The Next Lesson

by Bandy

Rating: everyone
Tags: Adventure, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Rainbow Dash
Length: 9622

Sometimes, a lesson takes a lifetime to learn. Sometimes, it takes even longer than that. 

Rainbow Dash lived a great life--but it wasn’t good enough. If she wants to fly out of the rat-race of reincarnation, she’ll have to learn some very important lessons about love, loss, and letting go. With the cosmic spectre of death as her guide, her soul will soar through multiple lives in an effort to do something few have ever dreamt of doing and even fewer have accomplished.  

No worries, though. She’s got time. She’s got all of time.

Written for The My Little Pony Renaissance Contest

Published 2021-07-31 22:10:00 UTC
Last updated 2021-07-31 22:10:00 UTC

Rainbow Dash

Rainbow Dash took some milk from the fridge, closed the door, and saw Death reflected in the hallway mirror.

She wiped her bleary eyes and squinted at the mirror. Sometimes the light played tricks on her aging eyes at night, and she saw lingering shadows and spots of color that weren’t really there.

But this was no trick. Death was most certainly there.

She knew this day would come eventually. That failed to quell the icy chill crawling up her spine. She swallowed a lump forming in her throat. “Who?” she asked.

Death lifted a hoof and pointed to Dash.

She let out a trembling sigh of relief. She glanced up the stairs to the master bedroom, where Applejack lay sleeping, curled up with two of the younger grandfoals who’d come to visit this weekend. They all slept like apples--which is to say, Death itself could not wake them. They’d get one more good night of sleep before their lives turned upside down. Good, Dash thought.

She shook the jug of milk at Death. “Mind if I have a snack first?”

Death raised an eyebrow, but acquiesced with a nod. It moved to the kitchen table, its discorporeal hooves landing on the hardwood soundlessly, like dry ice vapors spilling across a table.

Dash ripped open the box of cereal and poured herself a bowl. She noticed her hooves trembling ever so slightly. The enormity of her guest started to set in. The lump in her throat returned.

“Do you--eat?” she held the box of cereal towards Death, who shook his head. “Yeah. Figures.”

Normally, Dash’s midnight snack was over in the blink of an eye. This time, however, she found herself playing with her food, swirling it around in the bowl, holding the individual grains of Happy-O’s under the milk until they turned to mush.

“Am I allowed to ask you questions?” Dash asked. Death did not reply. “Oookay. Let’s give this a try. How do I go?”

Death’s gaze, if his empty eye sockets could gaze, fell upon a rickety floorboard by the kitchen entryway. Some of the nails on one side had rusted out. When Dash had entered the kitchen earlier, she had stepped on the floorboard and inadvertently knocked one side loose.

“So, I trip on that?”

Death nodded.

“And then what? Do I break a hip?” Death shook his head. Thank goodness--hip breaks were a lame way to go. “So what happens?”

Death motioned to the entryway.

Dash’s heart sank. “Faceplant into the entry table, right?”

Death nodded.

The revelation left Dash grappling with an odd sense of irritation. She’d wanted to put a trophy case in the entryway, but Applejack had insisted the four trophy cases in the basement were enough. To add insult to injury, AJ didn’t even let her help pick out the current entry table. She had just picked it up one day at a garage sale without bothering to consult her.

Figures, Dash thought. She returned to playing with her cereal. “Couldn’t I at least go out doing a cool trick? Or flying, at least?”

Death shook his head.

“C’mon. Let me go out flying. I’ll do a barrel roll into the ground at mach two. I’ll hit a tree while I’m trying to land. I’ll fly too high and freeze my primaries. Double corkscrew into faceplant.” Her voice got louder. Maybe if they’d gone with the trophy case, none of this would be happening. She’d get to finish her Happy-O’s and go back to sleep and live another ten years with Applejack. Stupid. “Backflip into a tree shredder. Botched water landing. Flight hypoxia. Please.”

Pegasus instinct screamed, Fly! She pushed her chair back and spread her wings. The bowl of half-eaten cereal overturned. Two percent milk and Happy-O’s flew all over the counter.

“Please.” Her voice cracked. “Please let it be flying.”

Death once again nodded to the upturned floorboard.

Stupid. Stupid. It had to be the stupid floorboard and the stupid entry table she didn’t even like. Was the universe trying to teach her some kind of lesson?

Dash approached the floorboard with a defiant snarl. “What if I just didn’t step on the stupid floorboard? Ever think of that?” With an exaggerated acrobatic flair, she hopped over the floorboard. “What are you gonna do now, you overgrown calcium bug? Gonna reap my soul with a scythe? I know you don’t carry those, cuz I’ve been to Tartarus and met your family. I styled on your cousins and flipped off your mom. Try again next time, you weirdo. It’ll take more than that to kill the Rainbow D--”

Dash was so preoccupied with clowning on Death she didn’t notice the die-cast model truck her grandfoal had accidentally left in the entryway. She stepped on it and let out a surprised little gasp as the model truck took her hooves right out from underneath her. She slipped sideways and careened facefirst towards the entry table.

The impact made the whole house tremble. Upstairs, one of the grandfoals turned over. Applejack let out a happy little snore. The night held on for a little while longer, then bled away into morning.

Rainbow Bloom

Rainbow Bloom leapt off the cliffside and felt the rush of weightlessness. She tucked her legs in tight and let out a heroic holler just before her cannonball body hit the water.

Splash, went the lake. Perfect ten.

“Did you see that?” she cried as she broke the surface. She looked up at the shadows of her friends lingering on the top of the cliff. “I was flying!”

Summer was special for earth ponies. Their magic surged as the temperatures climbed. The earth had definitively shrugged off the deadwood yoke of winter and taken big, gasping breaths of spring. Now it was alive. It was a first kiss that came every year. It was the strumming of acoustic guitars. It was taking your share of nature’s bounty and barbecuing it over an open fire.

It was also the one time of year Bloom got to hang out with her friends without school getting in the way.

Their campsite sat a mere twenty yards from the edge of the cliff, swaddled by tall grass and shade trees. Bloom could pick through the winding ascent from the shoreline to the campsite in just under one minute and four seconds. This was her sixth such journey today. She’d timed every one.

When she made it back, her friends Sourpuss and Balsam burst out laughing.

“What?”

“Your mane!” Sourpuss howled.

Bloom prodded at her mane. Three out of the four seasons of the year, her hair was a deep auburn. In the summer, it faded to almost orange. Today, it seemed she’d picked up a sizable deposit of brownish silt and twigs.

“Big deal.” Bloom shook her head, which didn’t help in the slightest. “This camp’s got a communal shower.”

“I was just over there. Trust me. Don’t.”

“Then I’ll hop in the lake again.”

“The same lake that gave you all that goop?”

“Whatever. Is the food done yet?”

Sourpuss relented. She glanced at their fire pit and the foil-wrapped vegetables cooking next to the coals. “Couple minutes.”

Bloom felt herself being pulled towards the cliffside. There was time for one more leap if she hurried. “Come with me, Balsam,” Bloom pleaded with her friend. “It’ll be fun.”

Balsam hid behind her green and brown mane and did her best to blend into the treeline. Her olive-drab fur made it all too easy in the waning light. “I dunno. Someone’s gotta stay here and watch the food.”

“Sourpuss can watch the food. She loves watching the food.” Bloom grabbed her friend’s hoof. “It feels like flying.”

Balsam’s pegasus wings twitched at her sides. “I’d rather just relax right now.”

Bloom found herself eyeing her friend’s feathers the same way other mares might eye a rare diamond pendant. “C’mon, falling can be relaxing. And you get to swim around at the end. Please?”

“I’ll cheer you on from the campsite. I promise.”

Bloom didn’t really need Balsam to accompany her to the cliff. But it felt important to get her friend in on the action. Maybe it was a crush. That would be alright with Bloom. Balsam was cute. They’d loved and tolerated each other all four years of high school, so that must count for something. And she’d once heard from a school friend that pegasus mares were into free love and polyamory. That’d be pretty rad. Probably. Bloom still wasn’t totally sure what polyamory meant, but it was something earth pony parents typically looked down on, so she was all in.

The way Balsam turned beet-red and fled everytime someone brought up dating was not a good sign. But maybe she was embarrassed because she was so into it, and she didn’t want her friends to think she was some kinda weirdo.

Anyway, Bloom knew from the look on Balsam’s face there would be no convincing her, so she decided to pull out her ace in the hole.

“Actually, now that I think of it I might have seen a Kirtland’s Warbler or two in the reeds at the bottom of the cliff. I couldn’t be sure, though. Hey Balsam, aren’t those on your summer wildlife checklist or whatever?”

The ploy was shameless and utterly without merit. But before Sourpuss could muster up a properly snarky response, Balsam spread her wings and shot over to Bloom’s side.

“You saw two of them?” she squealed? “Yellow belly, black back, two-ish inches long?”

“Sounds about right--woah--”

Balsam grabbed Bloom’s foreleg and all but dragged her to the cliffside. “Where did you see them? I can’t believe I forgot my binoculars. I’ll have to make a sketch for the Phillydelphia Natural Observer. I can’t believe our luck!” Her gaze fell on Bloom. The poor earth pony nearly toppled under the weight. “Where’d you see them?”

“Over here.” Bloom and Balsam inched up to the cliff’s edge. “They were all the way there at the bottom.”

“In those bushes?” A frown wormed its way onto Balsam’s face. “That’s odd. Kirtland’s Warblers usually nest in jack pines. Those are too dense and shrubby. Bloom, are you sure you--”

In an instant, Bloom wrapped her arms around Balsam’s barrel and threw herself off the edge.

In the two point two seconds it took them to fall, Bloom noticed a few things about Balsam. Firstly, despite her wiry pegasus body, she could kick. Hard.

The second was that she could scream to bring the sky down. Right in Bloom’s ears, too.

The third was that, gosh it felt good to be this close to Balsam. What a brilliant idea this was.

Then they kissed the lake. Perfect ten.

They breached the surface in a tangle of manes and legs and smiles. Balsam let out another loud shriek of delight. She scooped up a wave in her wing and flung it over Bloom. Bloom returned the favor in kind. They drew apart, then tangled up again, like foals at play, like birds flitting through air.

“You jerk!” Balsam laughed.

They drew closer still. The water was warm, but a sudden chill sent a shock through Bloom’s heart. Something was happening between them. They were as close as close could be, but still Balsam drew closer. If they didn’t stop they were going to bump noses. Or something else.

No, you idiot, Bloom realized at the last possible moment, right as Balsam tilted her head and closed her eyes. She’s gonna--

A terrified scream cut through the crisp summer air. The two young mares snapped their eyes open and looked around. “Did you hear that?” Bloom asked.

Another scream, this one cut short by a strange gurgle. Bloom was about to suggest they ignore it and go back to whatever they were about to do when Balsam’s sharp pegasus eyes snapped towards the middle of the lake. “Oh no,” she murmured.

She disappeared beneath the waves in a wash of white water.

Bloom hacked and spun and tread water. “Balsam?” she called out. “Hello?”

Something flashed beneath the waves a few lengths away. Then the water broke in a spectacular spray. There was Balsam, frozen for a split second in a heroic pegasus pose. Her mane flew back, throwing a line of droplets into the air. Her wings were poised at the apex of their stroke. Her mouth was closed and her eyes were set, radiating intensity.

Perfect ten, Bloom thought.

Balsam’s wings pumped once, sloughing more water, unintentionally whipping Bloom. Then they were dry, and Balsam took off like a light towards the opposite shore.

It took Bloom a moment to realize what had happened. Pegasi were spectacularly buoyant creatures, what with the hollow bones and all. Balsam’s wings might have been too tired and too wet to propel her out of the water by themselves, but diving a few meters beneath the surface had the same effect as holding an inflated beach ball underwater.

In the time it took to think all that, Balsam had skimmed to the middle of the lake, plucked a pony from the water, and shot back towards Bloom.

“Follow me!” she yelled as she flew over Bloom. Her eyes looked deadly serious. Bloom floundered, found her center, and chugged to shore in a graceless doggy paddle.

There was no time to rest on the banks. Balsam dragged Bloom over to the unconscious pony lying in the mud. Bloom started to say something, but Balsam cut her off in her typical soft, matter-of-fact voice. “No time. He’s not breathing. Start CPR. I’m flying for help.”

“Balsam, wait a second!”

Her wings kicked up sand. She shot up the cliffside and back towards the campsite.

The realization taht she was alone with this dying stranger--just a colt, no less--sent a wave of dizzying terror through Bloom’s mind. She’d practiced this a few dozen times in gym class, but that was on a plastic dummy. She remembered her teacher’s voice saying, “Remember kids, if you have to use this, that means lives are at stake. So don’t give up!”

“Don’t give up,” she said to herself aloud. “Don’t give up.” She held her hooves up to her face. Then brought them down on the colt’s chest softly. His fur was light brown. It almost matched Balsam’s. “Don’t give up.” She pumped her hooves once. The colt flopped a little like a dead fish. The sight sent tears leaping to her eyes. Everything was happening so fast.

“Don’t give up,” she said. She pumped again. Then a third time. Then she remembered the song she was supposed to sing while she was doing CPR in order to maintain an effective rhythm.

She started singing out loud, but as soon as she did she felt something crack in the colt’s chest. She let out a whimper and shirked her hooves away. Keep going. Keep going. Please. She fought for control of her own hooves. It felt like forever before she got them back on the colt’s chest.

Just then, a ripple in the water caught her eye. She turned her head and saw the skeletal face of Death peering out from the water just beyond the shore.

Bloom blinked, and the face sunk back under the water without so much as a ripple.

Balsam returned a moment later with an electrical pop, accompanied by two unicorn park rangers. They found Bloom pumping the colt’s chest furiously. Tears streamed down her cheeks. In a panting, hysterical alto she belted, “Ha, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive...”

The ranger tried to push Bloom aside. “We’ll take it from here.”

"No.”

“No?”

“If I stop now, he's a goner." Her eyes flicked back towards the water. It was deathly still and so clear she could almost see to the bottom. She saw the shadows all the way down and shuddered. "I got this."

"Miss, stop--"

"I have to do this."

"Bloom!" Balsam shouted right in her ear and broke her panic. Bloom wasn’t able to consider Balsam’s request in the moment. Mainly because Balsam picked her up and flung her off the colt.

Where Bloom’s hooves had been, she saw deep black bruises rising beneath the fur. Sickening shame filled Bloom’s heart. Her cheeks burned worse than her aching forelegs.

There was the sound of approaching thunder. The smell of ozone. Then there was a great loud pop, and the rangers and the colt vanished.

Bloom let out a shuddering breath. All her focus had just lost its target. She reared back and shoved Balsam aside. “Idiot,” she said, more at the lake than anypony in particular. She stomped her hooves in the sand as hard as she could.

"There's another ranger at our campsite," Balsam said. She seemed unphased by being tossed aside. "We'll need to give a statement." She took Bloom’s hoof in hers. “It’s over. Everything’s okay.”

Bloom glanced back at the lake. The water was still--too still. It looked unnatural, like a mirror pool to some other place. She kicked a hooffull of sand into the water and watched the ripples distort the reflection.

Then together she and Balsam picked their way back up the root-choked trail to their campsite at the top of the cliff.

Sourpuss’s natural inclinations made her an excellent songwriter. While Balsam and Bloom moped around the firepit, Sourpuss pulled out a guitar and plucked a few notes. Soon, a melody and a few minor chords appeared. Then she closed her eyes and sealed herself away in her own melancholic world.

Bloom moved the cold congealed mass of vegetables around in her tin foil bowl. All her mental focus was on remembering the colt on the beach and the bruises on his chest. Earth pony strength was a curse sometimes. Maybe if she’d been born a pegasus she wouldn’t have hurt him so bad.

“I’m such an idiot,” she murmured.

Balsam sighed with eternal patience. “It happened so fast. It would have happened to anyone.”

“What if he hadn’t lived, huh? I’d be a murderer.”

Balsam set aside her own untouched food. “We’re not having this conversation again.”

“You saw the bruises. I broke the kid’s ribs. He’s--”

“Shh.”

Bloom shut her mouth.

“If you do it right, you’re supposed to break ribs. We did everything we could. You did everything you could.”

Bloom turned over her food one last time before giving up and setting it aside. “I think this weekend's shot.”

Balsam shared a tired but genuine smile. “Do you really think so? We saved a colt’s life. That’s pretty great as far as Fridays go.”

Bloom chuckled a little. “I guess.”

“And we’re here now. And maybe after the sun goes down we’ll be hungry enough for smores.”

“Maybe.” A thought popped into Bloom’s mind. She hesitated, turned it over like she’d been doing to her food all this time, then spat it out. “What do you think happens when we die?”

Balsam examined Bloom’s face. Maybe she was looking for a hint of incenserity so she could shoot the question down. But apparently she found none, because a moment later, she answered, “Pegasi believe in reincarnation. Do you know what that is?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of it. Is that what you believe though?”

“I think so. It feels right.”

Bloom nodded. “Earth pony lore says once you die, you return to nature. Your body gets eaten by the earth and you go back to the place you were before.”

“So, basically like reincarnation.”

Bloom was aware of the teasing lilt in Balsam’s voice, but the last thing she wanted was to question her friend’s religious convictions and start a fight. “If all the molecules come together again, then maybe it would be like reincarnation. But that’s so unlikely. Once you decompose, your body gets eaten by worms, which get carried off by birds. Trees can absorb parts of you and send you off in their seeds. The mycelium layer eats you too, and that can carry your nutrients for thousands of miles. It's pretty wild how far you can travel once you're dead. The other races think earth ponies are sedentary, but they’re wrong. We know we’re gonna go far one day, whether we want to or not. So we stick around and admire one place while we still can.”

“Oh,” said balsam, looking slightly more green than usual. “That’s... interesting.”

“I’m sorry. I’m making this weird. I’m stupid.” Something danced on the tip of her tongue. Almost within reach... so close... “I was just so powerless, you know? I was looking at the colt and thinking, boy, he’s gonna go so far--”

Balsam rushed to her side and wrapped her wings around her in a fierce hug. Bloom blinked in confusion only to realize there were tears in her eyes. Stupid.

“Sorry,” Bloom said.

“I was scared too.”

“You didn’t look scared.”

“I was terrified. Oh, I was probably such a meanie to you, too.” Balsam squeezed harder. “I’m sorry.”

When the two finally broke away, Bloom wiped the last of the tears away and scooted to the edge of the log. “I’m the brawl of the group, y’know?"

“I think you mean brawn.”

“That’s what I said, brawl.” She shook her head. “I’m supposed to have it all locked down.” She gave a halfhearted flex of her forelegs. "It felt like I didn't even matter. I was just nothing."

“You matter.” Balsam fluttered over to Bloom’s log and looked her right in the eyes. “You matter so much.”

Bloom leaned forward and kissed her. Sourpuss hit a wrong chord and dropped her guitar. The fire crackled happily in place of a melody.

Perfect ten.

Rainbow Charm

Rainbow Charm aimed her horn at the sky. Advanced calculations whizzed through her head at supersonic speed. Preserve latitude and longitude. Alter altitude. Visualize every last inch of yourself. Don’t forget anything--for goodness’ sake, don’t forget anything.

Magical lightning arked around her horn, tracing the spiral from bass to tip. The feeling of isn’t permeated her body. The lightning arked. Charm disappeared.

...Only to reappear a moment later in the exact same spot. Her mane was frozen together in chunks. Sweat rolled down her face. One of the vessels in her right eye had burst. Her whole body felt tingly, and not in a good way. The feeling of is reasserted itself with a vengeance.

She opened her mouth to cheer and vomited all over the laboratory floor.

“What on earth are you doing?” came a voice from behind her.

Rainbow Charm whirled around and slipped in her own vomit. She fell to the ground and gasped like a fish out of water. “Sir--sir--I--”

“Suh-suh-suh--stop blathering like a simpleton.” The other pony walked up to her until his silhouette loomed large over her. “It appears you’ve vomited.”

“In the process of experimentation. Sir.”

The pony draped his hoof with a rag, then helped Charm up. “And what, exactly, were you experimenting on?”

“Myself. And the basics of teleportation.”

“Ah, reinventing the wheel. Fitting.”

“Not reinventing. Just making it more round.” Charm paused as she hacked up a lung. “I teleported exactly one mile into the air, then back down again. And I did it without a single millimeter of deviation in latitude or longitude. Exactly up. Exactly down.”

The pony looked her up and down with impassive grey eyes. “Congratulations. You’ve accomplished something basic to an inane degree of precision. Have you even bothered looking over my notes for tomorrow’s experiment? Or have you been too busy reinventing your breakfast?”

Rainbow Charm felt a chunk of something slimy under her hoof and grimaced. She was used to this sort of reproach. But this teleportation thing felt important--important enough to share. And important enough to merit further study.

“With your permission, sir, I’d like to continue refining this spell. After your studies are complete, of course.”

“I think not. Now take a letter.”

“Sir--”

“Did I stutter?”

Charm sighed. Her tired horn lit up the same pale pink as her fur. Ink and quill materialized beside her. “Ready.”

The pony cleared his throat. “Dear Princess Sparkle. New paragraph. My four dimensional portal blueprint is nearing completion, comma, and will be ready to test by tomorrow evening. Period. I humbly request the palace be placed at general quarters, comma, as tesseracts are unstable and constitute a minor, comma, though not insignificant, comma, threat to the local population. Period.”

“Minor?” Charm asked bluntly.

“Minor, as in there is a minor chance it will swallow the universe. Don’t write that down. Do write this down. My assistant and I will report back with our findings as soon as solutions reveal themselves. Period. New paragraph. May friendship spread through this world, and every conceivable world, comma, new paragraph. Your faithful student, comma, new paragraph. Kazimismo Kazimiscimo.” He lit up his horn to charge a spell. “That will be all. Clean this up, then you are dismissed until tomorrow morning. Don't forget to go over my notes. And get some rest while you’re at it. I’ll need you in tip-top shape for--”

He cast his own teleportation spell before he could bother finishing the sentence. His magic tugged so strongly she felt herself and her papers being dragged towards the spot where he had just stood.

Rainbow Charm sighed as she magick’d the letter away. She could feel feedback welling up in the front of her head, leaping from the base of her horn right into her frontal cortex. She’d need to rest if she wanted to be of use tomorrow.

It was getting harder to convince herself she liked this. Kazimismo Kazimiscimo--Cosmo, for short--was a unicorn born and bred to be historically significant. His work with extra-dimensional portal spells leading into non-Euclidian dimensions was going to revolutionize Equestria. Instantaneous travel for all races. Space travel. The end of resource dependency. And he was the personal student of princess Sparkle to boot. And only two years older than her. And handsome.

He sucked.

Rainbow Charm trudged through the lab, punched in the passcode for the thirty six inch solid steel blast door separating the laboratory from the rest of the Canterlot mountain, and wove her way through the labyrinthian catacombs of Canterlot mountain in search of a mop.

In her room that evening, freshly showered and no longer smelling like ozone and stomach bile, Rainbow Charm poured over Cosmo’s notes on tomorrow’s experiment with dutiful care.

She held no delusions about the danger of tomorrow’s activity. Tesseracts were dangerous. Cosmo’s two previous portal experiments had to be aborted after the portals spaghettified the data probes they’d sent inside. Charm had no intention of being spaghettified.

Her role in the spellcast itself was both safety and support. Once he had established the portal, she would assist him in keeping it open and stable while they deployed a probe inside and recorded data. Also, if Cosmo were to somehow lose control during his cast, someone had to be there to slam the portal shut.

A lot of the contingencies they’d planned for were still purely theoretical, but nonetheless something she would like to have a plan for. Better safe than sorry.

From the foot of her cot came a clatter and a high-pitched mewl for attention. Charm put her notes aside to scoop up Rocky, her pet rock, off the floor and onto the bed. She placed him in his favorite spot in the corner and went back to her books.

She and Rocky were on a very similar wavelength in many respects. Neither were emotionally needy or prone to complain. But they also liked company, even if it was at a distance. Just knowing the other was there felt nice.

Rocky made a rock-sized divot in the thin covers and bedded down. He looked at Charm with quiet discontent. He was ready for bed. Shouldn’t she get some sleep, too?

With a groan, she set the books onto the nightstand--by hoof, so as not to tax her magic. Aside from the bed, the nightstand, the messy bookshelf, and the single blacklight Rocket Ponies poster she’d found in the dumpster last year, her room was utterly bare.

Having no decorations in her room never bothered her, but tonight of all nights the room felt lifeless and cold. She pulled Rocky tightly to her chest and tried to snuff herself out with the covers before any tears could come.

Heavy magic use gave her disturbing, grainy dreams. As she slept, she saw threatening shapes collapse into themselves, then fly out in hyperreality. Shapes inside of shapes. She hugged Rocky closer to her chest. The little sentient rock let out a whimper.

She wondered if rocks ever missed their rock families, too.

Rainbow Charm had developed a precise mental ritual for the first ninety minutes of each day. That hour and half was something of a parade of horrors for her, so she’d had to develop a way to strategically ignore the worst of it.

Instead of focusing on the fact that she was being dragged out of sleep by an alarm clock at an unreasonable hour, she instead focused on what the alarm clock was playing--”Mares Just Wanna Have Fun,” by Cyneigh Lauper. Glittering electric guitars and spacey synths and swelling drums cut through the ache in her head. She swayed her hips back and forth in a tired two-step and mouthed along with the lyrics:

I come home in the morning light
My mother says "When you gonna live your life right?"
Oh momma dear, we're not the fortunate ones
And mares, they wanna have fun~

Instead of focusing on how cold the bare floors were on her hooves, she instead focused on the Rocket Ponies poster. Sky Rocket, Star Hopper, Stardancer, Sunspark, Twinkler, and Napper were dressed in their MegaZorg battle armor and arranged before their respective MegaMechs. Behind them, a cascading field of stars exploded into supernovae. So cool.

Instead of focusing on the usual morning drudgery of washing her face, brushing her teeth, and making the long trek from her basement bedroom to the staff dining area, she set her mind in motion by listening to her recordings of the previous day’s experiments, both hers and Cosmo’s.

Instead of focusing on the rows of pastries at the head of the buffet, or how Cosmo’s last experiment into rewiring the pony gut microbiome had left her with a savage intolerance to gluten, she gauged the weight of eggs and greens as she piled them onto her styrofoam plate. She guessed six hundred and twelve. Magic confirmed her estimation. She added it to the total precise weight for this month, then divided it by the number of days.

Her average was also six hundred and twelve. The thought made her frown. What was the definition of insanity again?

No matter. She walked to her usual two-top table in the corner, sat down alone, and lost herself in her recordings. Strategic ignorance. The feeling of isn’t was sometimes preferable to the feeling of is.

Before heading off to the lab, she made a quick stop to the call room. Booths filled with crystal ball calling machines and soundproof paneling lined the walls. She stepped into the nearest open booth, slipped a bit into the machine, and dialed her mom. Mist and arcane energy swirled around inside.

The face of her mother, Blissful Dream, materialized, looking blueshifted and slightly fuzzy but utterly unmistakable. Charm’s heart swelled.

“Oh, my baby,” Dream cooed, “how are you doing today?”

“I’m okay, mom. Just tired. We have a big experiment coming up today.”

“Ooh, like the one you did last week with the lasers and mirrors?”

Charm winced. “This one’s less dangerous. We’re working on portals.”

“That’s gonna look so good on your resume! I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks, mom.” Charm noticed that something in her voice sounded somber. She hoped her mother couldn’t hear it, whatever it was.

“When you’re done with your internship, maybe you could go into the portal field. I hear that’s doing great right now.”

“There’s not really a portals field, per say. And it’s not really an internship either.”

“You’re the arch mage’s vice president, aren’t you?”

“No, mom. I’m the assistant to the princess’s student.”

“Maybe you could become the princess’s student. You could show them all the nice work you did on this portal thing and make a case for yourself.”

“That’s not really how it works--”

“But it could help you get a leg up on those college ponies. If you made it into the Canterlot mage system on your own, you could prove you didn’t even need their silly degree. College wasn’t right for you anyway. You could do it all on your own.”

Charm let out a long sigh. “Okay mom, I’ll try.”

Signal disturbance in the leylines between here and her childhood home in Phillydelphia obscured her mother’s beaming smile in waves of static interference. “I’m so proud of you,” the voice crackled and popped. “I love you. Good luck. Can I send you some cookies for your biiii--th--thday nxxzt mmmmmmmmm--”

The line glitched and went dead. Charm blinked, then slapped the crystal ball. She stuck her head outside the booth and saw all the other callers had also been disconnected. An odd sense of worry filled her heart.

A letter teleported right in front of her face with an obnoxious magical pop. Charm let out a very undignified whinney and fell backwards into the booth. The letter unfurled itself and descended like a graceless bird directly onto her face.

LAB. NOW.

--C

As Rainbow Charm rose to her hooves, she wondered if she’d last long enough to see her birthday next month.

The blast doors were open when Charm made it to the lab. No sooner had she stepped over the threshold than Cosmo shouted from inside, “Seal the doors and come help me.”

Charm punched in the access code on the motorized door controls. As the locks slid shut behind her, she joined Cosmo in the center of the lab. Dozens of power cables and data-gathering probes snaked from machines around the room to a single shoulder-height pillar in the center. Spindly magical dampeners as sleek and sharp as a griffon’s claws jutted from the top of the pillar.

Cosmo frowned and ripped one out of its housing.

“Is that wise?” Charm asked.

“Very. I tried to fire up the tesseract just a moment ago, but there were so many magical dampeners it wouldn’t go.”

“You... you what?”

Cosmo shrugged and tugged on another dampener. “You were running late.”

No wonder all the crystal callers went out, she thought. “Nevermind how unsafe that is, Cosmo. With no one on the failsafe spell, you could have been seriously hurt if things got out of hoof.”

“Which they wouldn’t have, obviously.”

“And did you close the blast doors when you did this? They were open when I got here.”

“Don’t lecture me,” he hissed. Irritation formed deep wrinkles on his brow.

Normally, this would be the part of their interaction where Charm shrugged her mentor’s rudeness off and forged ahead with the experiment. Today, though, with so much riding on their experiment, she couldn’t not let him have a piece of her mind.

“Maybe you need to be lectured sometimes. What you did was unsafe. I want to hear you acknowledge it was a mistake to try opening the portal solo.”

“I will do no such thing.”

“Then I’m lodging a formal complaint and postponing the experiment.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I’ll take this up the chain.”

“There is no--what?” His face screwed up in contention. “There is no chain. It’s you, then me. That’s the chain.”

“I’m sure the princess would be interested to hear you’ve been running dangerous experiments without following proper safety protocol.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Charm raised an eyebrow in challenge.

Cosmo let out a seething sigh. “You have no idea the stress I’m under.”

“Yes I do. I designed this experiment with you.”

“But you’re not me.” He shot her a withering glare and twisted another dampener free. “This has to work. And it has to work today.”

“Why?” He rolled his eyes at her. “No, I’m serious. Is there some secret deadline I’m not aware of?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, there is.” He ripped one final dampener free from the pillar and tossed it on a rolling cart in the corner. “Now--”

Charm did something she never thought she would do. She walked up to Cosmo and took his hoof in hers. His reaction was like being hit with a stun gun. His whole body tensed, and he went stone-still, eyes open wide in shock. At least he finally piped down for once.

“We’re in this together. You have to trust me, or this partnership is never going to be anything more than a burdon.”

He stayed rooted to the spot until she let go of his hoof. Only then did he start to relax and unclench his jaw. “Please don’t touch me again.”

“Sorry. I won’t do it again.”

He sighed. “Thank you.”

“So we’re in this together, right?”

“Yes.”

“And this experiment is dangerous, right?”

“Some think so.”

“So we’re just two ponies doing a dangerous thing together.”

“Seems about right.”

“I think ponies who do dangerous things together ought to be a little more candid with each other.”

“Perhaps a greater level of candor could be beneficial to a more streamlined working environment.”

“Good. So tell me what’s going on.”

The fight drained out of him. His shoulders slumped. “How old are you?” he asked.

“Uh. Twenty.”

“I’m twenty two. I’ve been princess Sparkle’s student since I was twelve. At that age, I was the oldest personal student any princess had ever taken on. Ever.”

“So what?”

“So, do you have any idea what princess Sparkle’s old students were doing by the time they were twelve? Most of them had saved the world at least once.”

“How many of them were too dead to save it a second time?”

He shook his head. “Irrelevant. I have ground to cover. So much ground to cover...”

Heavens above, was she feeling sympathy for this cretin? She felt disgusted with herself even as she heard herself say, “I don’t think that’s how princess Sparkle sees it. Whatever reason she had for making you her student, I doubt it was to compete with ghosts.”

He turned back to the piller, now missing a fifth of its dampeners. “Are you going to help me or not?”

She reached for his hoof again, then stopped herself. “I have dreams too, y’know.”

“Yes, or course. The cobbler dreams of cobbling.”

“Don’t be a jerk. I want to advance science. I want the exponential curve of progress to go vertical.” She locked eyes with him. “Let’s do this together, Cosmo.”

His eyes flashed from her to the pillar. For a second, his lips curled down, and he thought he was going to send her away. But the moment passed, and he set his hooves down firmly on the concrete floor.

“We go again,” he said, his voice firm. “And we go together.”

The experiment was simple, in principle. They would use Cosmo’s magic to open a tesseract portal on the pillar. Charm would bolster the opening with her own magic, then chuck in a probe on a string. They would wait a few minutes for the probe to collect data. Then they would yank the probe out and close the portal. Easy peasy.

When she finished sealing the doors and checking the concrete safety barriers for signs of weakness, she rejoined Cosmo in the center of the room. The pillar stood imposingly amidst the tangle of wires and cables and dampeners.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Last thing. Hold still.” She lit up her horn and tethered a spell to Cosmo’s horn. He flinched at the sensation of magic touching him, but stayed dutifully still until the spell was complete.

It was a failsafe spell--once he started casting his next spell, a magical switch would be flipped on. If his magic cut off for whatever reason and the switch was not flipped off again, a distress call would be sent directly to princess Sparkle, along with some minor magical fireworks to get her attention.

“Rainbow Charm?” Cosmo said.

She turned at the sound of her name. “Yes?”

Cosmo fumbled with his thoughts in open-mouthed silence before saying, “I am not very good at speaking socially. I’m bad at it because it’s pointless and dumb.” Her smirk seemed to embolden him. “But I do not think it’s pointless and dumb to say that I respect you. You are smart in a great many ways I am not. And as long as you stay in the sciences, I believe the curve of progress will only grow more exponential.” He let out a long, exasperated sigh. “Now can we please get started already?”

A rare smile flashed across her face. She raced behind the protective barriers and readied the data probe, a chrome-plated cube roughly the size of a baseball stuffed with wires and sensors. As Cosmo joined her behind the wall and began his cast, he nodded, and she cast her failsafe spell.

She felt the air around her grow warm, charged with strange ambient energy. Through a viewing slit in the wall, she kept her eyes glued to the pillar. Cosmo pushed more energy through his horn. The lab lights faded from fluorescent yellow to orange, then red, then black. The outline of the pillar and the wires remained as white outlines against a black backdrop.

Cosmo let out a grunt and pulled on the local ambient field with all his might. Charm felt the hair on her neck stand up as a series of lines sprouted from the pillar. At first it looked like a cube, but then she noticed another shape within the cube, something like a second cube with many tendons connecting it to the first.

This was it--the tesseract. The air whooshed with magical energy. Every bone in her body vibrated in time with the pulsing waves pouring off Cosmo’s horn.

In the time it took her to double-check the data probe, the tesseract had already fully emerged from the pillar. It was only the size of a basketball, though it radiated like the sun.

“Now!” Cosmo shouted. His voice came from everywhere at once, an infinite echo feeding back louder and louder with each iteration. She stepped out from behind the blast barrier and chucked the data probe into the tesseract with all her might.

The little box of wires and sensors flew through the air in slow-motion. Charm noted that, if she squinted, the probe looked kind of like her pet rock, Rocky. A tiny twinge of worry pinched at her heart.

Then the probe entered the tesseract, and everything went wrong.

The color of the room immediately snapped back to normal. Cosmo appeared to fling himself forward into the barrier. The tesseract remained the blackest shade of night. It started to spin.

“What the...” Cosmo gave Charm a strange look. She noticed his horn was still pulsing with magic.

“Are you doing that?”

He looked up just in time to watch a long crack appear in his horn, running from the base all the way to the tip. His eyes went wide. He opened his mouth to speak.

The tesseract exploded outward and devoured the entire lab instantaneously. The probe, having been vomited up by the portal, slammed into the concrete barrier. The wall held, but a piece of concrete on the opposite side of the impact area flew off and plowed into Cosmo, sending him tumbling away.

Charm couldn’t see where he landed. She cried out in agony as the weight of the entire tesseract portal fell on her failsafe spell. She collapsed, blacked out for a fraction of a second, bit her tongue, then snapped back to reality.

“Cosmo!” she called. Her voice echoed back at her. With a herculean effort, she turned around and saw the blast doors at the lab entrance. The tesseract hadn’t gotten out yet. Hope surged through her.

But the effort of holding that gap open grew more taxing by the second. The feeling of isn’t crept over her with icy certainty.

She looked around again. She had to get Cosmo out. And close the portal. And save herself. Princess Sparkle would have received a distress letter as soon as Cosmo’s magic cut out. But would she even be able to make it to them in time?

Just as the confusion and pain started to overwhelm her, she heard a voice crying out behind her. “Cosmo?” She turned, collapsed, got up, and started trudging towards the sound of the voice.

Her progress was agonizingly slow. She was limping. Her hind legs were going numb. Her whole body trembled on the verge of total collapse.

She called out again, and the voices got louder. “Charm... Charm...”

“Yes!” She tripped and felt her hold on the opening slip. She wailed and dug her magic into the opening again. “Please! Help me Cosmo.”

“Charm... stop fighting.”

“What?” She stopped and fell once again. The voice was no longer Cosmo’s. A twisting, writhing body of shadows seperated and flooded the air around her, howling like hungry wolves. They snarled, showing infinite rows of teeth. One nipped at her flank. Then another. They beset her with cuts and scratches and bites. Nothing deep, but all painful.

“Stop fighting, Charm,” they moaned in chorus. “We can help.”

“Who...” Charm panted. Her jaw was no longer working properly. She couldn’t get the words out.

“Accept us,” the dark entity whispered. “We can help you. We see inside you. The jealousy. We could make you so much more powerful than him.”

Him. Charm lifted her head only to feel a hundred teeth and claws ripping at her throat. She squeaked and curled up again.

“He is beneath you,” the entity said. “Take this power and take his place. You are worthy.”

Charm dared to open her eyes for a fraction of a second. As she did, she saw the heart of absolute black atop the lab’s central pillar. Blacker than black. Black enough to paralyze her with primordial fear. The ancient all-seeing soul within her cried out in terror.

And beyond it, through the dimensional veil, she saw the skeletal face of Death peering in. He seemed to be studying her.

She put her head down. her magic started to fade. The beasts rejoiced and let out a howl of joy. The feeling of isn’t crept over her body like pins and needles, like a loss of blood, like unwanted sleep.

The howl died in their throats as waves of magical energy surged from beyond the veil, knocking the shadows back. Pure light spilled over the blackness in broad, crepuscular rays.

The blast door, meant to withstand the discharge of a small nuclear warhead at point-blank range, evaporated with barely a trace. Princess Twilight Sparkle in all her regal glory bounded into the room, horn awash in magical fire.

“Teleport out!” she cried into the void. “Hurry!”

Charm knew the spell like the back of her hoof. She’d studied it to inane perfection in the previous week, after all. It would require getting four magical threads through four needles, all placed in different dimensions, infinitely close and infinitely far apart simultaneously. But that wasn’t a problem for a powerful unicorn such as herself.

Her horn shimmered. She readied herself to teleport, and probably to puke as soon as she landed.

Then, in the shifting darkness, she saw the slumped figure of Kazimismo Kazimiscimo.

From Princess Twilight Sparkle’s perspective, it looked like her two most prized students vanished into the darkness. Cosmo’s horn looked to be damaged, and poor Charm could barely lift her head. One moment they were there. The next moment, darkness swallowed them.

Then there was a tremendous flash of light from inside the botched portal like a flash of lightning, illuminating a pack of shadows with eyes and teeth. They shirked away from the light, howling in agony.

A clap like thunder echoed in the lab. Cosmo flew through the opening and careened out of sight. The portal slammed shut. The concrete barrier walls collapsed. Twilight swayed slightly but kept her footing.

As the smoke cleared, the princess found Cosmo unconscious on the floor. A few paces away from him, closer to the smoldering pillar, she saw his assistant, Rainbow Charm, also on the floor.

The former took in a great heaving gasp of air and sat upright.

“I’m okay!” he cried.

Then his horn cracked neatly in two, right up the middle. One piece remained stuck on his head. The other fell to the floor. He stared at the shattered keratin in stunned, slack-jawed silence.

Finally, he looked up at the princess and said, “I can still be your student, right?”

Twilight rushed to his side. “The portal,” she said. “How did you close it?”

“The...” he glanced over his shoulder. A fine trickle of blood ran down his face from where his horn used to be. “I didn’t close it.”

Princess Sparkle frowned in confusion. “Neither did I.”

Their eyes fell on the prone form of Rainbow Charm. Her fur smoldered. She wasn’t moving.

Flying High

Flimsy flappers, falling branches, sunrise slow as soft molasses. Hark we go into the sky. Flap flap flap and up real high.

Falling branches down below, scary monsters down there roam. Safety in the summer sky. Safety’s up up up real high.

Down below the monsters roam, jagged teeth and crushing bones. We don’t worry, they can’t fly. Tweet tweet tweet! my sisters cry.

Leave the forest, go to town. There there’s foodstuff on the ground. Peck peck peck a crumb of bread. Sugar sweet rush in my head.

Big commotion, voices speaking. I can’t understand the meaning. Peck peck Woah! a cart rolls through, kicks up crumbs and cobbles too.

On the roof I sit and watch, away from scary stomping mosh. A hundred ponies making noise,
clop of hooves and jangling coins.

Silly ponies, don’t they see? They’ll never be as smart as me. Time is not to spend or see. Time is flimsy flapping free.

There is no now, nor is there then. Time is not to see or spend. I see it now as plain as day. Time is here for me to play!

Hark we go into the sky. Flap flap flap and up real high. The ponies don’t speak birdy song. We sing, but they don’t sing along.

Flapping hard, the forest looms, the trees are carved with ancient runes. Fold my wings and dive down deep, fast so monsters can not eat.

Nest is near, the call rings true. Another day, another hue. Another is that turns to was, another song that I have sung.

Flimsy flappers filled the sky, falling leaves and lullabies. Tweet tweet tweet! my sisters said. Return to nest and go to bed.

Death 1

Let us clarify a few things before we continue.

Death was not really a robe-wearing skeleton. What Rainbow Dash saw was merely the small piece of the larger universal consciousness tasked with ferrying dead souls into the higher-dimensional plane and preparing them for their next life.

It appeared to Rainbow Dash in that form because her mind, conditioned by a very specific set of cultural circumstances, would recognize it for what it was. She understood it the same way a two-dimensional creature would understand a three-dimensional creature if the duo somehow crossed paths. That is to say--she barely understood it at all. But she could wrap her head around that one little part of it that was on her level. Had Dash been born a yak, Death would have appeared to her as a flying three-headed wendigo with a beard that wrapped around the world. It was all very circumstantial like that.

But let's get back on track.

The soul formerly known as Rainbow Dash had done an exceptional job this time around. This iteration had been a test of her ability to empathize and love--something her previous twelve iterations had struggled with. The trajectory of her soul, buoyed by her connection to the elements of harmony, had met the challenge with a signature tireless bravado. Her soul was powerful and learning more all the time. It didn’t have far to go before it flew out of the wheel of life and death altogether.

But there was still work to be done. In order to discorporate completely, a soul had to be clean of all fears and attachments. No easy task, especially when you considered how much fear and attachment was woven into the thread of the mortal world.

Such a task was impossible for a pony to accomplish in one single lifetime, so the lessons had to be spread out over a few dozen millenia. In the entire history of Equestria, a grand total of twelve creatures had achieved enlightenment. They had all been ponies at one point or another, but only two had achieved it as ponies. The majority of the twelve, interestingly enough, achieved the last stage of enlightenment as common housecats.

But we are getting off track again.

The next order of business was something even more difficult than learning to be vulnerable. Her final moments had shown some glaring flaws attached to her ego and lust for life.

Before she could move on, she needed to learn to let go.

In the near-infinite catalogue of creatures about to be born, the creature known to some as Death found the soul formerly known as Rainbow Dash a new body. It had a starting point suitable for her prior accomplishments and a trajectory that would challenge her to grow more humble.

It was an earth pony form, to boot. What better way to instill humility in a pegasus?

Death 2

Let us pause again to emphasize how rare it was to surprise Death .

The kiss, the subsequent long weekend spent sharing a tent, and the following sixty years of marriage had not been a part of this soul’s expected trajectory. But their relationship was healthy and more stable than most. Balsam did not, as Bloom thought, participate in polyamory. But she was cool with that.

Time and time again, the soul formerly known as Rainbow Bloom had proven herself to be particularly rambunctious. A veritable pinball of cosmic energy. This unexpected development thankfully did not knock her too far off-course. She made it another eighty years, bringing the total to a respectable 97. Not bad at all. Another nasty fall at the end, though. What luck!

What’s more, she hadn’t been able to let go when it counted. She fostered arrogance in unexpected places. She sheltered jealousy, even towards her friends--especially towards her friends’ wings. She harbored a desire to control everything about her situation, from the color and direction of her post-college summer vacation to the way she and Balsam spooned in their tent.

And on that fateful day on the beach, those negative traits manifested in a very real way. They nearly cost one colt his life.

No, the soul formerly known as Rainbow Bloom still had a long way to go.

In the near-infinite catalogue of creatures about to be born, the creature known to some as Death found the soul formerly known as Rainbow Bloom a new life. This life was latent with natural power. Such things tested the best of souls and were downright dangerous to the rest. The soul formerly known as Rainbow Bloom had already proven she could handle power when she was surrounded by good influences.

Would she hold up if she were on her own?

Death 3

Let us take a moment to acknowledge the significance of this soul’s accomplishment.

The soul formerly known as Rainbow Charm had done something truly remarkable--she’d surprised Death twice in two consecutive lifetimes. Her life’s trajectory was supposed to extend far beyond that fateful day in the laboratory beneath Canterlot. She’d been meant to survive, carry guilt through the rest of her life, and have many small hard-earned moments of catharsis culminate sometime in her late seventies.

But that... that was truly unanticipated.

Death--the small piece of the larger universal consciousness tasked with ferrying dead souls into the higher-dimensional plane and preparing them for their next life--swelled with joy. In a single moment, she’d grown one step closer to flying out of the wheel of life and death.

There would be time to work on her next life soon enough--a noblepony, perhaps, one born into providence. It was easier for a pony to pass through the eye of a needle than navigate the myriad challenges of dealing with unearned wealth. But first, her soul deserved a reprieve. A short and easy life. Something to bolster her spirits, no pun intended, and tease her with the bliss that awaited her when she became the lucky thirteenth soul to escape the cycle of reincarnation.

A bird, perhaps.

Birds were misunderstood creatures--not because ponies didn’t think they were beautiful, but because they didn’t understand just how truly beautiful they were. Bird songs were Death’s favorite music. Ponies, not being able to speak bird, were limited to appreciating the melodic qualities of their songs. But Death spoke every conceivable language. So when the birds sang, he understood.

The truest beauty of a birdsong came in its lyrics. When a bird sang, it always sang in perfect rhyme.