“Close your eyes, Rainbow Dash.”
“But if I close them, then how am I gonna see?”
“Don’t! You don’t need to see up there. There’s nothing that can hurt you. And if you start to fall then, believe me, you’ll know about it whether your eyes are closed or not.”
“Okay,” the filly agreed nervously, “So I close my eyes, then what?”
“The thing with flying is that, through all our attempts to avoid the ground, in the end we have to become like it. Strong, resolute. Sturdy like the earth, yet as fluid and adaptable as the sea itself. Rush away from the firmament, be like the firmament. Close your eyes, Rainbow, and become a mountain.”
Rainbow found herself having to use more and more of her old teacher’s advice these days. When you were a weather pony, flitting from cloud to cloud, then skill was sadly an unnecessary commodity. But now, when she was training for the Wonderbolts?
Rainbow would often peak at the crest of her ascent, and hang there before a trick. A lone interruption of polychromia against a sea of endless blue. She would close her eyes, and become a mountain.
And when she fell, when she stopped drawing on that energy and once again gave herself into the sky, all the treasures of the air dancing through her wings, Rainbow was still focused on the ground. She looked for that splash of colour interrupting the green, the mirror of her own nature. A flare of vibrant purple and lavender and white disrupting a canvas of predictability.
Always focused groundward, always becoming a mountain.
Two sets of eyes meet hers. Then those eyes meet themselves. A languid, sultry smile growing on two sets of lips, passionate and longing and spied from above the ground by pegasine eyes. High up as a mountain.
It was at times like this that her old teacher’s advice seemed to crystallize. Because in the air one was free and unbound. But it was all the treasures of the earth that kept you coming back down.
Rainbow’s ascent quickened.
“Close your eyes, Rainbow. Become a mountain,” she muttered to herself. But who could stay resolute amid pheromone stinking air, close and damp. Amid thundering beats of bass, spat from speakers and amplified in the choral stamping of hooves.
Who could close their eyes before a sight like this?
Because even the pain of her recently broken wing, desperate to loose its bindings and flap free again, couldn’t draw her eyes from the dancing kaleidoscope of white and purple. She watched the two of them, swaying with each other. She watched their eyes, spied amid strobe and fog and sweating crowd by pegasine eyes. She watched how their affection swam amid love and lust both. She watched as that affection was turned to her, and she realised why now that the three of them were always meant to be one.
There was so much love here, too much for two to contain. It must have always been fated to spill over into three of them. And even though she couldn’t dance with them, even though her wing was too hurt to swaddle them both, it felt right somehow.
Watching the body paint on their coats shine in the lights, the two of their adorned bodies a lone interruption of polychromia against a sea of endless black, it felt right. Because how many times had they sat and watched her do the same? Cheered for her as she practised? Rarity and Twilight’s movements were perfect, they mirrored and clashed, they laughed and they loved and they cast secret smiles and glances meant only for the one other pony they loved as much as each other.
Rainbow gave it a final, token try, but soon found herself grinning. There would be no resolve, no concentration. Certainly no closing of her eyes. Tonight, Rainbow wasn’t a mountain. Tonight, though more grounded than ever, did Rainbow feel like she was in the sky. Buffeted by winds and clouds, no steady ground for hooves which shook at the appreciation and reception and profession of endless, boundless love.
The track changed, her wing felt like a distant memory. Twilight and Rarity looked at her, and then back at each other.
Then, as it was wont to do, the dance continued.
Her ascent quickened, and Rainbow tried to become a mountain again. She tried to feel the air and imagine the delicate twists and pirouettes of her feathers needed to complete the trick.
But she couldn’t, she couldn’t become a mountain because she didn’t feel like she was in the air, she felt like she was on the ground. All she wanted to do was to be there with the ponies she loved and who loved her. And while she tried to grasp at those old words, heed her teacher’s advice and right her fall, it was useless.
Who could become a mountain when you were spellbound?
Rarity looked up at Rainbow one last time, and her eyes shone with pride and affection so deep as to be the sky or the whole of the firmament itself. And when she looked back at Twilight, heart singing with a love too boundless for just two, she pulled the unicorn into a kiss. It was needy, hungry, desperate to lose some of that love lest it set her on fire.
The whole of it was spied from on high by pegasine eyes, high as a mountain, body in the clouds, mind on the ground. Rainbow knew exactly how Rarity felt, she’d felt it before, she felt it now. She’d been there, when Twilight had delivered a lecture or Rarity had stunned at a fashion show. She’d grabbed her other lover and poured that affection onto them, into them, drowning them all.
And when it was too late to pull up, when Rainbow realised she should have closed her eyes, she felt almost calm when she crashed into the ground. It felt like a homecoming. Rarity and Twilight were snapped from their trance. They jumped to their hooves and ran over, screaming, fearful.
“Rainbow, are you alright?” Twilight cried out, visually scanning her for harm.
“What on earth happened darling?!” Rarity joined in.
Stars above, how Rainbow loved them.
And even though Rainbow tried to flap her wing, and felt with a sickening lurch the way it moved with an agonising, unnatural wobble. The familiar feeling of a break. Even with all that, she was already getting up, already rushing to them.
She tried in words that had yet to come to her to explain that a broken wing was nothing in the face of her love for them both, for their love for her.That she didn’t regret keeping her eyes open so she could drink in the sight of them both for as long as possible. That she would have done it again.
But she was no poet, and the words wouldn’t come. So instead, she spoke from the heart. She’d been doing a lot of it recently.
“I uh… I guess I just got distracted,” she replied, eyes wide and bright and open.
