Life Is Only Real When You Are Near

“You see, Derpy, you’re not stupid and you’re not clumsy. You lack attention. That's all.”

“I don’t get it.”

Rainbow and Derpy sat on the same grassy knoll above which Derpy had so disastrously flown earlier today. Instead of the vibrant blueness of daylight the envelope of night covered them, starry and clear, quiet and serene.

“Your problem is that you start good then your attention goes away and you go woobly and then crash,” Rainbow said. “When you see somepony in trouble you’re gall… galva… galvun… well, you become totally alert and perform the deeds in a blink.”

“You say I’m scatterbrained?”

Rainbow nodded.

“It makes sense,” Derpy said. "But what can I do about it?”

“What happened when you saw the Crusaders, Ocellus, and Spike?”

“I felt all of me focus on them. As if nothing was more important than saving them.”

“You probably felt a sharpening of senses and full body presence, right?”

Frowning, Derpy looked on the ground then back at Rainbow to her right. “Yes.”

Rainbow stood on her four legs.

“So, how about you bring that right now when performing a double loop?” she asked.

“Isn’t it too late?”

“A few tricks. Nothing more. Pinkie promise.”

“Okay,” Derpy, standing up, said.

With a single flap Derpy was airborne and with the next one, covering Rainbow in a cloud of dust, she darted far into the sky, starlit and dark blue.

With eyes nailed to the gray-gold mare, who positioned herself into a horizontal line preparing for the trick, Rainbow stood on the grassy hill, her legs tense, her whole being hoping for success.

When Derpy moved upwards and began the curve, Rainbow’s mouth went dry and she tilted forward on her legs. Rainbow trembled and sweated upon seeing Derpy reach the highest point of the curve and begin her descent. She caught her breath but was ready to let it out in a desperate sigh as Derpy wobbled at the point when she needed to close the first loop and begin the second.

Wait!

Rainbow saw Derpy squint her eyes and frown her brows. The wobbling that she had come to associate with Derpy spinning out of control ceased. Derpy entered the second loop with the perfection of a Wonderbolt.

Derpy’s flight reached almost standstill when she reached the highest point of the curve with her belly greeting the starry heaven and her spine the ground below. Rainbow feared she would fall. Instead of stopping Derpy squinted once again and gave herself another push by stretching her forelegs and flapping her wings. Her efforts weren’t in vain. She finished the second loop perfectly.

Rainbow jumped, yelling, her wings flapping. Yes! She had found the problem! She knew the solution!

Looking back, surprised by her own manifestation of skill, Derpy smiled.

“I did it, Rainbow!” she shouted. “I did it!”

And then Derpy banked to the right and went swirling down to the wavy ground: a solid sea of green made of knurls, troughs, and hills.

In a flash Rainbow whizzed next to Derpy and steadied Derpy’s fall with her hooves.

Even in the darkness of the night Derpy’s eyes glistened like gold, fuelled by her own surprise and joy at what she had just achieved. How beautiful they looked. So shining and so happy. And that smile: wide, open, showing Derpy’s teeth that shone as brilliantly as the moon. And her hair. A mess thanks to the winds yet so perfect in their interlaced mess of yellow: strands that pointed right, strands that pointed left, strands jutting out of her head.

“I did it, Rainbow!” Derpy, incredulous, repeated. “I did it!”

“I told you,” Rainbow, smiling, said. “Now let’s do something more. How about an eight loop? Remember: when losing it, restore your focus.”

Derpy nodded. “Okay.”

With a powerful flap of her wings Derpy dashed upwards. Derpy gained altitude and, eyes focused and brows wrinkled, sped up ahead. She arched up, started the curve of the first loop. Once again she wobbled at the azimuth of the circle but gathered herself, her crossed eyes becoming straight for a second, and dived down nicely. On the crossing point at the end of the first circle and the beginning of the second one Derpy, however, lost her grip.

Instead of continuing with her belly up Derpy, to make the convex ascent easier for her, decided to turn around mid flight but lost all control as a result. She went spinning out of the circle, her wings folded and unable to find balance on the nocturnal winds.

Rainbow reached Derpy at the speed of light. With outspread forelegs she gripped Derpy by her shoulders and stopped her swirling descent; and with her hooves still on Derpy’s shoulders she watched Derpy open her eyes and look at her with a wide frightened stare.

“I’m sorry,” Derpy said, her voice trembling. Weak.

“It’s no biggie,” Rainbow, smiling, her head tilted, said. “Don’t try to change your position next time, ‘kay? You were doing fine till you decided to do that.”

“But it’s difficult to fly that way with your belly up. Very confusing.”

“Like I said, don’t hang up. It’s a difficult trick and I didn’t expect you to perform it perfectly anyway soooo… let it pass. At least now I know where you are and how to work with you. And that’s progress.”

“Will I be able to fly like you?” Derpy asked.

Rainbow contemplated Derpy’s sandy mane that fell like a waterfall of yellow to the left.

She swallowed, winked, nodded.

“Of course!” she said. “You have it in you. But let’s go with the basics first and the first thing you need to remember is… attention. Stay focused. Always.”

Derpy’s eyes widened. “But how? I always got sidetracked and I can’t keep that deep focus all the time.”

“Practice – that’s the key,” Rainbow, grinning, said. For some reason still unknown to her Rainbow liked the feel of Derpy’s silk-soft silk-smooth coat against her hooves. “Attention is like a muscle. You don’t have it if you don’t use it and when you focus it hurts. You train it and train it day after day, again and again, and you have nice working muscles that don’t ache any more. Practice is key.”

“But I have trouble with my thoughts,” Derpy sighed. “I can’t turn them off like a faucet for very long.”

“So that’s why you’re ditzy and kinda in the clouds all the time,” Rainbow said. Finally but reluctantly she removed her hooves from Derpy’s frame and flew a few inches away. The lack of Derpy’s warmth, of Derpy’s hot fast breath, felt wrong to her. Like getting out of the comfy morning bed into the pre-dawn cold wrong.

Derpy nodded. “My parents always used to say that I’m always in the clouds and rarely on the ground: a pegasus squared.”

“Well, there’s a solution for this. You watch your thoughts, your feelings, your sensations every single waking moment.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean by what do I mean? It’s simple. Have you ever meditated?”

Derpy lifted her right hoof to her chin and rolled her eyes. “Yes. Kinda. A long time ago at a goat trance party. Tree Hugger showed it.”

“And how do you meditate?”

“You sit with your legs crossed like this,” Derpy said, closed her eyes, and folded her hindlegs into a half lotus. The beat of her wings held her steady in the air. “Put your forehooves into your lap like this,” she said and placed her right hoof on top of the left in front of her groin, right beneath her navel. “And then you watch whatever comes into your head. Bad thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts that have an I in them, good and bad memories, good and bad feelings, the itches and the pains – you just watch it all without getting into them like usual when thinking.”

Rainbow, smiling, nodded. “That’s right. But what I want you to do is to keep that attitude at all times no matter what.”

“Even if somepony makes me sad?” Derpy asked, unfolding her hindlegs.

“Uh-uh.”

“Even if something makes me angry.”

“Especially if something makes you angry. The point is to make it all the time because the exercise makes you detached from your mind and more present in the moment, which is the most important skill a flyer can have. If you’ll do it you’ll become like me in no time: you’ll be able to fly with focus and take notice of everything around you. I promise.”

Derpy smiled wildly, showing her beautiful white teeth shining moon-like in the night, then lunged forward and hugged Rainbow tight. So tight, in fact, Rainbow had all the air in her lungs pressed out. So tight that Rainbow forgot to beat her wings and both of them, entwined, fell.

“Derpy, not so strong,” Rainbow said in a rasping voice, gritty, hoarse.

Derpy saw the dark green fields behind Rainbow approaching them, widened her eyes, let Rainbow go.

“Oops!” she said as her gray cheeks quickly turned red. “I got too excited. It’s just that… it’s just that nopony had ever seen me in such a way, you know?”

Rainbow batted her wings again. She looked at Derpy and saw that Derpy’s eyes looked watery and sparkled, reflecting lunar light. Something contracted in Rainbow’s chest. She frowned.

“It’s no problem,” she said. “I like the way you hug, by the way, but the next don’t make it so strong, okay?”

Her eyes still liquid, Derpy smiled, nodded. “Okay. So what’s next?”

Rainbow tilted her head down, her eyebrows knitted, her eyes staring intently on the ground. She looked at the waving field right below them, at the grass undulating from the nightly currents and changing hue from deep green to celadon as the wind caressed its stems, then stared at Derpy with a grin.

“Let’s go home and meet tomorrow at five o’clock,” she said. “You’re out by that time?”

Derpy nodded.

“And that’s the daily schedule from now on.”

Derpy again nodded.

“Cool. See you tomorrow, Dee.”

“See you, too, Rainbow.”

Rainbow turned around and zipped off ahead, leaving a vibrant sparkling rainbow, quickly dissipating, right behind her. On the way to her cloud home Rainbow jiggled ideas about how to train Derpy, where to start and how to proceed, where to put the focus first. The last one was easy – for now Derpy should focus on developing attention. Once that was out of the way she would bloom like a rose at dawn – such was the degree of Derpy’s hidden, unconscious, skill. While Derpy’s attention was developing they would perfect different basic tricks: loops, double loops, eight loops, chandelles.

The more Rainbow meditated upon Derpy’s problems the more she wondered about why was Derpy so lost in thought. She never had suspected that Derpy was a pathologically overactive thinker. Twilight, almost always OCD and on the intellectual edge – yes. Derpy, free-floating and serene – no. In the end it was another of Derpy’s idiosyncrasies that Rainbow wished to understand, and given time she obviously will.

She had a hunch the answer would surprise her deep.