themselves in the thick overhead canopy, loons pitched their whooping cantos against a whippoorwill’s soliloquy in the distance.

They knew she was there, of course. But they weren’t like the animals from back home. In all of their calling and singing to one another, none of it pertained to the pegasus ambling through their midst.

Not that she deserved to be spoken of, of course—not after her monstrous outburst from earlier. No matter how she tried to stack her points in her head, not matter how much she told herself she’d had good intentions, all of that burned away in the fiery glare of her cruelty.

In the heat of the moment, right when her friend needed her the most, she’d let her go.

Keep going, she told herself. You don’t deserve to have anypony waiting for you at Brindlebrook Valley, but... keep going.

Somehow, her legs continued their trudge forward. So lost was she in her thoughts that she didn’t even realize she had reached the summit of Roewillow Crest, the final climb of the race before it tumbled back down toward the finish line on the other side. Only when she felt the wind did she lift her head.

In keeping with its name, Roewillow Crest rose and fell along the edge of Blackhoof Bayou in a crescent shape—the Via Equestria chose to run along its spine instead of carving up the hillside with tortuous switchbacks. The willow trees had sprouted thick and bushy at the base of the crest but were somewhat more spaced out where Fluttershy was, allowing her to look back over the bayou. Bighorn Bluff and its revelers continued to glimmer in the distance, and she could make out little sequences of lantern light snaking through the undergrowth. The skies opened above her once more in even parts clouds, stars, and moonlight.

Filtered through the willow boughs, the breeze on Fluttershy’s face wicked away harmful thoughts like a mother whispering a song to her foal. The longer she listened, the more she found herself wanting to stay. She could hop into one of the willows, she realized—nestle in the fork of a sturdy branch, curl up and wait for the morning to find her there. She’d had enough of the night. Her eyes were drooping and shot through with red, and her wings sagged from her shoulders like cast iron. All she wanted to do was stop and listen to the noises of the bayou, especially the guitar playing filtering through the willows. They played a slow ballad, their melody pushing against the cool, elevated air like warmed honey. This, Fluttershy could handle.

A hundred bullhorns blared in her brain at the abrupt absurdity of it all. A guitar? Since when did willow trees sound like guitars? The answer ran parallel to thoughts like “never” and “only to Pinkie’s ears”, and it was the second thought that grabbed her attention like an antlion darting out from its pit. Somepony had a guitar nearby, and she began to sing.

My name is Pinkie Pie, and I refuse to cry.

There’s tempers swirlin’ in this world, so this is what I’ll try-y-y-y...

Fluttershy sprinted as if the world had turned to flame behind her. Even if its owner hadn’t mentioned her name in the lyrics, that voice was more memorable than the full corps of the Equestrian Honor Choir belting out Broaddray showtunes.

To make your days feel worthy, without blame or regret.

And though you yell, I sure can tell your day’s not over yet...

Surmounting the apex of Roewillow Crest, Fluttershy spotted the tall red-and-white striping of an aid station just down the road. The song emerged from within the tent, but it lacked the frenetic pacing of Pinkie’s usual repertoire—her voice flowed legato through her words, affecting vibrato when she held a note.

So let me try to make you smile, smile, smile.

Give me a chance—how ‘bout we dance a while?

‘Cause I love to see you smile, smile, smile,

since you’re still a friend of mine.

Fluttershy quieted her hoofsteps as the guitar bumped out a two-bar interlude. By the start of the second verse, she’d stopped just outside the aid station, safely back from the shaft of light pouring out from the front flap.

I’d rather have you grin, I’d rather have you beam.

I understand you’re feeling bad, so let me on your team.

I’ve got a perfect average in home runs for the heart.

‘Cause I believe that spreading glee and laughter is my finest a-a-a-art...

Hearing Pinkie so close by—Fluttershy’s chest wanted to cave in. The slow, restrained tempo of her friend’s song should’ve been a lament for all the world, an agreement to come to terms with a life that wouldn’t owe her the same kindness. And yet, when she launched into her refrain, she launched—her voice was not so much defiant as much as it was assured of its meaning. It was as if having a cake and eating it too were not only possible, it was a moral imperative.

Fluttershy had to hold her hoof against her mouth. What had she done?

Hey, I want to see you cheer, cheer, cheer.

It’s my mission here to make this crystal clear. (Do you hear?)

Come on in and give Pinkie a cheer, cheer, cheer.

Why are you just standing there?

The guitar transitioned into an arpeggiated bridge—ever flowing, but nevertheless returning to its roots with every new bar. Fluttershy could not have missed its meaning. Even after her shouting, even after her threatening, even after throwing her friend to the ground—Pinkie could have played in there until the day Princess Celestia grew weary and faded, and beyond even that, if only to wait for her.

Fluttershy felt a tear collecting along the rim of her eye as she passed into the tent.

Pinkie had her eyes closed on the cot with a guitar pressed to her chest. Another cot on the other side of the tent supported the two medics responsible for running the aid station, and they looked up and smiled at her as if they’d been expecting her. Sliding over, the stallion patted the spot next to him with a wing, while the unicorn next to him nodded in encouragement.

From the way Pinkie rolled her head with the melody, sending her mane bobbing to and fro, no pony would have guessed she’d come away from a shouting match with one of her best friends. True to Fluttershy’s nature, her stomach twisted into shapes that would’ve humbled a pretzel. How could she be forgiven so easily? How did she deserve to be forgiven at all?

She was being presumptuous. Was she even forgiven in the first place?

“I think I might tweak some of the words later,” said Pinkie, looking up from her playing. She shrugged.

“I like it,” Fluttershy offered, after some time.

Pinkie gave the pegasus a short smile as the notes from her guitar came to a crescendo. For a beat, they circled everypony like a sisterly embrace, snug and real—only to drop away as Pinkie’s voice returned. Sotto voce at first, her words swelled and grew triumphant as she sang.

It’s true, we’ll fight and scratch and holler. But don’t you feel bad,

‘cause friendship will win over all the little things like that.

There’s one thing I’ve learned to carry where there’s trouble or strife:

I’ll always count on my ultimate love of li-i-i-ife...

Fluttershy caught herself tapping her hoof in time with the music. Pinkie seemed to catch her, too—she looked over with a wink, and her voice brightened as she played her way into the pre-chorus.

It’s too short for resentment, so can we meet halfway?

When you’re in need, I’ll come, indeed. Let’s forge a brand new day.

Pinkie jumped to her hind legs and bounced on the cot as she slashed out a quartet of rising arpeggios. Captured by the rhythm, Fluttershy’s wings lifted her into the air, and the two friends began to dance with each other, their hearts pounding in the throes of a new joie de vivre.

How could she have thought for even one moment that Pinkie was angry with her? Maybe it was a trick of the light, but she could have sworn her friend had acquired a golden aura—like sunlight swirling in a summer breeze. Suddenly, her lungs brimmed with burning urgency, and the words belting out of her mouth harmonized with Pinkie’s like the two of them had rehearsed them as they spun each other through the air.

It’s obvious you love to soar, soar, soar,

‘cause with every smile, you climb a mile more.

The past is past, so let’s just soar, soar, soar.

What else could I ask of you?

Come on, Fluttershy! Pinkie took over the song from there, settling back onto her hooves and placing the guitar on her cot. Just smile, smile, smile. Take it to the road with dancing, dancing. As she led the pegasus toward the front of the tent, she looked back over her shoulder and waved.

‘Gale and ‘Lee, remember: smile, smile, smile.

Count yourselves as friends of mine.

Beaming between the ears, the medics waved her off. Still, Pinkie sang, repeating her last stanza over and over as she motioned Fluttershy to gallop after her, projecting her words into the night so long as they were within earshot of their hosts’ tent. High in the sky, hundreds of stars twinkled against the Milky Way in the dense purple void, and the moon, waxing, large, and at peace.

Come on, Fluttershy! Just smile, smile, smile.

Take it to the road with dancing, dancing.

‘Gale and ‘Lee, remember: smile, smile, smile.

Count yourselves as friends of mine...

***

The final miles of Blackhoof Bayou passed in tranquility—something Fluttershy never would have expected from Pinkie Pie, of all ponies. Not that she minded, of course. She knew the rest of the peloton had probably crossed the finish line in Brindlebrook Valley’s main square the better part of an hour ago, so all would be quiet by the time she and Pinkie arrived—and that was all she wanted after this past night. Even without the sun to summon them, the morning songbirds were warming up their melodies from their niches in the trees. Passing beneath the one-mile-out lantern hanging above the road, Fluttershy allowed herself a small chuckle.

Come on, Fluttershy! Just smile, smile, smile. The words in her head translated to hummed notes in her throat, and Pinkie ‘s ears perked at the tune.

“It’s stuck in your head too, huh?”

“It is,” said Fluttershy. “You make a very good point with them.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“It’s the part where you suggested we meet halfway.” Fluttershy looked ahead—the tree cover of Blackhoof Bayou was already beginning to give way as the road sloped downward. “I lost my patience with you tonight. I didn’t know what to do to get you back on track, but it certainly wasn’t what I tried. I see the halfway points now, and next time I’ll use them. And—I’m sorry.”

“Ha! Hahaha! Hahahaha!”

Fluttershy had to admit that, of all the things she’d expected Pinkie Pie to answer with—accepting her apology, downplaying its importance, even shrugging—laughter had been the last thing to enter her mind (though she really should have seen that one coming). Yes, that was Pinkie Pie, tearing off like she’d borrowed a tank of laughing gas from the town dentist.

But—and this sounded insane to her, too—this was a different kind of laughter. Laughter was to Pinkie Pie was what blinking was to other ponies. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t mean it whenever she cracked up. Her assigned role among the Elements of Harmony gave her comic inclinations a sincerity to the point of inflicting pain on those around her.

Still, this laughter was different. Fluttershy picked her brain until she tickled its very center—the answer danced just out of her reach, laughing and laughing. Stymied, Fluttershy pulled back with the first words that came to her head.

She’s laughing at herself.

Her eyes widened. Pinkie Pie’s head had tilted back and her eyes were closed. That was her answer. There was no other laughter in Equestria like the kind that came with self-revelation.

“You shouldn’t have to feel sorry,” Pinkie told her, wiping a tear from her eye. “What you told me was right on the money.”

Fluttershy gaped. “H—how?”

“I talked a lot with Nightingale and Orderly while we waited for you to catch up,” Pinkie explained, hopping a small fissure in the road. “Well, they married each other last year. So they were telling me about how they thought they were ready to start a family.”

“That’s wonderful!” Fluttershy’s thoughts flicked to her parents—she’d have to remember to write to them when she finished the race.

“It’s the best, isn’t it? Anyway, that got me talking about my family, and what Papa’s going through right now, and how I’m the one who’s supposed to get him the only medicine that can help him—and then we started talking about you. What you told me before we got to Bighorn Bluff? That whole responsibility thing? I told them exactly what you told me, and they seemed really impressed with you.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. When they learned how many different kinds of animals you take care of back in Ponyville, they thought I was friends with one of the most accomplished ponies they’d ever heard of.”

Blood rushed up Fluttershy’s face until she could have lit the road ahead with its heat. “They’re... too kind,” she whispered.

“But it’s true,” said Pinkie, giving the pegasus a wink. “So from now on, I promise I’ll do my best to be a more responsible pony. Responsibility’s going to be my middle name. And I think I know how I’m gonna go about doing that after we’re done with this race.”

Fluttershy nodded.

“Nopony knows this yet, so you’re the first to know.” Pinkie slid over to Fluttershy’s ear and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Mrs. Cake’s expecting. The baby’s due sometime this summer.”

“Oh, Pinkie.” Fluttershy giggled. “Anypony’s who’s paid attention could see that. I ran into her at the store while she was picking out a crib.”

“What? Aw, shoot. I thought I was the only one.”

Fluttershy drifted over and nuzzled Pinkie on her cheek. “It’s all right. I’m sure you’ll be a wonderful helper with the new foal.”

“Thanks, Fluttershy.”

They didn’t say anything else until after they’d passed the finish line—really, what was there left to discuss?

***

The envelope of the Opera Concordia measured a quarter-mile in its forward dimension and a third that abroad, and the Princesses’ seal painted onto its side, a downward-opening crescent moon inscribed within an eight-pointed sun, loomed impossibly large on a purple field. A five-deck gondola hung beneath its underbelly with enough space to keep a thousand passengers, a platoon of royal guards, two Princesses, and a full complement of the staff and officers necessary for its smooth operation comfortable for a month. Miles of hardened spider silk kept envelope and gondola from separating toward their native planes, which was a lot to ask of something measuring only as wide as a pony’s body on average. Even with the gondola’s weight held up with triply-redundant cabling, most of the guards stationed on the airship were pegasus engineers on the lookout for cracks or faults in the lines.

Rainbow Dash snorted to herself as she hovered a hundred yards behind the gondola. She knew how much trouble she could get into if she nicked even one of the lines—those guards weren’t hesitant about subduing anypony who so much as looked at them with the wrong arch of their eyebrows.

She cracked her wings out beneath the pre-dawn sky, took one final steadying breath, and screamed. “Ahhhhh!” Her wings lashed the air, dragging her signature contrail out of the atmosphere as she approached the lines. The first one whipped past her left ear, the second past her right—back and forth, she threaded through the lines like a laser to the sudden cries of guards eating rainbow-colored wake.

So what if they chased after her? They could throw her into Canterlot’s darkest dungeons for all she cared. Maybe she and her friends had a chance to get back in the race after Applewhack and Faility trudged in as the last ponies of their stage, but that chance died with Cluttershy and Pinkie Butt doing the exact same thing. The two of them even had the nerve to look satisfied as they crossed the finish line! How could they be happy with being the worst ponies in the whole race?

She angled herself vertically, pumping her wings for altitude until she was over half a mile above the Opera Concordia. Little gold-clad dots of white were flapping up to meet her—or take her into custody. Whatever. She pointed herself at the ground and plunged, passing by her would-be captors with enough velocity to drag them tumbling after her for a while.

Didn’t her friends understand what they were doing to her? She’d made it clear to them early on that this was her best chance to impress the Wonderbolts—a good showing in this historic race would have put more than her hoof in their front door. But now they’d look at her friends’ performance, see nothing but a pair of dead-last finishes in their first races, and chuck her application into the garbage bin forever. She made a second pass through the airship lines in half the time of her first, even deliberately rubbing her belly along one anchored to the gondola’s aft section, and it sang with her wrath in one low, sonorous note.

How could they ruin her future like this? How dare they even think about it! They were more than happy to help Applejack out when those conponies tried to swindle her farm away from her with their fancy dancy cider machine last autumn. They crashed that high class party in Canterlot, but that didn’t stop Rarity from becoming a star among those snobby elite types. And Fluttershy—Fluttershy, of all ponies—she didn’t even do anything to get into that modelling career! Haystacks, how many times had she told Rainbow about how much she hated the attention?

“Why?” she yelled to the stars. Her voice fell just as quickly, and she addressed herself. “Why me?”

She remained where she was, wings flapping only hard enough to keep her aloft, and let the guards approach her this time. They glared at her with their huge, blue eyes as they surrounded her on all six sides, and their captain, so noted by the crimson red crest protruding from his helmet, gave the order to return their captive to the airship.

“Are you trying to get everypony killed?” he asked over his wing.

“No,” Rainbow said, completely believing herself. “I’m pretty sure my ‘friends’ are doing that to me, though.”

The captain sighed. “To Tartarus with this,” he said, his voice gruff and edged with irritation. “You’ve only gotten worse since flight camp, Rainbow Dash.”

The pegasus gasped. She recognized that voice. If ever there was a voice to tell her she was in a steaming pile of minotaur manure, that was the one. “A— Amber Swift?”

“Never thought your old camp counselor would join the Guard, did you?”

“But you’re white,” Rainbow stammered. “Amber Swift was brown.”

“Regulation grooming,” Amber replied. “I can’t believe I’m still carting you off for breaking the rules after all these years. I can’t say it’s ‘just like the good ol’ times’.”

“Likewise.” They all alighted on the Opera Concordia’s upper deck and just below the bridge. An ornate door beneath the windows bore the same royal seal as the airship’s envelope, and the Guard captain pushed it open.

“I’m sure the Princesses would like to have a word with you,” he said, just before shoving the pegasus through the threshold and closing the door behind her.

“You didn’t have to give me a rug burn,” the pegasus muttered, rubbing her muzzle. She looked up from the rich, purple carpet at the hall before her. Scrolled columns were embedded into the golden-colored walls, with cheery sconces marking the halfway point between each pair of columns. A chandelier with hundreds of raindrop-sized crystals hung from the middle of the ceiling. There were guards posted all along the hallway, as expected.

What Rainbow didn’t expect, however, was for all of them to lie there on the floor, their eyes open, but unblinking. One of them was drooling on the carpet.

She looked down at the end of the hall at a pony she knew for certain did not belong there. Or, at least—she thought it was supposed to be a pony. She had a head, four legs, and a tail, yeah, and nothing about her seemed outright wrong. It was about what it didn't get right. Her pale coat was pulled a little too tight over her ribs. Her breathing didn't match the motion of her chest. Her hair seemed to waver even in the windless hallway.

She had formless, ashen smudging for a cutie mark. In fact, Rainbow wasn't sure if that could even be called a cutie mark.

She was busy running her hoof over the door on the other end of the hall—the one leading right into the Princesses’ royal chambers. Trails of inky, bubbling darkness remained after its passage, and it took Rainbow a few arrested breaths to realize what the newcomer was up to. When she did, the epiphany hit her like a falling castle—the subdued guards, the unfamiliar pony-thing that laid them low, and her proximity to the Princesses—

“Very funny, Amber Swift,” she called through the closed doors behind her. “This is seriously the lamest stunt you’ve pulled in your life—and you don’t even do stunts!”

Rainbow turned around just in time to see the pale pony-thing charging toward her. Her eyes were as large, white, and hollow as the moon, and holy Celestia she was fa—

Repose | Opera Concordia

The construction of Equestria’s first skyliner had been something of an open secret over the past two years. You’d have an easier time squeezing that last bit of toothpaste out of a tube made of tigers than you would squeezing anything official out of the Bremareton Shipyard—but the size of the Opera Concordia’s skydock meant that most anypony with eyes could picnic on a nearby bank and count the staterooms along the side of its gilded alabaster hull. Trains out west being cheap and speedy, families had planned entire vacations to the Seaddle area just to watch the ship come together.

Not that Twilight knew families did that firsthoof, nor had she learned that going there alone on a free weekend. Or that, if she'd had ever been there, she'd have given an instant's thought to teleporting on board and eluding the security patrols to study the levitation matrices inlaid in the hull, or the cyclonic repeating engines humming in the lower stern. She'd have never dreamed of strolling through the gardens of the Promenade.

Above all, she never would have gone to Princess Celestia to ask for a modest library in the bow of the vessel. Twilight was a practical pony, and books were very dense objects. Front-loading the ship with too many of them would drag the whole thing down like an anchor carved from a quasar—and of course there wasn't any kind of convenient levitation matrix that could counteract the issue.

Again, it wasn’t like she knew about any of these things before boarding the vessel for the Summer Solstice Steeplechase. Nevertheless, a small grin tugged at her lips and she couldn’t repress a small chuckle as she turned to the second chapter of The Work of the Work of Harmony: Marekind’s Latest Marvel. The book had come out a month ago with the christening of the ship, and its large, glossy pages still had that resiny, just-off-the-presses smell. On most days, that alone was enough to get her back hooves dancing.

If she hadn’t sunk herself a foot deep in one of the library’s numerous reading cushions, she would have been bouncing off the shelves like an oxygen molecule. Her library back in Ponyville was cozy, and her room in Canterlot had enough overhead for Rainbow Dash to practice her EKG maneuver, but those two could not begin to compare to this place. The Princesses’ sun-and-moon seal informed the library’s basic layout: the bottom floor was covered with resplendent gold carpeting and polished, round tables, while a pale blue crescent rose along the back of the room and leveled out into a spacious mezzanine. Banks of rosewood shelves ascended the walls and became them, the margins between the book cubbies inlaid with lustrous leaf filigree. Crystal chandeliers turned like mobiles from a domed ceiling painted like the sky on the verge of dusk. End to end, the library could’ve challenged Ponyville Town Hall in terms of spatial endowment.

The greatest feature of the library, however, lay along its forward edge. The kingdom’s best glassmakers had toiled for half a year on its formation—one month, it seemed, for every ten feet it amassed in height and breadth, Twilight could only hypothesize how they had put it in place. Set into the Opera Concordia’s lower bow and crossed with impossibly thin brass muntins for its mass, it gazed over the pre-dawn countryside slipping beneath it in silence. Anypony looking out from within its radius soon learned just how small they were in this wide open world, but they also learned how it was to see as gods saw.

Twilight had all of this to herself—the library’s only other patron had departed an hour before midnight. Sure, she’d signed up to run the Steeplechase’s night stages, and her circadian rhythm was now honed for optimal performance for the moonlit hours. But those first two books on the Via Equestria had flown by so quickly, and there was so much more she wanted to read! She turned the page in her book and tapped her chin in thought. The idea of pulling her first all-dayer had a certain, if bizarre appeal to it. She could do it, too. This upcoming day was a travel day, and they wouldn’t pull into Starsweep Peak until tomorrow. She’d have time to get her internal clock back on track for the night shift and read until her ears fell off.

Then the mezzanine doors banged open, and Twilight’s heart kicked her ribs so hard that it redefined the cage match.

“Twilight!”

The voice crack and the whole yelling in a library thing pointed to one pony, and one pony only. “Rainbow Dash! What are you—”

“Oh thank Celestia you’re here,” the pegasus cut in, half dropping, half slamming onto the main floor with a forward roll. She then shoved Twilight’s book aside and started tugging her out of her cushion. “You’ve got to come see this—I-I-I don’t know anypony else who’d know—”

“Rainbow—Rainbow!” Twilight pushed her friend away attempting to cope with the fastest violation of her personal space in recent memory. “What are you doing, barging in here like that?” she hissed. “You scared me half to death!”

“That makes two of us, then,” said the pegasus.

“You bet that makes two of us! Do they have barns ponies are born in at Cloudsdale, or—” Twilight ceased her tirade as her eyes caught up with her mouth.

If Rainbow’s weight shifted from hoof to hoof any faster than that, she’d have been tap dancing. She looked like she couldn’t decide whether to face Twilight or to watch the doors behind her, too, and her irises had contracted to the size of bits.

“Is this a prank?” Twilight’s eyes narrowed.

“Huh?” Rainbow’s ears folded against her head. “I—I don’t think it is.”

“What do you mean?” The unicorn stamped her hoof. “It’s either a prank or it’s not.”

“I—” Rainbow grunted. “Twilight. I have no idea what’s going on, and I’m getting freaked out over here. Please,” she added, clutching her friend’s hooves in hers. “I don’t know who else to go to right now.”

Twilight opened her mouth to speak—and closed it. A scared Rainbow was one thing. One reduced to begging set off more than a few alarms in her head. The pegasus was squeezing her hooves so hard that Twilight could feel the pressure on them. She couldn’t begin to imagine what had gotten so far into her friend’s head. But the evidence was there, staring her in the face, and it was her duty as a good friend to help out.

Who knew? Maybe there was a friendship report in it. She rose from her cushion, set her book on a nearby table, and nodded at Rainbow to lead her away—as long as they walked. The Opera Concordia may have been the largest airship to ever grace the Equestrian skies, but most of its interior hallways were only wide enough for two ponies to squeeze past each other.

From the library, Twilight and Rainbow climbed a flight of tiled, fanning-out steps into the Promenade, an open, three-chambered atrium rising through the heart of the skyliner’s five inner decks. At the fore of the bow chamber, a pair of brass-trimmed staircases rose in spirals from within clear glass tubes, and purple carpeting muffled the two ponies’ hoofsteps as they climbed their way to the top.

Twilight noted the way Rainbow couldn’t keep her eyes forward—half the time she was urging her on over her shoulder with exaggerated tilts of her head while spending the other half fixing her gaze on nothing. At least, nothing Twilight could see—every time they came around to face the atrium again, the pegasus all but plastered her muzzle against the glass as she scanned the space below. There was an Everfree wolfwood planted in the middle chamber that gave off the impression it wanted to sniff the occasional passing pony, but Twilight doubted that was what was eating her friend.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked Rainbow, peeling her friend’s face free of the glass for the fifth time.

“Princesses’ chambers,” came the reply.

Twilight missed her step, and she barely caught herself with a levitation field before the the staircase practiced unlicensed dentistry on her front teeth. “What? What were you doing up there?”

Rainbow subsequent account of her flight between the tethers was as burning to Twilight’s ears as actual fire.

“Habaza— Were you trying to get everypony killed?"

"Haystacks, Twi! You’re my counselor all over again!” Rainbow moaned, flaring her wings in defiance. Twilight winced; she’d heard stories about flight camp.

“You know what those cables are made of. I couldn’t take one out if I tried,” Rainbow carried on. “You—you honestly thought I’d do that if I could?” If her eyes had turned any harder than that, they could have scratched diamonds.

“No no no no no!” Twilight waved her hooves in front of her. “That wasn’t what I meant—”

“What did you mean, then?”

The unicorn shut up. Much as she wanted to protest Rainbow’s abject lack of common sense, she had to relent. She’d acquired a length of hardened spider silk some months back and, after fashioning a harness out of it, had suspended herself from a bundle of threads less than half a centimeter in diameter. Yes, she’d once witnessed Rainbow tear down a barn with nothing but momentum and spunk, but no wing-sharpening spell could compare to the adamantine scalpel Twilight’d dulled to cut the silk.

The words “We’ll talk later” popped into her head but went unvoiced. She hated saying those words. They were just as bad as redirecting the topic, which she was about to do, and were tantamount to admitting she’d been stumped. By that time, however, they had reached the top of the stairs and had stepped out beneath a pale orange sky. Paired teak walkways wrapped around the three glass and brass-latticed domes capping the inner Promenade, and some ponies were already up and about taking advantage of the loop for some early morning trotting.

“All right, rewinding,” said Twilight, drifting toward the starboard walkway. “Your old nemesis from camp catches you doing something incredibly dangerous and ill-advised—and I wholeheartedly agree with his judgment—and he escorts you to Princess Celestia’s quarters for disciplining.”

Rainbow hopped into the air and flapped alongside Twilight. “Yeah. Then comes the part when everything turns crazy. He tosses me into the hall and obviously there are gonna be more guards there, except every single one of them was—” The pegasus made a sudden, strangled noise. “Oh, Celestia. Hide me.”

After a brief shock, Twilight rolled her eyes at her friend’s choice of refuge. She looked ahead and determined the source of Rainbow’s panic with minimal difficulty: an echelon of six pegasus guards were banking toward her, led by their red-crested captain. “Rainbow, my tail isn’t going to keep those guards from seeing you. Get out.”

Her new rainbow-colored tail extension lashed the deck like a snake on a trampoline.

“Look,” she sighed. “Princess Celestia knows who you are. If her guards ask, I’ll tell them I’m taking you to her. Seriously—this is getting weird.”

“You don’t understand.” A hoof poked out from Twilight’s tail and pointed at the captain. “That’s my old counselor.”

“Oh.” She watched Amber Swift’s patrol fly overhead and exchanged glances with him, but that was the high point of their encounter. He led his patrol toward the bow in no particular hurry. “Well, that was anticlimactic.”

“Huh?” Rainbow risked a head check out from under her straight-cut sanctuary. Sure enough, her great fillyhood foe went along his way without betraying the slightest hint of acknowledging her presence. “Okay—you were wrong, Twilight. Things aren’t just weird. They’re getting super weird.”

“Because he ‘forgot’ he took you into custody just now?”

Rainbow stepped into the open and resumed walking, passing by the pools and sunchairs astern of the Promenade domes. “No. It’s not just that.”

“Then what?”

Rainbow sighed the exact kind of sigh a pony made when they knew what they were about to say next wouldn’t be believed. “Five minutes ago, he was unconscious.”

“You’re kidding,” said Twilight, trotting to catch up. Rainbow’s propensity for resolving conflict through battery echoed between the covers of her flight camp file. In her mind’s eye, Twilight saw a storm of blue hooves pounding on an unprotected head. She didn’t recall seeing any bruises on the captain as he flew past, but armor was good at hiding those kinds of things. “Did you do that to him?”

“W—what? Holy comoly, Twi!” Rainbow reared up and threw her forehooves wide. “Where’s my credit here? I’m not dumb enough to clobber a member of the royal guard. Somepony else’d done that to him, folded him up like an accordion or something, and dumped him there.” She pointed to a nearby section of gunwale. “The rest of his squad didn’t do much better.”

“Rainbow...” Way to go, Twilight. Accuse your friend of grievous assault without evidence, huh? The unicorn chose to remain silent—she had dug herself a very deep hole, and every reply that came to mind was a shovel in disguise.

“Just wait.” The pegasus stopped before the double doors leading toward the Princess’ chambers and turned toward Twilight. “I promise you I’m not going crazy. You’ll see.” Rainbow pushed the doors open.

Her ears collapsed and her wings followed suit a moment later. “No. No no no!”

Twilight tried to look around her friend for something—anything—out of the ordinary. What she saw was an orderly, brightly-lit hall with purple carpeting, golden walls, and five pairs of guards spaced over its full length, all of them giving the colorful pegasus in the threshold a questioning eye.

“This isn’t right,” Rainbow yelped. Her eyes darted toward the other end of the hallway—the final doors sequestering the Princesses from the rest of the Opera Concordia. “The words! Where’d they go?”

Twilight brought her hoof to her face, knowing the gesture couldn’t save her from dying of embarrassment. Finishing her outburst, Rainbow proceeded to charge into the hall as if the guards knew better than to block her way. She didn’t even manage to pass the first pair before they drew together, crossed their inner wings in her path, and angled the tips of their outer ones at Rainbow’s temples—their glares could have set a cockatrice to flight.

“She’s with me, sirs,” Twilight called to them. “We wish to have a brief audience with the Princesses.”

They looked up, recognized Princess’ Celestia’s protégée, and withdrew.

“That’s right,” Rainbow blurted. “Move aside, we’re coming through.”

Twilight resolved to drag that pegasus down to the library the first chance she got and read her all twenty-two volumes of Neat and Tidy’s Elements of Social Etiquette if she had to tie her to a chair. Tabling the thought for the moment, Twilight joined Rainbow at the other end of the hall.

The Princesses’ chamber doors were thick slabs of frosted glass, engraved on one door with an eight-rayed sun and the other with an upward-opening crescent moon, and both halves were as spotless as cheetahs vandalized by poison joke.

“This isn’t right,” said Rainbow, running her hoof over the glass. She pulled it away and looked at it as if she expected something to jump out at her.

“On the contrary, it looks like everything’s all right,” said Twilight. “What else were you expecting to see?”

“Uh, not this?” Rainbow Dash pointed at the guards. “They were knocked out when I got here, too. The door here—” smacking her hoof on the glass— “had writing on it, and I saw the pony who did it, except she didn’t seem like a normal pony.” The pegasus made whirling motions with her hooves. “She was pale—like really pale, skin and bones almost, too, and her eyes were these big white things! She was the one who’d knocked out all the guards, and when she brushed her hoof on the door like this, it left behind words.“ Rainbow demonstrated for her friend’s enlightenment, which would’ve been useful had Twilight needed to hear anything more. She cast a grip field around the pegasus’ tail and made to drag her away.

“I’m calling this here,” she grunted, her brows flat. Rainbow never settled for the easy way with things. “I’m not sure what you were—ngh, trying to pull just now, but believe—ugh, me. I’m not laugh—for crying out loud, will you stop acting like a yearling already?”

“Wait!”

“No. No more of this.”

“Twilight, look!”

Groaning, the unicorn looked over her shoulder, expecting absolutely nothing from Rainbow’s words by that point. She was wrong. Just beyond the Princesses’ doors was a tall silhouette, blurry and soft through the frosted glass, and parts of it rippled on their own.

Twilight dropped her spell. As soon as the magenta aura around her tail faded, Rainbow Dash crouched in place and snarled at the door, wings primed to launch. “All right!” she yelled. “Come on out!”

Her belligerence turned to confusion the moment the silhouette raised its head, as it developed a long, slender horn. Then a pair of wings rose from its sides like chrysanthemums in bloom, and a moment later, the doors swung outward.

“Ahhh.” Princess Celestia yawned, lifting a hoof off the floor as she did so. Her pink eyes opened when she finished and fell upon a unicorn who wanted nothing more than to disappear into the carpet. “Good morning, Twilight Sparkle,” said the Princess with a smile. “And good morning to you, Rainbow Dash.” Noticing the pegasus’ aggressive posture, she asked, “Is everything well?”

Twilight rushed over and shoved her hoof so far up Rainbow’s mouth that she felt a uvula. “Everything’s fine, Your Majesty! Rainbow Dash and I were just about to leave—weren’t we, Rainbow?” Her eyes flicked between the utmost respect for her mentor and rock-powdering rage at her friend.

Whether it was Twilight pumping her head up and down for her or Rainbow realizing the exact depth and texture of the trouble she was in, the pegasus nodded.

The brow lift was subtle, but to Twilight, it loomed above the stars. “Very well, then. If you’ll excuse me.” Princess Celestia’s tone was one step behind her words, and the cold hoof of fear brushed Twilight’s heart. But her mentor’s next words soon returned to their customary ease, brushing that fear aside. “It has been so long since I’ve slept in,” she explained with something of a guilty smile, “and I’m afraid I may have over-indulged myself. Duty calls! Good day to you both.” She passed down the hallway to the salutes of her guards and walked outside.

A small grin appeared on Twilight’s face as she worked through the math. The Princess couldn’t have been late to raising the sun by more than seventy-three seconds. Her bemusement lasted nowhere near as long as that, however, as it ended the moment she retrieved her hoof from Rainbow’s jaws.

“Well,” she said, scraping saliva off the end of her foreleg. “That could’ve gone a lot worse.”

Rainbow popped her jaw back in place with both hooves. “Twilight?” A lingering twinge in her cheek demanded a moment’s rubbing before she could continue. “Why’d you say we were leaving? We’re going out there to talk to her, right?”

“That was the original plan.” Even as she only saw them looking straight ahead, Twilight thought she caught one or two of the guards shooting her friend the kind of glare reserved for timberwolves pawing at the edge of the Everfree Forest. She turned to follow her mentor outdoors.

“Why isn’t it still the plan, then?” the pegasus asked as she trotted after her. “We’re gonna talk to her as soon as she gets done raising the sun, right?”

“That’s the thing, Rainbow,” Twilight replied. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“But I—”

Twilight spun around. “I know what you think you saw. But think about what the Princess saw. What I saw. Rainbow, I know you mean well, and I want to believe you’re not going through with this atrocious behavior of yours for nothing, but you don’t have any evidence we can show her. I mean, I—” She sighed and rubbed circles in her forehead. Looking Rainbow Dash in the eye during moments like these was like trying to reason with a rose-tinted hurricane. She imagined she’d even have more fun with the latter. “Fine. If you notice anything else weird happening over the next few days, you come talk to me, all right?”

Her offer didn’t go over with Rainbow as well as she expected it would have, since the pegasus fired back, “Just so you can send me away again, like you’re doing now?”

“Rainbow, please—”

“Princess Celestia is in danger! I thought you of all ponies’d care the most about that!”

If the guards had paid no attention to Rainbow Dash earlier, they sure were now. Their eyes changed from pea-sized irises to full-on deathgazes in moments as they had more time to take in the crouching, snorting pegasus mare in their midst.

Twilight knew those words should have provoked her. They should have stung, should have piqued her into fits of rage that tore her lungs to tatters. If there was one thing she took seriously in her life—even more so than learning from her friends—it was the bond she shared with her greatest mentor, a bond no normal pony in Equestria could ever hope to replicate as long as Twilight Sparkle walked upon the land. Questioning the integrity of that bond was questioning her right to live. How dare Rainbow use it against her?

And yet, as Twilight opened her mouth, the words of anger failed to come. She felt a surge of something different building over her head, ready to crash down the moment she faltered, and she only just threw up a mental dike against the assault. In anger’s place came a melancholy stepping into the vacated plaza of her mind, and her words to Rainbow were quiet. “Barring my family and you girls,” she said, referring to the rest of their friends, “she’s the pony who shaped me into who I am today. I owe her my life as I know it. So, if you feel the Princess is truly endangered—and I mean endangered—” Twilight hesitated. This sentimentality ground against some of the most fundamental scientific principles out there—skepticism and first-hoof observation, but their driving force swirled beneath them, unshakable and unstoppable: instinct. She breathed deep. “I’ll believe you.”

“She’s ‘truly endangered,’” Rainbow insisted, folding her forelegs across her barrel.

Twilight rubbed the bridge of her muzzle . Could she have expected this kind of thing to go any different with that mare? “Can you bring me proof?”

“You’ll have it.” Rainbow reached out for the door leading to the outside deck, only for it to rattle against a magenta aura. “C’mon, Twilight, quit blocking the door. Let’s talk to Princess Celestia.”

“No.” Rainbow could glare at her until Canterlot came crumbling down—she was not going through that door and making things worse for herself. “I’ll go and talk with her on your behalf. I believe you, Rainbow. But there’s not anything you and I can really do about this mysterious pony of yours right now.”

Rainbow Dash’s jaw hung in space.

This had gone on long enough. Twilight gritted her teeth, calling to mind the arcane motions of a second spell that would solve the problems she faced that instant. Rainbow’s eyes widened a moment later as strands of magical energy swirled into being around her limbs and barrel. She caught on, too late, to Twilight’s plan.

“I’ll see you back in the stateroom, okay?” said the unicorn, the point of her horn glowing white.

“Twilight, just what do you—”

Twilight collapsed the stasis field, using its inward momentum and the newly-freed part of her mind to bind Rainbow in place. A flash of light and a popping sound followed in short order, and when the sparkling afterglow cleared away, the pegasus was nowhere in sight.

She didn’t think there was anypony in the stateroom at the hour, so there’d be nopony to disturb Rainbow Dash while she got some much-needed rest. Reflecting on that thought a little, Twilight failed to stifle a yawn as it welled up from her lungs. Sleepy was as sleepy did. She wasn’t sure how her words were going to go over with the Princess in a little bit, but she could be more certain that a bunk downstairs was starting to call her name.

***

Smooth cotton sheets. Sculpted foam pillow. A mattress that never got hot beneath her flank, no matter how long she held it there.

Shoot. This kinda bedding was too good for her—she was gonna get soft by the time she made it back to Ponyville. Applejack swung her legs over the edge of her bunk and hunched over, letting her mane fall over her face.

The stateroom was quiet—just the way she wanted it at that moment. Running this race with her friends was noisy work, and heavens to Betsy if she didn’t blow her top at Rarity yesterday. Her mind wandered back to the early morning orchards of Sweet Apple Acres, right at the time when the dew from the grasses tossed colorful light beneath the shadowed canopies, and she pictured herself harvesting with nopony but Big Macintosh for company.

If she didn’t understand why her brother kept his words to himself before, she sure did now.

Because she’d been all but senseless when Rarity dragged her there from the spa, Applejack took the moment to look about the stateroom. The bunks were arranged into two towers of three, all of them cantilevering out from the opposite walls of the stateroom. Every other bunk but hers was unoccupied. A small porthole on the wall showed her a bluing sky that meant she’d slept in. She wasn’t happy about that at all, but she’d picked up a lesson or two over the years on forcing work on too little sleep.

The other end of the stateroom had a small booth with a table and a lamp, a closet for everypony’s saddlebags, and a door leading into the bathroom. Royal blue carpet covered the floor and walls, and a small light, currently extinguished, peeked out from its brass fitting in the ceiling.

Most all of it could’ve fit into her bedroom back home. Make no mistake, the airship life was swanky (and the massages weren’t half bad, either). Still, she was counting down the days until she could stretch her legs nice and proper on a real bed: one stuffed with good, honest straw.

She hopped onto all fours, but a yawn surged from her lungs like a stampede of wildebeests, dropping her back onto her bunk. Stars above! There was tuckered, and then there was... well, there was this. A shower was in order: a cold one, the only kind that got the ol’ blood flowing on slow mornings like this one.

She only got to lay a hoof on the bathroom door before the middle of the stateroom exploded in a flash of purple light.

“—you think you’re doing?”

Yelping, Applejack reared up, her hooves ready to strike—only to see a scowling Rainbow Dash when the spots cleared from her eyes.

“What in tarna—” Applejack returned to all fours. “What’s gotten into you, R.D.? I coulda smacked you a good one.”

“Ugh!” The pegasus stormed past and vaulted into one of the top bunks. She pulled her covers over her ears, leaving Applejack’s mind buzzing with questions.

“Did something happen, sugar?”

The answer that came back to her was too muffled to make sense of.

“Sorry, Rainbow, what was that?”

Snoring like a roaring pride of lions cut her off.

Applejack sighed. That filly got off on some mighty strong moods every now and then, and when those moods rose to the top, Applejack found it easier to change the weather herself than to reason matters out with her. At any rate, she had no interest in ruining her morning with more of the same verbal tussling that did yesterday in. She took care to close the door behind her quiet-like as she took her shower, though Rainbow’s entrance had taken away the need for it to be cold.

A few minutes later, she’d toweled off, got her mane tied up, and donned her hat. She was ready to get the hay out of that small little room and get something in her belly, and a steaming heap of oat ‘n’ apple flapjacks sounded more and more like doctor’s orders with every passing second. Surely the chefs they hired onto this flying hotel contraption had the know-how to put out a mean homestyle spread. Here was the sixty-four thousand bit question, though: how in the world was she going to find a restaurant when she didn’t even know how she got to her own stateroom?

“Like, wow, Crescent. It’s been ten minutes since breakfast and you’re thinking about lunch already?”

“Lay off, Gigglebug! The food’s free, I gotta enjoy it while I’m here!”

The laughing voices outside the door summoned Applejack like a parasprite to a polka. Throwing the door open behind the passersby, she poked her head into the hallway and put on her most courteous voice. “Pardon me, ladies, but would y’all be willing to help a poor pony with some directions to the best vittles at this hour?”

The mares were more than happy to oblige her, though navigating this hooped-up corn maze in the sky remained a challenge for the farmer. She managed to traverse the Promenade with little incident—though she thought that one tree tried to sniff her as she walked past. A chain of events more accident than intent followed as she stumbled her way higher, until she found herself at the front end of the fifth deck staring at a floor-to-ceiling panel of frosted glass. The words “High Wind Café” were etched on its front face in flowing letters.

“Ain’t that purty?” she muttered, walking around the glass. She ventured one glance into the restaurant ahead—and that was that. Before she could stop herself, her hoof was pulling her hat over her eyes.

The image lingered in her mind despite her self-inflicted blindness. The cafe split into two identical terraces sloping down from the center, and in place of walls it had windows: long, curving panes of glass that magnified the rolling fields thousands of feet below. Waiters with groomed manes and dress coats walked in and out of an open kitchen while floating plates of food to cloth-covered tables. A platform on the right side of the restaurant supported a baby grand and its player, a tall mare with half-moon glasses and her mane done up in a double bun. Despite this, the kitchen turned out to be the loudest part of the establishment, where cooks and hosts barked at each other in Fancy over the sizzle of stoves and the clanging of knives and spatulas.

The food itself smelled strange—familiar scents like peppers and olive oil mixed with hints of something nutty or fermented. Applejack couldn’t find a bowl of cereal or a stack of toast among the dishes out there, much less her oat ‘n’ apple flapjack stack, and her stomach somersaulted in disappointment.

Was there one place—just one—on this ship where a filly didn’t have to conduct herself like a city pony to eat?

“Good morning, Applejack,” called a voice to her left.

The earth mare yelped, earning the attention of a sizable portion of the café’s patrons. She turned and laid eyes on a familiar yellow and pink pegasus waving at her from the edge of the restaurant. “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”

Seeing her friend’s reaction, Fluttershy wilted onto her table like a daisy thrown into an oven. The apologies gushed forth as soon as Applejack took the seat across from her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Applejack chuckled. “Aw, it ain’t nothin’, pardner,” she said, tipping her friend’s chin back up. “To be honest, I’m glad you’re here. You’re the first friendly face I’ve seen all morning.” Applejack decided against bringing Rainbow into the conversation and picked up the faux leather-bound menu laid before her.

Was it just her, or did they print this menu on another planet? Her eyes tumbled down the page like a sack of apples down a cliff. Tarragon quiche au fromage du chevre? Miso soup spectrum with traditional pickles and sweet rice? Frittatas di Sestrimare? What in the name of all things pony were half these things? “I think I’m a little lost here,” she confessed, laying the menu back down. “Think you could help me out? What’re you havin’?”

The pegasus cycled her wings once before folding them, a small smile emerging on her face. She answered questions from her friends just fine, but it often paid to phrase them in ways that gave her the impression she was helping out. “Ah. Well...” She picked up her menu from the table and turned it so Applejack could read it, tapping a hoof on an item on the second page. “This grilled polenta dish sort of grabbed my attention. It’s prepared with a mozzarella and cherry tomato confit aux fines herbes, and it isn’t supposed to sit too heavily on the palette. Or... so I heard.”

Applejack blinked. “Uh, they wouldn’t happen to have anything along the lines of a bowl of grits or biscuits ‘n’ gravy, would they?”

Fluttershy’s eyes traveled the rest of the way down her menu. “I’m sorry, Applejack.” Her voice faded. “I don’t think there’s anything like—wait. Oh, nevermind. No.”

“Maybe I’ll just start with a glass of water.” The earth mare tilted her hat over her eyes.

“They have artesian well, sparkling, tonic, and mountain spring,” Fluttershy informed her.

The ponies who ran this ship wanted her to starve. “Can I get the one that comes from the well? And whatever looks good from that menu? I’m guessing you’re used to this ‘cause of all the time you spend with Rarity in polite places, but I’m more outta my element here than a catfish on a Canterlot crosswalk.”

Fluttershy’s ears folded down. “Applejack? Would you like to eat someplace else?”

“No!” The speed and force behind her answer caught her flat-hoofed, as it did for the ponies seated nearby. As much as she feared making even more of a foal of herself in a high-falutin’ establishment such as this, Applejack thought Fluttershy was comfortable with this sorta gig, and it’d have been downright shameful for the farm pony to insist her friend leave with her just ‘cause she couldn’t stand acting classy. She slumped in her seat until her chin came to rest on the table. If Fluttershy didn’t want to leave in even the tiniest amount, she wasn’t going to force the issue. “I mean, no, it’s fine,” she continued, poking at the flower vase. “You were here first. I’d be weeds in your wheat asking you to relocate. No—seriously, Fluttershy—”

Applejack put a hoof on her friend’s shoulder before she could rise out of her seat. “I’ll only be happy eatin’ where you’re happy eatin’ and that’s that. Sit.”

Fluttershy complied with the speed of resting dough. In silence, she started kneading the wrinkles out of the tablecloth with small circles of her forehooves. The waiter swept by at that moment, eliciting a small cry of surprise from the pegasus when he asked for her order, but she sent him away quickly enough and returned to staring at the table.

In desperation, Applejack rifled through her mind for topics that could get her friend to forget herself. “So.” She leaned forward. “How’d things go with Pinkie after the race yesterday?”

Fluttershy looked up. “Hm? Oh. It went fine. Why do you ask?”

“Just outta curiosity, ‘s all,” said Applejack, shrugging. This wasn’t a bad start. “Y’all went and split for someplace the moment y’all crossed the finish line last night.”

“Oh, that. Sorry.”

“Sorry, nothin’. How ‘bout you tell me ‘bout the race? I’m sure you had some amazing moments out there.”

It took a little more prodding and goading after that, but she finally got Fluttershy to give a quick account of her time in Blackhoof Bayou. She relayed the search for finding that “hair o’ the bog” thing as if she were drinking a glass of slightly expired milk, and the far-off gaze she fell into when describing the plateau party shot worry through Applejack’s mind. Fluttershy did seem to pick up by the time she reunited with Pinkie at the aid station, however, and she even offered up a verse of the song they sang together. By the time she explained why they had run off after arriving in Brindlebrook Village, she didn’t seem like she noticed her hooves were pattering softly across the tabletop.

Applejack nodded. “I see. So y’all had to deliver that flower to her old stallion lickety-split, huh? How’d that turn out?”

Fluttershy brought her hooves together. “It was... strange.”

“How so?”

Fluttershy coughed and reached for her water glass. “Well, as it turns out, hair o’ the bog doesn’t lose potency if it’s slightly singed. In fact... it becomes quite—I’m not sure how to explain it.”

“Ain’t nothin’ but time here, sugarcube.”

“It—” The pegasus made a face as if she’d swallowed a teaspoon of vinegar. “The best explanation I can come up with is that it tries to repair itself. And it uses whatever’s at hoof to do so.”

Applejack scratched her head. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

Fluttershy folded her forelegs on the table and put her head down. “I’m sorry. It was just a very strange night.”

“Aw, c’mon. You’re doing a great job. I could’ve been at that party you mentioned earlier; that’s how well you’re doing. Just tell me what happened once y’all got to Pinkie’s place.”

The pegasus’ face scrolled up from beneath her mane. “Well, once we got upstairs to her father’s bedroom, we saw his family standing by the side of his bed. He’d lost most all his hair by that point—only a tiny tuft on the top of his head and some around his fetlocks.”

“Gosh.” Applejack tried to imagine the same fate befalling Big Macintosh. Mercifully, her horse sense intervened before the lower half of her brother’s coat disappeared.

“Pinkie turned off the lights. I heard her walk over by her father’s side. Then she said, ‘Open wide, Papa.’ There was a really, really loud bang after that—I think his bed must’ve jumped in the air— and by the time the lights came on again, I was clinging to a rafter and Mr. Pie had hair.”

“Hot dog! That’s great news, Fluttershy.” Applejack reached across the table for a high one, but her exuberance faltered when she didn’t see the same reflected in her friend’s expression. “What’s going on now? Do you know how hard it is to keep that silly filly on task sometimes? It’s a miracle her pappy got his coat back. You should be proud of yourself.”

“It—it wasn’t exactly his coat,” the pegasus stammered.

“Huh?”

“Remember what I said earlier about the hair o’ the bog trying to repair itself with whatever was at hoof?”

“Uh, sure?”

“Well, Pinkie had kept that flower in her tail for a fairly long time by the time we arrived at her parents’ farm.” Fluttershy sighed. “Once we turned the lights back on…”

The epiphany came slowly, like chocolate syrup oozing down the sides of a delicious sundae. The smile stretched across Applejack’s muzzle just about as quickly. “Oh. Oh, ho ho!” she chortled, pounding the table. “That’s evil.”

“I believe Pinkie’s exact words were, ‘Hey, Papa! You look just like me now!’” Fluttershy’s brows dropped to half their height. “‘That’s weeeeird. Funny, but weird.’”

“Land’s sakes, girl!” Applejack clutched her stomach before she laughed it out of herself. “I could’ve sworn you sounded just like our Pinkie there.”

“I... I may have had some practice,” the pegasus admitted, turning so red that it wiped the yellow from her cheeks.

Applejack had known that Fluttershy’s penchant for song, though nowhere near as prevalent as Pinkie Pie’s love of patter, still figured into many of her dealings with her animals and the ponies around her. Music to sooth, and all that other historical mumbo-jumbo. The farm pony had never thought to connect those musical inclinations to a talent for voices, however, and a couple of good-natured pokes and prompts earned her a few more impressions of Ponyville’s most infamous fete-filly.

“It was the worst decision I ever had to make last Tuesday,” said Fluttershy-as-Pinkie, holding her head between her hooves and spinning her eyes around. “I could’ve had a slice of cake, or I could’ve had a cupcake, or I could’ve had a muffin, and I only had enough bits to pay for one ‘cause Gummy ate the rest of my allowance that week.” Fluttershy reached across the table for Applejack’s shoulders and shook them. “Oh, it was horrible! Don’t you ever let yourself get into a situation where you have to choose between the three—“

“Your meals, ladies.”

The waiter’s soft voice was like a wedge driving into Applejack’s thoughts. She blinked as a covered plate slid in front of her, accompanied by a glass of artisan well water or whatever Fluttershy had called it. Murmuring her thanks, she stole a glance across the table.

“Goodness.” Fluttershy rubbed her hooves together as she gazed at her own dish. “I don’t think I’ve talked that much in a very long time.” Her ears pinned downward as she realized what she’d just said. “Sorry for being a loudmouth.”

“Don’t you go pickin’ that load up again, now,” said Applejack. When a puzzled expression flitted across Fluttershy’s face, the farm pony pressed ahead. “I’m serious. You’re an honest pleasure to listen to—more’n you give yourself credit for.” She grinned. “Now, I’m starvin’. You ready to chow down, pardner?”

The silvered covers rose from their plates, and the scent of warm cornbread laced across Applejack’s nostrils. It came from Fluttershy’s meal: two spongy, golden squares crisscrossed with grill marks which came tucked under a mound of cubed tomatoes, cheese, and herbs with a sprig of rosemary on the side. The earth mare’s mouth watered up. She looked down at her own plate, almost forgetting where she was eating as she did—

But then she was back in that high-class restaurant feeling more conspicuous than a pig in a pansy garden. There were apples on her plate, that much she knew. Why a pony’d go and cut them into hair-thin translucent slices and stick ‘em on a plate like papier-mache, however, was beyond her. She picked up one of the slices in her teeth. It flopped horribly against her chin.

She let it drop back to her plate while her heart did the same thing. Lost for words, Applejack tried anyway. “Fluttershy? What am I looking at here?”

Fluttershy cringed. “I—I know you like fresh fruit in the morning, but they didn’t have anything like that here. The gala carpaccio was the closest thing they had.” She let her head hang.

Applejack looked back at her plate and half expected the soggy slices to reach for her face. She pushed it toward the center of the table before it could get the chance. “I’m sorry, sugarcube,” she said. “I don’t think this establishment’s for me at all.”

There was a squeak from the other side of the table. “I can take you somewhere else, if you’d like?”

“I went over this before,” said Applejack, waving her hoof. “You’re more than entitled to eat here. Maybe this place has it in for me, but I’m not gonna walk out on you just ‘cause I can’t stomach it here.”

“Are... are you sure?” Fluttershy tapped her hooves together while glancing off to the side. “Because on my way up here, I passed by the restaurant beneath this one. I noticed they were having a flapjack special and... well, a part of me thought of you.”

Applejack sat up.

***

In a booth tucked far in the back of the restaurant, Applejack feasted.

Pancakes. Latkes. Creeps, or whatever those Fancy-pony things were called. And flapjacks—flapjacks filled with blueberries and raspberries and peaches and apples, flapjacks smothered beneath slabs of whipped cream and chocolate chips, sour cream flapjacks as a palate cleanser from the sugary rush—all of them arrived hot and steamy and had a melt-in-your-mouth texture that came very close—not quite, but very close—to the way Granny Smith made ‘em back on the farm.

Applejack tipped her hat to the staff of the Journeymare’s Saloon—now here were some ponies who knew their way around a griddle. Having sent the waiter off for a third plate, she leaned against the booth’s backrest and sighed. “Fluttershy? Can I say you are one of the greatest friends I’ve ever had?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said. Bless her soul—she was dining on the lightest pancakes Applejack had ever seen—slices the size of bits and half again as thick. She looked to be enjoying herself as she spooned whipped cream over them. Tiny spoonfuls, at that, but she kept adding them on and on until her plate resembled a small avalanche.

“I don’t say anything I don’t mean, sugarcube. You know that.”

“Of—of course. Not that I meant to imply you do or anything.”

“Nuts.”

“Please.” Fluttershy accepted the bowl of chopped peanuts the earth mare handed her.

Applejack leaned back smiling as her friend nibbled at her breakfast. That willowy pegasus was always weighting herself with enough doubts and worries to bend an oak to the ground. If only she didn’t feel like she had to shoulder those burdens again every time she set them down. Still, for the moment, she was at peace. That’s what mattered. There was just something about her that, as she talked about the things she looked forward to seeing on the ship, got ponies to slow down a spell and listen. Maybe it was the way she looked at a pony—for one, she looked. Eye contact was scarce enough with a filly like her.

But there was something else there, too. Folks talked with Rainbow and Rarity and Twilight, and those three always had some sharp glint in their eyes that charged a pony’s heart. Fluttershy’s eyes did no such thing: they soothed and reassured; they took a pony’s pulse down and put it at ease. There was her smile, too—she was always fighting it down without realizing it, and here it had room to come out on its own. She didn’t aim to hypnotize, and she didn’t put other ponies to sleep from boredom. She was only honest and straightforward.

Lots of ponies thought of her as a reclusive, internal mare. It was a hollering shame they didn’t give her more chances to prove them wrong.

“They’ve even have a surf machine on the lido deck,” she said, dabbing a bit of cream from the corner of her lip. “Pinkie said she was going to try it out later, so I thought I would go up there and—oh.”

Before Applejack could ask what a surf machine was, the waiter returned with a plate of oat ‘n’ apple flapjacks as big around as her hat. He slid in front of her like it was a challenge, tipping her a wink as he headed back for the kitchen.

Applejack laughed. “Git, ya rascal!” She turned back to the plate in front of her, deciding the syrup jar was her first priority. “I still can’t believe I’ve got room for all this.” She poured syrup over the melting pat of butter on top. “Guess that race yesterday took more outta me than I figured, huh?”

Then she paused. A thought occurred to her, and Fluttershy needed to hear it. “This is amazin’. We’ve lived down the road from each other all these years, and I can still count the number of times we’ve done breakfast together on my hooves. Why haven’t we done this more often?”

Fluttershy shrugged. “It’s a mystery, isn’t it?”

“Well, I say you don’t be a stranger ‘round my farm, now. Pinkie Pie nothing—I know you cook for yourself in that little cottage of yours. We could be right terrors in the kitchen one morning, you and me.” Applejack raised her water glass with a nod. “How’s that sound, neighbor?”

Fluttershy reached for her own glass. She paused, allowing the moment to hang—then she smiled and held her glass aloft, too. “I’d like that—if you’ll have me over, of course.”

“Do you really hafta ask?”

In a booth tucked far in the back of the restaurant, two glasses clinked together.

***

Up on a raised section on the sky deck, steel drums and roaring bass blasted Pinkie’s body from horse-sized speakers stacked three high on both sides of the deejay’s stage. Wrapped in the beat pumping from the tan pegasus’ turntables, Pinkie slammed her hooves on the dance floor and whipped her head around like a bola. The ponies around her knew how to get into the rhythm, too—they leaped, spun, stomped, and cheered, and they linked forelegs with her and hurled her from partner to yelling partner, and it was all she could do to hold onto herself as momentum flung her across the space of the Heavenly Drop Club.

Of course, it wasn’t just about the groovy dances that were making this for Pinkie. You had to consider the pool games, too, or the all-you-can-eat popcorn and nachos bar on the lido deck, the rock climbing, the bingo nights, the fancy dinner and gala later on, the parasailing—everything, everything! And all of this was three thousand feet above the Equestrian countryside, in the company of a thousand other ponies looking to race hard and play hard all throughout the week. It was about whooping past the top of her lungs and driving her heart like a jackhammer, for what else would the bards sing about when they looked back upon this new epoch of fun history?

If this was all a dream, she had to wake up! It wouldn’t be fair of her to keep this incredible feat of party engineering trapped within her head! She’d rush out of bed, head straight for Twilight’s library, and convince her to build a skyliner right then and there—surely she had a book on the subject.

Pinkie’s awareness returned to the dance floor as the deejay’s set crashed through its outro riff, and the thump, thump, thump of her heart melded with the solo kick for the final four bars. Up on the stage, the deejay peeled her headphones off and cut the music, and the cheers spilled off the sides of the deck.

“I’m DJ Loudabee!” she cried, leaning over her setup to high one the front row. “Thank you all for haulin’ your haunches outta bed for Morninglight Mayhem, ‘cause you guys were amazing! I want all of you back here with your friends at the Drop tonight for my friend Everfreak, okay?”

“Wooo!” Pinkie screamed with the crowd, pumping her hoof in the air. So help her, she was going to wear grooves in the floor with all of her friends by the time they got back to Ponyville.

With the dance over, everypony began to flow toward the stairs leading down to the sky deck, and Pinkie turned to follow them out. Her coat was shiny from movin’ it for the past few hours, and she shook her head just to hear the beads around her neck clap together like dozens of tiny hooves.

Pinkie’s smile, formerly as wide as her face, shrank to a smidgen less than as wide as her face. She wished she was hearing that applause coming from her friends and not from strings of brightly-colored plastic—not that there was anything wrong with bright and colors and plastic, of course! It was just a shame that they had all missed out on an incredible dance. Twilight and Rainbow Dash had stayed out of the stateroom all night and were still gone by the time she woke up, she knew better than to try and disturb Rarity’s beauty sleep, and Applejack and Fluttershy—

“Howdy, Pinkie!”

The earth mare gasped. The saying that came to mind involved devils, even though she hadn’t breathed a word about them. Adding to that, Applejack was most definitely a pony and not some red-skinned meanie-pants with horns and tight pantyhose. And Fluttershy—Fluttershy was even less a candidate for devilry than Applejack was. The whole thing made no sense. Yet there they were, the two of them, waving up at her from the bottom of the stairs.

“I don’t know who came up with that phrase,” she said, bouncing down to meet them, “but that pony must never have heard of you two and how nice and wonderful and super incredible the both of you are!” She threw her forelegs around the both of them and pulled them into one of her Pinkie Pie-patented good morning hugs, topping it all off with a cheery “Good morning!”

“Uh...” said Applejack.

“Um...” said Fluttershy. Her hoof reached over to pat the back of Pinkie’s mane.

The patted mare let go and returned to all fours. “What are you two up to?”

Applejack turned back to Pinkie and tilted her head toward the Promenade domes. “We just finished with breakfast a little while ago, so the two of us were gonna spend some time in th’ Arboretum,” she explained. “Fluttershy gets to chat with the critters there, I might learn a thing or two ‘bout aerial tree transport. Bloomberg needs more friends out West and Braeburn wrote me ‘bout some coyote pack hasslin’ the trains out there.”

The best pony to wear a cowgirl hat in Ponyville inhaled a breath through her nostrils, released it, and shared a glance with Fluttershy. Nodding, the earth mare turned back to Pinkie. “You’re welcome to come with us if you want.”

“Aw, sugar straws.” Pinkie stamped a forehoof on the deck. “I’ve already been through there, and there’s still so much of this ship I still have to see,” she explained while sitting down. “The Arboretum’s really, really pretty, though! You should try a flower or two while you’re down there. They can’t call it an ‘eat-’em’ for nothing.”

“That sounds like a swell idea, Pinkie Pie,” said Applejack, turning toward the stairs leading down into the Promenade. “We’ll be sure ‘n’ grab you somethin’ for later.”

“Can you make it a Whitefeather lily?” Pinkie called after her.

“You got it!” Applejack replied while holding the door for Fluttershy.

Pinkie waited for the last hair of Fluttershy’s tail to slide behind the stairwell door before bouncing off toward the stern, humming as she went. She’d absolutely meant what she’d said about there being so much she had yet to see on the ship. If she wanted to keep her friends back home dazzled with her parties, she needed to branch out and see how ponies threw it down in the big leagues.

And the biggest player of them all called to her from the back of the ship. The instant she learned it was there from Twilight’s library presentation, she knew she had to go try it out. The surf machine, so they called it, was a giant blue slope on the lido deck that spanned most of the gondola’s width. Embedded pumps at the forward end pushed a broad sheet of whitewater up the slope into a shallow basin on level with the sky deck. The idea, so Pinkie had heard, was that ponies could ride the fabricated wave on funny boards for as long as they could without falling.

She reached the back part of the sky deck where it opened down into the pools and the surf machine, all but draping herself over the railing as she stared at the slope. Now that the machine was open, the rushing water was a lot quieter than she imagined it would have been. On the whole, everything was a lot quieter—there were maybe one or two ponies lined up to try the machine out. Where was everypony else?

Maybe they didn’t know where the surf machine was. What a horrible thought! It was the only one that made sense to her, at least. She’d left her megaphone back in the stateroom, but there was no shortage of tethers to climb. She could inch her way up top and scream something really loudly like hey, everypony, did you know this ship has a surf machine? You should really, really try it out right now.

Her plans went forgotten, however, as soon as she focused on the first pony in line. She was a unicorn wearing a lavender coif and sunglasses, and a black one-piece obscured her cutie mark. Her light gray coat was familiar, as well as the little smidge of purple mane that peeked out as she whispered something to the attendant. She couldn’t seem to keep her eyes in one place, either. Maybe she was on the lookout for spies.

The attendant, another unicorn with a green coat and a blue vest, said something back to the mare that put her at ease. He escorted her halfway up the slope, set the board down on the water and invited her to lie down on it, keeping it steady in the glow of his horn. A moment passed when the board wobbled beneath her belly, but the mare managed to hang on, and she was finally able to get herself settled in.

Pinkie’s jaw opened in anticipation as the attendant nudged the mare into the current with a hoof. She was tense, real tense—her hooves were turning white from gripping the front of the board so hard. Pinkie couldn’t argue with her results, though—by the time the mare reached the center of the slope, her shoulders had relaxed a little, and she was even starting to wind her way back and forth a few feet at a time.

“Way to go!” Pinkie cheered, waving. “You ride that wave, girlfriend!”

The mare looked up at her. Instead of smiling and acknowledging Pinkie’s support, however, she screamed.

Sometimes, ponies screamed when she was around. There were a hundred different reasons why they did so, but before Pinkie could call them all to mind, the board’s forward edge crashed downward and was lost in a spray of droplets. The de-boarded mare performed a dreamy half somersault, but her landing definitely needed more work. Her back splashed into the water and she was whisked upward into the top basin.

“Whoa!” Pinkie pushed herself off the railing and made for the other side. She had to go apologize for throwing that pony off of her groove—the last thing she’d wanted was for her to slip up and fall off like that.

“Hey,” she called, splashing into the hoof-deep water of the collecting basin. “Hey, listen! I’m really sorry about earlier! I was just having so much fun watching you because you looked like you were having fun, too, and—Rarity?”

The mare hunched over in the basin had her mane flopped over her face as she felt around for her missing coif and sunglasses, but that stopped as soon as she flopped her forelock over the back of her neck. There were no questions about it—those were Rarity’s blue eyes, and that was Rarity’s horn, and that was definitely Rarity’s slack-jawed “oh Celestia—where in Equestria did you come from?” look.

“Are these yours?” Pinkie Pie nosed a pair of folded black shades in the water onto her eyes. The morning became twenty percent less bright. No surprises there, considering who Rarity probably borrowed them from.

“I, uh...” Rarity glanced off to the sides, where a couple of other ponies had stopped to look at her. “I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “Who are you?”

“Oh, Rarity.” The sunglasses bounced on Pinkie’s muzzle in time with the rest of her body. “It’s me, Pinkie P—” Realization bowled her over like a perfect strike. “Shoot! You should’ve told me we were playing a guessing game—you know how much I love those! Hang on, hang on... Ha! I’ve got one!” She wiped a foreleg in front of her face, replacing her smile with an instant scowl, and she leveled her other leg between Rarity’s eyes. Reaching deep into her core, she dredged up her best rumbly accent and let loose.

“Hasta la vista, filly.”

“Pinkie Pie!” Rarity snapped, pushing the earth mare’s hoof out of her face. “Now is not the time to be playing Termineightor! Can’t you see I—”

“Wow, first try!” cried Pinkie, sweeping her friend up in her hooves. “I guess the sunglasses gave it away, didn’t they?” She noticed the other ponies slowly gathering around the two of them with questioning looks on their faces. What? Did they not know she was the liquid metal film pony from the future, or was it that they didn’t know who she and Rarity were at all? Well, she wasn’t too worried about getting to know other ponies, since she threw them all parties at some point or another, but Rarity was always trying to make a name for herself out there.

“Hey, everypony!” She lifted the unicorn onto her shoulders so they could get a better look at her. “This here’s my best friend Rarity! She’s smart and elegant, she’s great at playing games, and she’s the most fashionable pony I know! She makes gorgeous dresses and you should all buy one from her!”

Murmurs passed between the other ponies, and at least one gave an appreciative “Oooh.” Getting there, but it didn’t take a firemare to figure out the audience was only warming up. Pinkie breathed deep, ready to fire off another volley of praise and publicity for her friend, when a shining, periwinkle aura enveloped her body.

“Hey, that tickles,” she noted. The aura didn’t stop there, however—it lifted her hooves clear of the water, and for the moment, her legs dangled in space. She felt weight slide off of her shoulders and splash down, and soon she was looking down into Rarity’s narrowed eyes and the glow of her horn.

“Hiya, Rarity! Where are we going?” As the unicorn stepped out of the basin onto the sky deck, Pinkie Pie floated in front of her like a puppet.

“To have a word with each other,” Rarity answered her, her smile taut. That counted—Rarity deserved every moment in the spotlight, and smiles were the only payment Pinkie accepted for her social services. Still—

“Just a word? Why not several?”

“That’s what I mean, darling.”

Pinkie’s brow furrowed. “Then why’d you—”

“Shush!” The periwinkle aura around Pinkie’s body dissipated, dumping her rump into the curve of a very nice deck chaise by the side railing. Rarity took the next chaise over, swinging her legs over the side so she could face Pinkie. Gone from the unicorn’s face was the smile from before—Rarity looked like she’d just swallowed a cupcake made of green beans.

“Is... is everything okay?”

Rarity pressed her hoof on the earth mare’s muzzle. “Pinkie, dear—sweetheart. I’m not sure what you thought I was doing, but I wasn’t actually trying to be noticed out there.”

“Mm fmm hmm?” Pinkie’s eyes widened.

“Think about it, Pinkie. I am an up and coming designer in Canterlot and a known associate of Fancypants. And while he may be Canterlot’s most important pony—of what, I’m still uncertain, but he is—his influence can only go so far to cover me if I am seen indulging in... more rustic activities.”

Fancypants—now there was a stallion who understood how to have a great time. Pinkie pulled Rarity’s hoof off of her mouth. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” she protested. “Didn’t Fancypants get those guests to toast all of us at a party he wasn’t even hosting?”

“Well, I—” the fashionista sputtered. “Sure, but—”

Pinkie pounded her hoof into her other hoof. “I bet you three chocolate lava muffins with coconut and caramel on top that if you showed him what a surf machine was, he’d be the first to put one in his yard,” she said. “And then you could take the credit for it when all the other big snooty ponies get one for themselves!”

“Pinkie—”

“I mean, I guess I have to say this. If you didn’t want to be spotted on that huge wave just now, you wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it.” She rolled her eyes and threw her forehooves behind her head. “It just doesn’t make sense any other way.”

She brought her hooves back down and leaned over until her muzzle floated just an inch away from Rarity’s. “You couldn’t stay away from the call of the blue, could you, Rarity? Blue means Dashie, and Dashie means fun, and summa kumquat potato, nopony can resist fun.”

The unicorn could only stare at her. Ah, the targeted application of logic. If she hadn’t toppled that bookcase on herself that one time at Twilight’s, that nifty philosophy book might never have squashed her muzzle with its teachings.

“You’re really overthinking this,” she continued over the unicorn’s silence. “Wherever you go, ponies follow. Look—there’s a whole bunch of ‘em lining up to try their hooves at surfing, and it’s all thanks to you!”

A noise like a pressed balloon sputtered from Rarity’s lips. She twisted in her seat.

The line had grown to about ten ponies or so, and several more were trickling into place—most of them were the ponies Pinkie had told about Rarity just moments before. The earth mare slid up next to her friend and slung her hoof over her withers. “Not bad for a trendsetter, right?”

“Hmm.” Rarity lifted a hoof to her chin, surveying the ponies below her. She must’ve come around to Pinkie’s view of things, for the unicorn’s withers shook with a quiet chuckle. “Goodness me. I suppose you may have a point.” She turned to the earth mare and brushed her neck with her muzzle. “Thank you, Pinkie. I do feel a little silly about all of this, now.”

The earth mare threw her hooves around Rarity’s head quite ignorant of its wetness and the flailing of her front legs. “You’re welcome! Hey, we should get in line. It’s starting to fill up fast.”

“Oh, no no no no no,” said Rarity, pushing Pinkie away. “I’ve had my fill for the morning. You go on ahead, though. I’ll be up here to cheer you on, Pinkie Pie swear,” she concluded, sweeping through the requisite motions.

That was good enough for Pinkie. If she didn’t get downstairs right away, who knew how long she’d have to wait for her turn on the surf machine?

The answer, as it turned out, was ten minutes. Lots of wonderful ponies stepped up to the challenge of riding their first wave, and lots of them had wonderful wipeouts to kick off their surfing careers. There was that one earth colt who got his board swept out from under him—the moment his legs touched water was the moment he became a pony turnover. The pegasus filly after him had it even rougher—the attendant gave her a countdown before letting her go. She didn’t even make it to “two” before she overbalanced and facefaulted into the current.

With every place she advanced in line, Pinkie’s heart pounded harder. Her tail got twitchier, too. Well, duh to that last one. Ponies out there were falling over themselves like white on frosting. Even the good ones only put off the inevitable—the colt before her stood up on his hind legs and pull off a few spins for the crowd before kicking his board away. Of course she cheered his performance with all the other ponies—it was gonna be a hard one to top.

She reached the head of the line, right by the side of the machine. Every drop of water splashing on her hooves, every burble of liquid tongues collapsing on the foam, every lash of her tail told her she was that much closer to hanging two. Then the attendant trotted up to her, board in glow.

“You ready?”

Every fiber in her body screamed out with her. “Yes! I—”

That was all she managed to get out. Driven past its limits, her tail reared up and whipped down one final time. The ensuing crack sent a deep rumble through the big gas bag thingy overhead, her ears went ringy, and ten feet of space opened behind her as the ponies after her tumbled into those waiting further back.

Cinnamon a million, that was a doozy of a twitch right there! There weren’t any actual doozies coming down the pipe, of course—that was a whole different set of shakes and shivers.

“Are you sure you’re ready, miss?” asked the attendant, his brow arched.

“Sure am!” she chirped. “I get these weird twitches all the time that tell me what’s gonna happen in the future, but I’ve never done anything like that before! And I love it when that happens, ‘cause that means I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next! Well, we could probably rule out anything that involves this story’s update schedule. There’s just no predicting that ever.”

The attendant rolled his eyes. “Miss, please...”

“Oh, right, surfing! Gimme that board.”

As Pinkie set her hooves one by one on the fiberglass, she looked out to the rest of the ship and saw ponies gathering nearby. They bobbed in the pools below or stood off to the sides—some looked down at her from the opening in the sky deck. True to her word, Rarity was there at the railing with a daiquiri, and she returned the wave the earth mare gave her with a smile.

Pinkie wasn’t a showmare. When she threw parties, they were always for other ponies—or griffons, or donkeys, et cetera. Parties had momentum, and that momentum needed direction. This meant she spent most of her time taking care of the little behind-the-scene details most ponies didn’t pay much attention to: punch bowls and pastries never ran low at a Pinkie Pie production, and nopony went without a conversation partner. She was fine with never hearing a word of thanks on the small stuff so long as her guests enjoyed the big ones.

Realizing the assembling ponies had come there to watch her for once—she gulped a little. This was a huge responsibility she was taking on all of a sudden. She wasn’t nervous. On the contrary, she was excited—she was psyched! Life continued no matter how she performed on this surf machine, but, at the same time, she needed to give everypony a show they wouldn’t ever forget.

All right, then. She had all four hooves on board. On her signal, the attendant would let her go. She closed her eyes and pulled a breath through her nose. Her heart pumped within her chest like a train engine—nothing she could do about that, so better to let it work on its own. She exhaled, ready as she was ever going to be.

“Okey dokey,” she said, nodding to the unicorn.

The aura holding the board steady dispersed.

And so did the board. Pinkie had only a moment to observe the water beneath her belly before she performed Equestria’s greatest atomic flop. Then the noise died down, and things went dark for a little bit…

“Pinkie Pie? Pinkie Pie, darling? Can you hear me?” The voice echoed down to her as if from the far end of a very long tube.

“Mmm... mama?” Pinkie opened her eyes. Everything was blurry, with two blobs of light gray and purple taking up the center of her vision. “I don’t wanna go to school today.”

“It’s Rarity, dear,” the blobs said, soon resolving into the familiar face of her fashionable friend. She had one hoof holding up the earth mare’s head and the other tucked behind her back. “You had a nasty fall just now. Do you remember any of it?”

“A little.” With Rarity’s help, Pinkie was able to stand on her hooves and tottered out of the shallow waters of the collecting basin. Her memory was kind of hazy—she remembered there was a jolt the instant the water swept her board away, and then... “‘Biff.’”

“Sorry?”

“‘Biff,’” Pinkie repeated, totally serious as she and Rarity took their chaises from before. “That’s the sound I made when I fell, right?”

Rarity dragged her hoof behind the back of her own head while looking off to the side. “Sure, we can go with that. What happened out there, anyway?”

“I fell,” Pinkie replied.

“Yes, you did,” Rarity agreed. “It’s just that, well... that was rather unexpected.”

Pinkie tilted her head. “Huh?”

“I mean—” Rarity’s jaw performed a small, silent acrobatics routine as she looked for words in the sky. There wasn’t really any other way to describe what her eyes did then. “I would’ve expected this sort of thing to be your forté.”

“What, surfing?”

“Yes and no.” A silly smile snuck across the unicorn’s face. “I suppose you’re just talented with so many things and comfortable with even more that, well... I would’ve thought surfing would’ve been among them.”

Pinkie threw herself back in her chaise laughing—it was a good laugh, too, one that got her tummy all pinchy and her legs kicking. “Hee hee ha ha ha! Oh, Rarity, that’s a good one!” she said, wiping her eyes. “Hoo hoo! What in Equestria gave you the idea that I’d be good at something I was only trying for the first time? If anything, I’m gonna need a whole lot of work before I do anywhere as well as you did your first time through.”

Rarity turned a shade of barn. Coughing once, she stumbled over an apology the earth mare told her wasn’t necessary, then continued. “Well, when you put it that way…” She let her eyes slip from side to side conspiratorially, then held a hoof up to the side of her mouth as she leaned in. “You don’t suppose you’re up for another try, are you?”

“Only if you’re coming, too,” Pinkie insisted.

“Really now,” said Rarity, rising from her seat. She held her hoof out. “How could I refuse an invitation like that from a lady like you?”

***

One thing became clear soon enough: neither Pinkie Pie nor Rarity were on their way to Haywaii’s North Shore for a shoot on the waves within the next year or so. Pinkie was sure she was going to run out of ways to fall over before the day was done, and yet she couldn’t keep herself from stepping back on the board again and again.

To the earth mare’s amazement, Rarity was the first of them to try standing on two legs professional style, and her mane flapped this way and that in the wind as she wobbled her way over the water. Lunchtime came and passed for the price of ten seconds’ success—her front legs shot way high up in the air and she unleashed an amazon cry—totally worth the sore hips afterward, she said.

By late afternoon, Pinkie noticed some very special ponies gathering on the sky deck rail. Applejack and Fluttershy had returned from their trip to the Arboretum to cheer on her wave-taming attempts, and Applejack even had her front leg slung over Fluttershy’s withers. Pinkie stood by her claim that the Opera Concordia still had so much to offer her activity-wise, but the two looked like they were enjoying themselves so much that they deserved more time on their own. And there they were now, hollering cheers for Rarity from Applejack and slightly less loud calls for Pinkie from Fluttershy.

Twilight showed up a little after the others did, and they’d shared a few words before Rainbow Dash hobbled up on deck, rubbing her eyes after what must’ve been an incredible nap. The moment she noticed the pegasus on the approach, Twilight whisked on over and whispered a few words in her ear that got her standing straighter. After a questioning look, Rainbow drew Twilight in for a hug and joined her other friends on the railing, where the four of them made a great big cheering section for the Raripie fan club. Having come up with that name on the spot, a small part of Pinkie wondered if similar names existed for her other friends. Then her board beached at the bottom of the wave and bucked her off.

Late in the afternoon, the pumps were turned off and the surf machine fell silent. Pinkie went with the rest of her friends back to the stateroom to freshen up for dinner. Hard to believe the day of repose had come so quickly to its end—an end hastened through the relentless bubblepop blasts in the Heavenly Drop later on that evening.

After a long, peaceful night of travel filled with dreams of friends and happiness, the Opera Concordia touched down on the morning edge of Pinstripe Plains.