A cool breeze rolled across her body and a thousand little blades of grass poked into her sides. She stirred as the warm sun pressed on the outside of her eyelids and turned the darkness within them a warm red. She wrestled with the weight of her slumber, fighting to open her eyes.
She fidgeted with a groan. “W… wh-”
“‘Where am I?”’ A familiar voice rasped with a stifled snicker.
She gasped. Her eyes snapped open, pupils shrunken and tense. Rainbow Dash hovered above her with a hoof over her mouth to suppress the laughter that was already escaping from her eyes. Her body was quivering and buckling under the stress from trying not to melt down into uncontrollable hysterics.
“Bu- bu-...” Twilight’s eyes darted around frantically, taking in the endless green hills dotted with lush trees and the clear skies. The sun hung at a perfect angle, not beating down, but still maintaining enough heat to complement the nearly constant gentle breeze. “Y-you… b-but I?”
“BAAAA HAAHAAHA!” Rainbow Dash exploded. “You should see the look on your face right now! Oh, Celestia, it never gets old.” She flicked a few tears from her eyes. “And I thought AJ’s reaction was funny!” She glided around Twilight in a circle before touching down and offering her a foreleg. Twilight numbly took it with her own.
“I don’t get it. You? AJ?” Rainbow Dash tugged her onto her own wobbly hooves as Twilight’s mind tried to cram together impossible bits of information into the mold of a rational explanation.
“Geee, yeah, it’s a real mystery...” Rainbow Dash deadpanned. She took to the air again and gestured to her body with her hooves, then struck a pose. “Oh, oh, oh! And look how young I am too! Been a while since you’ve seen the awesomest flyer in all of Equestria -er, I mean from all of Equestria- at peak performance, huh? I bet you’re gonna freak out about that now too!” She hovered in Twilight’s face, teeth digging into her lower lip out of anticipation.
The alicorn took a deep breath and sighed. “No, ‘Rainbow’, I’m not.”
Rainbow Dash’s expectant expression loosened into a gape. “HUH?” She floated back a bit, a dejected look stamped across her muzzle. “WHY NOT?”
“Because,” she sighed as she stepped past her, closing her eyes. “I’ve dreamt of you before. All of you. I can’t stop thinking about you girls. I guess it’s cathartic to see you again, but it’s just going to make waking up in the morning all the more painful. I don’t want to forget you, our friends, and everything we had together, and I know I shouldn’t, but it’s hard to live with the memories too.”
“Phhbbbt, what a buzzkill. I guess you’re still the same, egghead.” She rolled her ruby eyes and flapped around her. “Well, if you’re worried about ‘waking up’ and ‘living’” She said, raising her hooves to punctuate the air around the words with quotation marks. “Then - good news - you’re not gonna be doing much of either now, y’know, being dead and all.” She raised a preemptive hoof towards Twilight, closed her eyes and turned her head away. “And befooore you move onto the next cliche - no, there hasn’t been ‘some kind of mistake’. They made that pretty clear to me when I got here after my - err - slight miscalculation on my nose dive… 90 degree turns at terminal velocity is deeefinitely a young mare’s game, and I probably should’ve realized that. Eh heh heh…” She scratched the back of her head. “Bet that made for a heck of a friendship lesson, huh?”
They had started to slowly idle across the seemingly endless expanse, Twilight walking on the ground with Rainbow Dash flapping over her shoulder. Light streaks of cirrus clouds marbled the blue above them like foam on ocean waves. The supple grass cushioned her every step as the weak wind billowed at them from behind.
“You’ll forgive me if I’m not convinced, ‘Rainbow’. I think I’d remember dying.” The pegasus stopped, exhaled hard into her elbow, so violent it bordered on becoming a frustrated scream, and mutely shook her hooves at the sky before accelerating back to Twilight’s side.
Rainbow Dash dragged her hooves down her face, stretching her skin. “How the heck did they get me on “it’s not a dream” duty again? You’re really gonna make me read the list, huh? I shoulda known.” Grumbling, she pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and fumbled with it until it was only slightly crinkled and illegible. She began scanning down it. “Dreams… dreams… dreams, ha, okaaaay here it is. Are you listening?”
“Uh-huh.”
The pegasus inhaled deeply and blurted the words off the page.
“Normallyyoudon’trememberthebeginningsofdreamsandhowyougotintotheirsetting,butyoushouldbeabletorememberwhenyoufirstrealizedyouwerehere. Convinced yet?”
“Uh, no. I was unconscious until you woke me up.”
“Buh? Wha- THAT DOESN’T COUNT!” Air fumed out of her nose as her eyes returned to the paper. “Rrrgh! Ifthiswasadreamyouwouldprobablybeabletopointoutinconsistenciesintheenvirenmontbetweennowandthetimeyouentered.” Her gaze darted up at the alicorn.
“Dreams come in all types of forms. I should know, I’ve been managing them for about a hundred years now.”
“THINKBACKTOYOURLASTWAKINGMOMENTWHATWEREYOUDOING.”
“Rainbow, this is ridiculous. Celestia and Luna have lived for a thousand years, so how would I die after only living a little more than a century? I had finally just gotten off work, and-” Her pupils shrunk to the atomic level and she came to a dead halt. “Oh.”
“IFTHISWAS- oof!” She gasped as she flew straight into Twilight’s body. “What the hay is wrong with you?” She circled around to see the limp expression on the alicorn’s face. “AHA!” She tossed the paper away. She put her hooves on her hips and bore a smug, vindicated smile. “You just realized you’re dead, didn’t you?”
Twilight looked away with a pink blush. She rubbed a fetlock with a hoof.
“Heh, no wonder why they keep making me do this job. I’m the best.” She dusted her hooves off on each other before landing next to Twilight. “So, how’d ya kick it? Was it awesome? Spill the beans, girl!”
“Erm…” She twisted her face away from Rainbow Dash’s beaming eyes. “It was. Awesome, I mean. It was awesome.” Her face contorted into a sheepish smile. The pores in her forehead opened, and a gallon of sweat was about to start seeping out and spilling down her face. “I just wouldn’t want to bore you with the details of my... experiment…”
“YOU DIED BEING AN EGGHEAD?” She gaped in disbelief before cutting Twilight off with a raised hoof. “Stop right there. Consider me bored.”
“Really?” The relieved bliss that filled her body rushed through her like a tsunami. She felt like she might rise into the air from the feeling alone.
“Duh. Besides, I’m sure if it really was awesome I’ll hear about it in no time. After all, it’s like all we talk about down here.”
“It is?” Twilight gulped. Hard. Somepony had just filled her lightened soul with concrete, and her stomach began rehearsing for a new acrobatic routine. Her eyes deadened into a stare at a far away nothing. A legion of sweat droplets marched down her face. She tremmored.
“Sure is. The first time you see anypony down here that’s like the first thing they ask. Your brother, your mom, your dad - everypony. It gets old quick, even with a story as awesome as mine.” Rainbow Dash draped a wing over Twilight’s shivering form. “C’mon, I gotta get you to the girls. They’re gonna be dying to see you, well, they would be if, y’know…”
They disappeared over the crest of a hill, underneath the sun-encrusted sapphire sky, and Rainbow Dash’s raspy voice gradually tapered off into the endless serenity of still, green waves of grass.
…
“Twilight!” Princess Celestia called as she and Princess Luna touched down on her former balcony. “We noticed you did not lower the sun and feared the worst.” They pushed through the bedroom door with urgency. “Are you o-.” Her royal jaw loosened, then plummeted downwards. As Princess Luna entered the doorway, her eyes bulged to their physical limits, and her muzzle copied her sister’s.
“. . .”
Though the room was dim, it was illuminated by the rays of the still risen sun pouring through the door and a few lavender scented candles. Hanging from the top of a ceiling fan by a long, yet apparently durable, piece of satin, was the current ruler of Equestria, in none of her regal glory. It wrapped around her neck, burrowing into her skin, practically squeezing Princess Twilight’s bloodshot eyes from out of her skull. Her tongue flopped limply out of the side of her muzzle. Rolled on the ground beside her was a cornucopia of vegetables - cucumbers, zucchinis, carrots, eggplants - even a hefty, yellow plantain. On the other side of her was a fallen copy of Playmare magazine, propped open on a page bearing a well-endowed stallion wearing nothing but a royal guard helmet and a toothy grin.
The sisters turned away from the scene, still battling to regain control of their faces. Princess Luna recovered first, swallowed, and spoke in a very delicate tone. “Well, sister, so much for our Silver Shoals retirement.”
Princess Celestia just walked over to the wooden railing of the balcony. It was centuries old, masterfully carved, and had accompanied her every night for a thousand years when she had stared out at the night sky, waiting for her sister’s return in silent melancholy. She looked across Equestria, her former, and now present, charge. She breathed deeply from the high Canterlot air.
Then she smashed her face through the railing.
Author's Note
Thanks for reading, folks. If you've got any advice or even opinions, any at all, please, please, PLEASE let me know in the comments. Check out my other stuff too if you want! I've got one more one shot in the chamber, possibly two if I consolidate my other fic into a single chapter.
Anyway, peace
