Faithfully Yours

                                                                                                                                                             1st July

Dear Rainbow,

Congratulations!! I just knew you'd win! The derby was so exciting to watch

--

Rainbow abruptly stopped reading. Seizing the letter between her hooves, she tore it with her teeth and threw it aside furiously. A dose of something other than Twilight's condescension was what she needed right now. Clamping her feelings like rampant wound, She hurried to the bedroom and swiftly took to rooting around under the bed. This supply wasn't quite exhausted, as far as she could remember, and certainly hoped -  she'd be damned if she had to make another appointment with Flam.

Engrossed in her frenzied search, she heard none of her boyfriend's upbeat chatter as he entered the room, having finally escaped the surge of post-derby commotion. She herself had made no compromises in her escape, but she knew that such a miracle would be short-lived. She was the big star, after all. Her heart pounded as the pockets of last season's promotional outfits, stuffed contemptuously under the bed, offered nothing. And then she found the spare pillows, and gasped with relief at her old reliable lack of imagination. She didn't bother being discreet about it now.

Soarin flew to her side, seeking to disarm her. "Hey! No! Remember what the doctor said - "

"DON'T TOUCH ME!"

Soarin reeled back from his girlfriend and the horror of her grief-stricken face.

"You took a dive you son of a bitch!"

"Rainbow I went down at the twenty third hoop, I lost concentration and misjudged. It happens."

"NOT TO YOU!" She swallowed hard, battling her feelings with an obstinacy that was all too justified. "You never misjudge that angle. I know you."

Soarin's face fell. It took nothing less than a champion of the sky, who on top of her own expertise, knew him through and through - the weight of his body, its suppleness and natural inclinations, every approach, every reflex, every strength and every weakness - to realise what he had done.

Rainbow sniffed fiercely, her voice attaining a bitter form of composure. "And I know why you did it. Scoots was there when you made the deal."

Soarin took a step back, his brows rising on the influx of incredulity and fury that now inflated his stare. "You sent your little helper to spy on me?"

Rainbow turned away. "I didn't want to think that you'd actually go through with it." She pondered, her voice now disturbingly casual. "I thought when the time came you'd have...changed you mind."

"You WON, Rainbow!" Soarin bellowed, abandoning all former pretence. "You got what you wanted! You have everything you wanted!"

But Rainbow was shaking her head, tears streaming down her face. With a voice crippled by futile contempt, she asked, "Why don't you love me?"

The question had no answer. She survived no more than a minute of the silence, and her husband's fatally honest face, before she felt her beaten heart break. And then the screams possessed her.