Larger Than Life

Chapters

Wildfire
Whirlwind
Champagne Bath
Don't Say A Word
Cinderblox
Wildfire, Part II
Larger Than Life

Wildfire

"What are you doing here?"

Rainbow looked down at her guitar with a frown, then at the amp it was attached to, then still frowning she looked back up towards the door. "Practising?" she said, confused by the way it seemed so obvious and yet apparently wasn't immediately apparent.

"I don't think so," Trixie said, crossing her arms and pouting as she stepped inside. She had her own guitar strapped over her back.

Rainbow blinked. "Well, I've got some bad news for you, 'cause it is what I'm doing." She gave her strings a couple taps, fingers itching to get back to playing. "Are you going to let me continue or what?"

Trixie pouted harder, a feat which Rainbow was previously convinced only Rarity could pull off. "I booked this room for myself. Now shoo. Let someone with some actual talent play."

Rainbow was normally annoyed by attempts to poke against her ego, but she'd long accepted that being bothered by those that came from Trixie was like worrying about getting wet walking out in the rain. They were expected when dealing with the girl, and so frequent that by then they'd lost their edge. "There's no booking the rooms, Trixie. First come, first served. Try being a little faster next time."

The other reason Rainbow didn't bother with Trixie's poking was that the girl got riled up enough for both of them, even at just the most veiled hint of a comment against her. "I don't believe someone as lazy and unimportant as you could understand the concept of being kept by more pressing matters requiring one's attention. Then again, it is fortunate that such tasks fall to someone qualified, and not you." Trixie slid her guitar to her front and hooked it to the other amp in the room. "Such is the burden of greatness." She tossed her hair aside with a broad stroke of her hand.

"Bold words coming from miss third place."

Trixie's previous, contained outburst had been a facade, and Rainbow's words shattered it, leaving her practically fuming. "I won that battle, fair and square!" she barked. "It should have been me going against the Dazzlings, not you cheaters. I would have had no trouble stopping them!"

"Uh-huh." Rainbow gave her most unimpressed nod. "Sure seemed like you might have with all the not stopping them you did."

Trixie crossed her arms again, closed her eyes and looked to the side indignantly. "It was all part of my plan. I don't expect you to understand something like that though."

Rainbow shrugged. "Do you even still have a band, or did the others leave after you wouldn't stop pretending you're a solo act?" She absentmindedly plucked her guitar's strings a couple more times.

"How I spend my time is no business of yours." Trixie got her hands into position on her guitar, ignoring Rainbow. "Please quiet now. But feel free to stay here if you really don't want to leave, maybe you'll learn something about how to actually play." She began to run her pick over the strings while her hands danced higher up along them. Her song didn't make it two seconds in before being interrupted by a riff from Rainbow's guitar. Trixie looked over at her, furrowing her brow. "Must you? I'm trying to practise."

"I thought you were trying to annoy me out of here with what you were playing." Rainbow blew a raspberry at Trixie, then began to play her own song as if nothing had happened. She, too, was interrupted by the other's music just a few seconds in. Both guitars went silent again.

"Is that what you're trying to do right now?" Trixie underscored her comment with a raised eyebrow. She went back to playing, straight into a solo rather than toying around with chords.

Rainbow huffed. "A shred-off, then?" she asked, speaking loudly and yet still barely making herself audible over Trixie's music. She waited a few moments, studying Trixie's movements, then picked up alongside her and played her same notes back at her in time, before taking the tune into her own direction as soon as Trixie let go of it.

The brief moment of triumph Trixie had experienced at Rainbow's silence, guessing the other was too impressed with her skill, was dashed away, and in her resulting quiet she was even more bothered as Rainbow deliberately began to play her song faster than she had. But at least she knew what notes were coming next, and right at the point Rainbow's pick was briefly still her own came down hard on her strings, blasting away the other's concentration as she delved into another, more complicated solo.

Rainbow, having snatched back the pick that had slipped from her fingers after Trixie's deliberately loud interjection, glared at the girl and her hands, then began to follow along with the new song and quickly caught up.

Trixie was prepared, and hastily switched to a different variation of the tune, letting Rainbow's notes ring off against her melody. Rainbow was quick to adapt though, and even quicker to play, enough so that she began to slip in extra notes between the ones Trixie was playing and left her sounding like the backing track to the real solo.

Trixie found herself struggling to keep pace with her own song, and staring angrily at the other she found only the girl's smirk mocking her. Rainbow was preparing to speed things up further, and Trixie refused to let that happen. Gritting her teeth and ignoring the momentary dissonance that resulted from the switch, she began to play a completely different song. Her fingers danced and stretched like a spider over the strings of her guitar, her hand gliding up and down its neck as she finessed her way through one finely adjusted and carefully planned set of simultaneous presses after the other, always pushing down exactly where on the string she wanted to.

Rainbow tried to keep up. To her credit, she did fairly well, despite being forced to read Trixie's movements and mirror them with the opposite hand. She had enough of a sense for music that she could guess where things were going, and keeping up with Trixie's tempo was no issue for her. It wasn't any of those things that did her in, but she still gave out first.

"Ah!"

Rainbow's notes abruptly stopped, ending in a single strum of unpressed strings while her left hand sat a few centimetres away from her guitar's neck, cramped and curled in an awkward way. Trixie's own music came to a halt just a moment later, the girl panting as she shook her hands to work the built up tension out of them. Silence stretched for a few seconds.

Rainbow eventually worked her hand back into shape. "Wow," she said, bending and clicking her fingers together and listening to them pop. "How'd you manage that?"

Trixie allowed herself a smirk on her otherwise tired expression. "A magician needs to be quick and dexterous with her fingers, Dash." She held her grin for a few more panting breaths. "You're pretty fast, though. I don't think I'd be able to keep up if you took the lead."

Rainbow smiled at that. "Hah! Yeah. I've been told that." She sheepishly rubbed the back of her neck, and leaned against the wall beside the amp she was using. "You're pretty good at this whole guitar thing. Not as good as me," she quickly added, "but still pretty good."

Trixie rolled her eyes, but allowed her smile to stay. "Thanks," she said, feigning disinterest while looking at her nails. "I suppose you're alright as well." She finally looked back at Rainbow. "Now, will you let me practise in peace?"

"Hah." Rainbow shook her head. "Can't do that. We've got a gig coming up, and I need to make sure I'm on top of my game."

"Tonight's concert?" Trixie quirked an eyebrow. "Let me guess, you procrastinated on proper practice until the last moment."

Rainbow averted her gaze, but she did not have a valid response to that. A moment later she took the conversation elsewhere. "Either way, I'm the one who's doing this as a job. Kind of. I need to get this right." She tried a few strings on her guitar to make sure they were still tuned right. "The place we usually practise at is closed today, and the others are busy. We'll rehearse together later this evening, before the show, but I'm on my own for now."

Trixie leaned against the wall opposite Rainbow. The room wasn't particularly wide, though at least the absorbent panels it had been fitted with prevented music in it from bouncing off the ceiling and walls. It was too small to be a classroom, and had probably been a somewhat large storage closet before being made into a place for students to practise playing music. Not the oddest renovation the whole Battle of the Bands fiasco had brought to the school, and one of those sane enough to be kept once everyone was in their right mind again.

Trixie sulked a tiny bit. Rainbow did have a point, one of them was going to perform in front of a crowd that day and the other was just cultivating a hobby. She may have had a rivalry with the other girl, but that was no reason for ruining her night, her friends', their crowds', and more importantly the show itself. Her eyes fell on Rainbow's guitar. "Can't you just have that thing magic you a good performance or something?" she asked on a whim, recalling the first time she'd seen it.

"Doesn't work like that," Rainbow said. "I can get some magic out if I play well, sure, but not the other way around." She put on a confident grin. "Not that that's a problem for me, of course." Without waiting any further, she straightened and began to play again.

She was, as was at that point tradition in that room, interrupted by the other. However it was not Trixie's music that came to halt her, rather the girl's voice. "You're doing it wrong."

Rainbow stopped and looked at Trixie, perplexed.

"Your hand posture." Trixie took once more proper hold of her guitar and placed her hand back on the neck, pressing down on the strings where Rainbow was. "See? This is how you're supposed to hold it. No wonder you're straining your fingers."

Rainbow looked at Trixie, tilted her head slightly, then adjusted her hand's position to mirror the other. "Huh." She arched and relaxed her fingers a couple of times while holding the position. "You are right."

"Of course I'm right." Trixie used her free hand to slide her hair back past her shoulder, to avoid it getting in the way. "By the way, I think that part you were playing would sound better if you did it all downpicking." She played the section in question back to Rainbow. "Like this."

Rainbow played it back at her, doing as instructed, and listening carefully to it. "Hmm. Yeah, I guess it does sound better that way." She played it a couple more times, trying out the positioning Trixie had instructed her on. "Thanks."

Trixie looked taken by surprise at that. "You're welcome," she said after a moment. "You should lift your fingers before moving them and put them down after you've moved them, as much as possible. You're doing it all at once and it kind of bleeds through in the notes. On this song at least, it doesn't sound too good, you can do it intentionally on something written with that in mind."

Rainbow was still playing, but she nodded, still looking at her hand on the guitar's neck. "Say, are you free tomorrow afternoon?"

Trixie blinked. "Depends. Why are you asking?"

"Wanna hang out?" Rainbow turned towards Trixie.

Trixie stared back at her. She did so for a few seconds, in complete silence, her expression impossible to read. "Sure."

Whirlwind

"What are you doing here?"

"Oh, she's with me." Rainbow took a half step between Rarity and Trixie. "I asked her to hang out."

Rainbow's friends looked to her with varying degrees of surprise and confusion, and hints of botherment. So did Trixie herself. "You didn't tell me they were going to be here too."

"They're not." Rainbow walked up to Trixie and turned to look at the others. "I was just hanging around them while waiting for you. I mean, we can hang around with them if you want, but I was thinking we would, you know... I asked it like a thing between us." She swayed back and forth on her feet, looking a bit nervously between Trixie and the other girls.

Sunset put a hand to her mouth and snickered in realisation of something that wasn't clear to Rainbow herself, while Rarity and Applejack looked at each other, trying to understand if they were coming to that same conclusion. Pinkie just smiled.

Trixie cleared her throat. "No, it's fine. I also took it to mean we'd be the two of us, and I'm sure you've got something planned." She glared sideways at Rainbow. "You do have something planned, right?"

Rainbow sheepishly rubbed the back of her head. "I... Yeah, of course I do," she lied unconvincingly.

Trixie rolled her eyes. "Come on. Let's go, I'd rather not waste my time." She turned and began to walk away.

"Have fun you two," Sunset said while waving, as Rainbow was left awkwardly miming a goodbye to her friends before rushing after Trixie.

They caught up with each other a few metres away, far enough to talk normally without being heard by the other group. "I just figured we'd hang out together, do whatever we want. I'm sure we can come up with something. Do you have anything you want to do?"

Trixie's bitter expression mellowed out. "I'll think of something." She had a brief look around the mall, stopping in her tracks. "There is that new ethnic food stand I've been meaning to try."

"Neat." Rainbow looked around absentmindedly as she waited for Trixie to start walking and take the lead again. "I'm always down for food." She looked at the other, and saw her still not moving. She suddenly felt very awkward. "So, huh... Enjoy the show yesterday?"

Trixie quirked an eyebrow momentarily, then let it rest. "It was a good show, yes. You and your friends do make for a fairly decent band, I won't deny that."

"And we're so mediocre you came there to listen to us, huh?" Rainbow walked up to Trixie and nudged her in the side with an elbow.

"I had nothing better to do," Trixie said. "And they had free snacks."

"They did? They didn't tell us." Rainbow frowned in genuine, frivolous disappointment. Trixie looked at her, then snickered. Rainbow pouted and blinked. "Did I say something funny?"

Trixie looked to the side and sighed. "Nothing, nothing." She raised her head. "Right. The food stand. I think it's this way." She began to walk again.

Rainbow followed behind her, at least happy she seemed to be in a better mood again. "So what's this ethnic thing anyway?"

What it turned out to be was closed. After a few wrong turns and unnecessary escalator ramps, that Trixie tried and largely failed to justify as her wishing to check out this or that corner of the mall, they found the specific place they'd been looking for wasn't open that day, with no indication of why that was. Hungry both from thinking about eating there and from the extra wandering, the two girls decided hamburgers from the closest shop were a good enough substitute for the food they had been denied.

They sat on the upper corner of a wide stair ramp, largely empty as clients around them favoured escalators or elevators, Trixie carefully trying not to get herself too dirty with her food while Rainbow seemed to care very little about the issue. This, and the extra time Trixie spent watching Rainbow eat with the kind of morbid fascination typically reserved for a parasitically infected bug's peculiar looking symptoms, meant Rainbow finished her food while the other was still barely halfway through. As a result, she got up by herself to throw away the wrapping paper.

Trixie looked at her go, eye level with her belt, then looked back to her hamburger as Rainbow returned. When she sat down again, Trixie felt and heard her even without looking, and after swallowing the bite in her mouth she spoke. "So, like. What are we?"

Rainbow raised a quizzical eyebrow at that, then realising Trixie wasn't looking at her added in a questioning huh.

Trixie had taken another bite, and she finished munching on it first. "This feels like a date."

Rainbow blinked. "Huh," she said, again, less in confusion and more in realisation. "Yeah. I guess it could be a date." She blinked again, blushing. "No, wait. We could just be friends, hanging out."

"But you don't want me to be with your other friends."

"You don't want to be with my other friends."

"Sunset is fine." Trixie took a small bite to chew through it quickly. "I'm happy to not be around Pinkie though."

Rainbow smiled, a bit too triumphantly given the context. "We're just friends of two different friend groups that happen to intersect at me."

"I didn't know you knew that word." Trixie let her jab linger as she ate some more, then asked, "And this other group is compromised of exactly just me?"

"Yeah."

Trixie looked at Rainbow with the disappointment of an elementary school teacher watching a child fail the same basic task twice in a row after having it explained to them.

Rainbow's smile faltered. "Well... Do you want this to be a date?" Her expression suddenly seized, caught between a few different impulses as she thought things through. "I'll have you know, there are people who'd go to great lengths for a date with me!"

"I'm aware CHS has students who fail their classes, yes." Trixie was halfway through munching when her face went through much the same as Rainbow's had. Her tone suddenly shifting she added, "And I will have you know there are just as many if not more people desperate for a date with the Great and Powerful Trixie."

"And yet you're always on your own." Rainbow blurted it out on instinct, and immediately regretted it.

Trixie glared at her, eyes retorting how the same was true for Rainbow without the need for her mouth to speak it. She crumpled her hamburger's wrapper while swallowing the last of it, and as she did so she frowned as a thought occurred to her. "Well, none of them are good enough." She looked over Rainbow. She pouted and frowned a bit. Talented guitar player, gifted athlete, local hero. "I guess you're good enough." She stood and went to throw her own stuff in the trash while Rainbow sat there, dumbfounded. She came back to Rainbow still sitting like that, though in fairness it had only been less than a minute.

Strangely though it was actually Rainbow herself who broke the silence first, snapping out of her stupor. "So, uh... I mean. Yeah, I'd be- I mean of- I mean..." She had to stop, take a deep breath with her eyes closed, and slowly exhale. "I wouldn't mind this being a date. You're pretty cool too, I guess."

Part of Trixie wanted to ask if Rainbow was saying that because she meant it or because she was desperate. Another part of her wanted to just take the ego boost and roll with it. Realistically speaking, Rainbow was pretty, popular, outgoing, and probably had more than a few advances made on her. She wasn't sticking to Trixie as a last shore, she was most likely genuine in declaring her enjoyment regarding the situation. "So, date then?"

Rainbow looked up awkwardly at Trixie. "I guess. If we want to. I mean, if you want to. If not we can just be friends." She shifted awkwardly in place, then stood up. "But I wouldn't mind being more than that, I think."

Trixie looked her straight in the eyes. "Do you have any idea what you're doing?"

Rainbow put a hand to the back of her neck, smiling awkwardly. Trixie was starting to realise it happened somewhat often. She was starting to realise it was really cute, too. "Not... really. Never been into a proper relationship." Rainbow immediately bit her tongue, realising she didn't actually want to say that.

Trixie would have poked her about that, but knew better than to criticise someone over something when it applied to herself as well. Or at least she pretended to in that moment, acting much unlike her usual self with a veneer of reason to cover for it. She realised after a while that she'd just been standing there, looking at Rainbow. "Cool," she said, the first thing that came to her lips in an attempt to break the silence. She was dating Rainbow Dash then. Sort of. Maybe.

"Cool," Rainbow echoed, seemingly just as lost in her own moment of contemplation over the situation. Silence stretched again as the two girls looked at each other on top of the stairs. "Should we, like, kiss?" Rainbow asked after a bit.

Trixie sputtered herself out of her trance. "Uh... Later. In private." Her heart skipped a beat in realisation. "You can come to my place later. Can you come to my place later?" She caught sight of Rainbow's nod. "You're coming to my place later." A date. The girl she was dating coming to her house. "Ice cream."

Rainbow raised both eyebrows in surprise. "We just ate a burger."

Trixie was already storming off, having grabbed hold of Rainbow's wrist as she marched past the stairs. "I said we're getting ice cream."

Ice cream they did get. The conversation died down for a bit as both were preoccupied with licking through their cones before the heat could send their contents tumbling to the ground. The risk of that was minimal in the artificial just a little too cold to be comfortable climate of the mall, but both girls pretended it was not so so they could push off conversation for a bit and gather their thoughts.

They were mostly positive thoughts. Trixie thought Rainbow was a fun enough girl who she'd found she had more in common with than she'd thought. Rainbow thought Trixie looked pretty, and was good at banter. Trixie thought dating Rainbow would sound nice when she was such a prominent member of anything sports related and generally well looked upon by the other students. Rainbow thought Trixie's antics were probably fun and maybe she'd get to assist her with a stage performance or something. Trixie thought it was weird that Rainbow was licking deep enough into her cone to have it bumping against her nose, and was so focused on that she did not notice the same was true for her as well. The same went for Rainbow.

Until they both realised it. They looked at each other, mouths hidden by their hollowed out cones. They laughed. They finished their ice cream and stayed quiet, unsure of what to say, looking occasionally around the mall.

Rainbow pushed her hand towards Trixie across the space between them on the bench they sat on. Trixie noticed it, and did the same. Then a bit more, both of them. Then their fingers locked together. The two looked up from their hands and into each other's eyes.

Rainbow blushed, shifted her cheeks a couple of times without opening her lips, then finally spoke. "How's the date thing going, then?"

Trixie was unsure of how to answer. "Well enough, I think," she said, sincerely yet without much certainty.

"I'm glad." Rainbow smiled. Trixie smiled back. She was suddenly tempted not to wait until being in private.

Champagne Bath

"What are you doing here?"

"She's with me, mum." Trixie poked her head out from behind Rainbow's silhouette. "I invited her over for the evening." There was an understated giddiness to her tone as she spoke, one that tore into and took away most of her boastful bravado and replaced it with serene cheerfulness.

Her mother smiled at the news. "You finally made a friend?" She extended a hand to Rainbow. "I'm Sunflower, pleased to meet you."

"Rainbow Dash," Rainbow said, shaking the woman's hand while Trixie quietly died of shame behind her.

"Come on, come in." Trixie's mother stepped back through the door and welcomed the girls inside. "Are you staying for dinner?"

Rainbow stepped inside after the woman's invitation. "Probably not. I haven't really warned my parents and I wouldn't want to spring this on them." It spoke a great deal about how embarrassed she was at the thought of a dinner conversation with her maybe dating partner's mother that she chose to do the responsible thing, and pretended to do so for the sake of being responsible.

Trixie's mother knew Rainbow far from well enough to realise how out of character her decision was for her, and so only gave a polite smile and an understanding nod. "Of course. If you ever want to come over another day, feel free to."

Rainbow only got to reply to that with a nod of her own, before being dragged farther into the house by Trixie. Sunflower watched them go with the head shake characteristic of parents watching their kids be immature in harmless and endearing ways, then closed the door and went back to the other room.

Before she got a good look at the house, Rainbow found herself inside what had to be Trixie's room, sat on the bed next to the wall as its owner locked the door behind herself. The place wasn't excessively small, though it wasn't big either, but it was cramped. Longer than it was wide, one side of the room was completely taken over by a wardrobe and a set of shelves beside it, overflowing with stuff. Mostly stage magic related stuff at a glance, alongside some clothes, musical equipment, and a few things Rainbow recognised as coming from various school trips or other activities.

Trixie's bed was on the other side of the room, only the nightstand between it and the door, and past the foot of the bed was Trixie's own desk with her PC atop it. The desk was possibly just as cramped as the shelves, textbooks and notes barely visible on it under all manners of tricks in various stages of execution and a few books on music theory. Past that still was the window, and with the curtains drawn Rainbow got a good look at the Sun as it was nearing the horizon.

Trixie must have noticed her looking around in silence, because she suddenly cleared her throat and stepped up in front of her. "So. What do you think?"

Rainbow had another broad look around. "Seems pretty nice." She wasn't about to comment on how messy the place was, not when her own room was far worse. Trixie at least took proper care of her clothes.

Trixie gave a half twirl, and plopped herself down sitting next to Rainbow. "Pretty nice, yeah?" she repeated quietly. Awkwardly she leaned a bit to the side, her shoulder into Rainbow's own, and reached with her arm behind the other's back.

Rainbow at first shifted in place, unsure of how to take the intimacy, then decided to stay there. They were together, after all, kind of, maybe. And it didn't feel bad. Just weird, and new. She looked at Trixie. Maybe it felt nice. She reached out with her arm behind Trixie's back and wrapped her hand around the other side. It did feel nice. Trixie looked at her. Rainbow blushed. She tried to get the conversation going again. "So, uh, got a plan for what we could do?"

"I was thinking we could just figure it out on our own," Trixie said. "Chat about something."

"We already chatted at the mall."

Trixie glared at Rainbow's unintentional attempt at shooting down the mood, but let it pass. "I'm sure we have more to chat about. Things to get to know each other. Something might come to mind."

Rainbow mulled that over, and had another look around the room. "Why be a magician?" she asked on a whim.

For a brief moment, Trixie recoiled at the question the way she'd usually do with a spider. It was barely a flash though, less than a second, and Rainbow wasn't even sure she'd seen it properly. A couple of seconds passed in silence as Trixie thought, and by the end of it she decided Rainbow may as well hear about it if they were to be together. That was what partners did. Or something. "My dad was one."

"Oh, cool." Rainbow answered on instinct, but after a moment what she'd heard properly clicked and she looked back to Trixie with worry about what she'd said. "Was?" she asked in a far more tactful tone.

"Still is, probably." Trixie had a look around the room too, an excuse to look anywhere but Rainbow's eyes. "I've never met him. Mum... They kind of left each other before I came along, but she's not angry about it. Maybe one day." Just because she was telling Rainbow the truth didn't mean she had to tell her the whole thing.

"I see." Rainbow did not actually see how Trixie's father abandoning her mother would lead to the girl wishing to follow along with his footsteps, but if it made sense to the girl then that was that. "Your shows are pretty good, from what I've seen. Just maybe need to work on the whole smoke exit thing."

Trixie chuckled. "Thanks. Believe me, that works better when you have a trapdoor." She recalled one particularly unfortunate instance. "And when the trapdoor works properly." She finally looked back to Rainbow. "What about your parents? How are they?"

"Oh, they love me!" Rainbow said, leaning down onto the mattress with her arms behind her head. "A little too much, maybe." She crossed her legs. "Then again, I am awesome."

Trixie leaned down beside her. "I suppose you are neat enough, yes." She smirked at Rainbow's glare, then broke into light laughter after the other's frown turned to snorting amusement. "I could teach you a couple guitar tricks, later."

"That might be nice," Rainbow said. "Later." Suddenly she found herself with Trixie's head over her chest, the girl's hand over her stomach.

"I wanted to see what this is like," Trixie said. "I've never really had a chance to try."

Rainbow looked down at Trixie's silver hair for a bit. Hesitant, she reached out with a hand, and began to stroke it. Trixie shifted a little at her touch at first, but did not complain afterwards. Rainbow slowly got into a rhythm, petting Trixie's head and neck like she was a cat. "Feels pretty nice on my end," she said, looking at the ceiling.

Trixie pulled up her legs to have them pressed against Rainbow's side. "On mine too."

There they lay for a while, as the Sun got lower outside the window, and tired from the day's activities there they may have stayed a while longer still had they not been interrupted by a grumble from Rainbow's stomach.

Trixie propped herself up, looking at the other while her hair partly fell over her face. "Seriously? You had a burger and ice cream, how are you still hungry?"

Rainbow shrugged. "I burn through a lot of calories."

Trixie rolled her eyes. "I'll go fetch us some snacks." She walked out the room, leaving Rainbow alone on the bed for a bit. Eventually she came back, a glass bowl in her hands alongside a bag of crisps. She sat down once more beside Rainbow, poured the bag into the bowl, and placed it between the two of them.

Rainbow pulled herself up, and began to eat a few crisps at a time. "I like the ceiling," she said between two pinches of food.

Trixie looked at her, while taking some crisps into her own hand. "Thanks?"

Rainbow looked at her, and swallowed. "I like you too."

Trixie blushed, taken aback. "Thanks," she said, more quietly and looking away. After a moment, she added, "I like you too."

Rainbow downed a few more crisps. "Wanna come to my place tomorrow?"

Trixie thought about it. "Sure." She ate some more. "After lunch?"

"After lunch." Rainbow nodded as she dusted her hands, then pulled herself farther onto the bed so her back was against the wall. "Anything you wanna talk about?"

Trixie thought about it. "How does the songwriting process in your band work? Do you sit around and discuss it over or do you each do your own songs?"

"It's mostly Fluttershy's thing," said Rainbow. "Occasionally we get to do our thing too though, or write our own lyrics. But she's the main songwriter. She's good at it, and it's less work for the rest of us." She hesitated for a moment, then added, "Plus, you know, it's fair she gets to do that to justify being a part of the band when she's playing a tambourine." She didn't look too proud of that statement, but there was some truth to it. She clarified, "She is probably the best songwriter among us though."

Trixie nodded. "Makes sense." She pursed her lips into a subdued smile. "What about the yacht one? Who wrote that?"

Rainbow wretched at the mention of that particular song, which she routinely tried to purge from her memory. She pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing. "Look, we had a contractual obligation to make that one, alright? I don't like it, I don't think anyone liked it except Spike, and I don't remember who wrote it other than Pinkie writing her own verse." She sighed again. "We try not to let Pinkie write her own lyrics too often."

"I can't imagine why." Trixie took one last handful of crisps, then set the bowl aside and pulled her legs up on the bed. "I haven't really written a proper full song in a while. I should get around to it some day."

"I can help if you want."

Trixie pulled a face, before quickly pulling it back. "Thanks, but..." She tried to think of the right words. It was her maybe sort of girlfriend she was talking to. "Your work is... not really my style of music. I could use your help with the solo, though."

Rainbow looked at her. "What's wrong with my stuff?"

Trixie huffed. Best to say it straight. "Look, Awesome As I Wanna Be is-"

"The kind of song you would write about yourself?" Rainbow looked at Trixie with a smug expression.

Trixie hesitated. "No. Well. In spirit, maybe, but Trixie is awesome. But it's without the flair and poise I bring to my own image. You're too... raw. Too unrefined."

"You mean it's without the fluff," Rainbow said. "All those useless little frills and decorations you wrap yourself in and prop yourself up with. You don't need to do that if you're really great and powerful, you can just state it without the need to dance around it and be all pompous."

"And I don't believe stating something without proving it is enough. You lack Trixie's finesse." Trixie paused, looking at Rainbow as if taken by a terrible realisation. "Am I as annoyingly egocentric as you are?"

Rainbiw quirked an eyebrow. "I'm annoying?"

Trixie blinked. "No. No, clearly we're both great and awesome, and everyone else is wrong. I guess we are perfect for each other after all."

Rainbow looked at Trixie in the eyes. Trixie looked back at her, and for a moment the room was silent. Then they both burst into laughter. Then they were hugging again.

Don't Say A Word

"What are you doing here?"

"Rainbow asked me to meet her here," Trixie explained. "We're supposed to hang out at her place this afternoon."

"Why?" Scootaloo looked at Trixie with a quizzical expression. "Are you helping her study or something?"

"Actually we're girlfriends," Trixie said. "I think."

Scootaloo looked at Trixie without a reaction, as if the statement was too absurd to register with her. "Cool."

Trixie stood there in awkward silence, looking around the skatepark with her guitar strapped to her back. "Do you know where she might be?" she asked after what felt like a minute, and was probably less.

Scootaloo shrugged. "No idea." With that she headed away.

Trixie remained there, looking around. And then Rainbow was at her side. Trixie jumped in surprise, only properly realising she'd seen the multicoloured blur approaching her after she'd already registered the girl's arrival.

Rainbow looked at Trixie's startled expression with momentary worry. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, yeah." Trixie dusted herself off, though there was no dust to dust from her dusty blue clothes. "You should just work on making your entrance less sudden. And you're late."

"Sorry." Rainbow did that thing with her hand on her neck that consistently made Trixie's petty anger melt and she hoped Rainbow never realised that. "I was busy with a thing. Free now though, got here as soon as I managed to."

"I noticed." Trixie could not stop the smile crawling onto her lips. "Am I meeting your parents today then?"

"Actually, they're away today," Rainbow said. "We've got the house all for ourselves."

Trixie was surprised. "Lead the way then."

Rainbow burst off in a blur. Then she came back, sheepishly smiling, and began to walk normally. "Sorry. Sometimes I forget to turn it off."

Trixie rolled her eyes as she took on to walking behind her, but it was mostly for show. She couldn't stay mad at that smile. Probably.

The walk to Rainbow's house was uneventful, and uncharacteristically quiet for both of them. Without each to shoot down the other's self aggrandizement there was little left for conversation in that direction, and other topics either had already been discussed, or were niche enough neither had thought of them yet. Neither were empty compliments a worthwhile use of conversation. Trixie knew she could have had Rainbow agreeing she was the greatest and most powerfulest just as much as Rainbow knew she could have Trixie tell her she was awesome, but in a state of supposed relationship both wished for something more than echoed requests, and preferred freely given compliments to remain pleasant surprises rather than formalities.

Neither of the two actually knew that in those terms, but they understood it regardless to some degree, and may have worded it similarly if given time and reason to mull over their condition and a copy of the above paragraph from which to copy its description with slight alterations. It was after all a fact that Rainbow's grades were as great as Trixie's were awesome, that was to say both girls were barely passing some of their classes. But at least cuddles made for a more morally palatable excuse for procrastination, if not one the teachers would give much weight to.

Trixie stood in front of Rainbow's front door, the other intent on admiring her pet tortoise as he munched on dandelion leaves with all the incomparable happiness and beaming unfiltered delight of a tortoise munching on dandelion leaves. It was admittedly a very nice sight, but Trixie would have rather had her eyes filled by the rainbow curtain of Dash's hair while hugging the girl. Not her mouth though. That part was an unfortunate consequence of long hair they had soon discovered, and one that had pushed both of them to carry along hairbands for emergency ponytail making in case of cuddling. Trixie thought she looked awful with a ponytail, but it was a sacrifice worth making to avoid feeding her girlfriend her luscious mane.

There was a joke somewhere in there about her putting some part of her body into Rainbow's mouth. Trixie didn't want to think about that just yet. Aside from her lips and maybe tongue at least. Then again, Rainbow was a terrible kisser.

Luckily for Trixie, so was she, and likewise Rainbow planned to take it slow with regards to tonguing each other's teeth and the like for the time being. Instead she just opened the door, allowing Trixie inside. "Here we are. Make yourself at home."

Trixie did not make herself at home, and treated the place with far more respect and care than she usually did her home, mostly out of not knowing the exact limit to which she may push things without actually leaving lasting damage, unlike her home. This was not weird or unintentional, and instead exactly the expected behaviour when asked to make one's self at home someplace, the implication being to treat the place as well as one's home as much as to act as one would in one's home, something regardless innately nearly impossible and in truth not recommendable and really wrongfully invoked by a purely formalised expression of courtesy.

Rainbow did make herself at home, it actually being her home and stuff. "Want something to drink?" she asked, heading for the fridge.

"Nah." Trixie was busy having a look around. "Maybe later." There were some trophies up on shelves in the living room. Rainbow's it looked like, and looking closer she could see they spanner most of her life. Most of them were on the whole unimportant, little more than decorative prizes for nearly insignificant events held for children still too young to properly display a disposition to sports truly worth pursuing, but it was regardless impressive how consistently well Rainbow had preformed in all of them. Then again, it was expected, Rainbow being Rainbow. Trixie wondered if the trophy for the Battle of the Bands was there somewhere. She didn't actually remember if there had been one. And if there was it would have made more sense for Sunset to have it anyway. "Did you get a trophy for the Battle of the Bands?"

Rainbow came back holding a bottle of lemonade. "Yeah. Sunset has it."

Figures. Trixie set her guitar down and headed for the sofa, more because she wanted to sit down than because of Rainbow doing the same. The weather was warming up and standing around got tiring, and she wanted a drink, actually. Not lemonade. Not that brand of lemonade Rainbow had, she didn't like that. Too fizzy, it burnt in the back of her nose when she tried it and it wasn't even that good in taste.

Rainbow plopped down on the sofa not like she owned it, but like she had a grudge against its owner, and Trixie wasn't sure if the fact that it didn't creak as she fell on it was to be attributed to its sturdy high quality structure or the girl's light weight. "Wanna watch a movie? I've got some of my favourites here."

Trixie wasn't sure she wanted to see the kind of movie Rainbow would consider her favourite, but then she thought about it and came to the easy conclusion that she was actually sure she didn't. Unless it was that one she'd had a part in, maybe. Trixie didn't know the details on that one. But it was probably too recent to be on DVD already. "Sure." What was she supposed to do, be honest? She'd made deception into an unsuccessful career masquerading as a somewhat successful hobby. "Pick whatever you want." Maybe it was because she would hate them all indifferently. Maybe she wanted Rainbow to be happy. Maybe the second thing was due to the first.

Rainbow went to the TV to set up the movie. Trixie had a look around. She'd been doing that for a while, but it took a while to do it all properly, the house was pretty big and so was that specific room. The TV was pretty big too, which meant the couch was somewhat far from it to allow those sitting there to properly see it all, which meant Rainbow took some time to get to and from between the two, especially since she chose to just walk. A matter of seconds, but still a notable amount of time given it was her.

There were pictures of Rainbow's parents on top of the cupboards in the room. A lifetime spent together, from the moment they'd met to sometime before the present. Trixie had taken distant note of them before, and her eyes drifted again to them as Rainbow crashlanded on the couch besides her and the main menu for her chosen movie appeared. They looked young in some of them, less young in others, and finally there were some where they were accompanied by a really young Rainbow. Together through years, through different places, growing older. Always together.

Pieces of something she'd been distantly aware of started falling into place in her head. Something that had been there for a while, like a messy desk staring as she put off sorting its contents for another day. She tried to ignore it. The screen went dark as the opening credits began to roll. She wished to just pretend it wasn't there, and be happy, but it wouldn't let her.

Out of social obligation, Trixie looked towards the TV. Out of genuine want, she let her hand move to her side over the seat until her fingers intertwined with Rainbow's. Out of surprise she spotted the bowl of popcorn in front of them Rainbow had put there while she was distracted, and began to eat from it. But it was still there, nagging at the back of her mind. Caramel popcorn. She'd never had it before but she had heard it was a thing. It was nice, and so was being with Rainbow.

The movie wasn't. Not even with Rainbow's exaggerated reactions to some of its scenes, especially not with her rattling off spoilers ahead of time when given characters showed up. Yet all that was far from the issue. Trixie smiled. Rainbow's voice was nice to listen to even when her words weren't. Trixie thought she needed her head checked for getting enjoyment out of Rainbow's insufferable scratchy croaks.

The movie was over. Some cheesy ending about the hero sacrificing himself to blow up the aliens or whatever. Trixie hadn't paid attention, more focused on staring at Rainbow from the corner of her eye than on looking at the movie, and even more focused on the thought slowly festering in her mind. Now the movie was over, Rainbow was talking, and Trixie was supposed to be paying attention. And she couldn't. The thought kept her, its grip dreadfully cold on her mind. She shook her head. "Can you say that again?"

Rainbow blinked. "I was saying, wanna go out for a walk while it's still bright outside?" She was starting to frown. Trixie had never imagined how much the sight could hurt. "Are you alright?" She looked at least a little worried. That made sense. Rainbow cared for her.

Trixie was not alright. It had taken a while to accept it, but she couldn't deny what was wrong. "Yeah." She cared for Rainbow. She still failed to sound convinced. She kept her eyes drifting around the room. Thinking about it, lying wasn't good there. "No." The truth wasn't good either. It would hurt Rainbow more. And yet she knew it was the least painful alternative, in the long run.

Rainbow kept looking at her, her patience cracking but mostly just confused. "What is it? Was it the popcorn? Are you sick?"

Trixie looked back to the pictures on the cupboards. Then back to Rainbow. "I..." Then down at herself. "I think I need to go."

That afternoon, Scootaloo wondered why she saw Trixie running on her lonesome. The day after, she wondered why she never saw Rainbow outside.

Cinderblox

"What are you doing here?"

The mirror didn't answer, and the reflection's owner decided to drop the conversation and walk away. It was a strange middle ground she'd found, using second person on a whim in her downbeat state, though the sight she'd just caught of herself had understandably spurred her on. Had she been in higher spirits she could have appreciated the humour of the situation. In her condition all she wanted to do instead was looking away, and stop staring at the one who'd ruined everything. And her thoughts went back to the day before.

Trixie had looked back to the pictures on the cupboards. Then back to Rainbow. "I..." she'd said, then she'd looked down at herself. "I think I need to go." She'd stood up, and grabbed her guitar. "I've got... I..." Lies had refused to come to her mind, neither had she had the will to force them to. She'd looked at Rainbow for support, unsure of how to even get it out of her when she was the source of her turmoil. Truth had forced its way out of her, harsher than she'd have ever wished it to, built up in pressure through the maelstrom of her feelings and the failing of her tongue. "I don't think we're going to work."

Rainbow had stood up too, reaching out with her hand, a look of sudden hurt crossing her face. Seeing that, Trixie had discovered she could be hurt, and yet wish no harm on the one responsible, and it was a kind of pain she never wanted to feel again, a pain without an outlet to make something else of it. "Listen, I-"

And despite that, she'd leaned into it. "No." She'd gone along with it. Because it was easy. Because there was comfort in being her usual self. "You're going too fast." Because maybe if she hurt Rainbow the normal way the other wouldn't have to feel what she was feeling. She'd swatted away Rainbow's hand, and she doubted she'd ever forget doing so if it was going to keep showing up in her nightmares as it had.

Rainbow's face had changed. Her hurt had deepened, then a brief flash of something like rage, then a cold frown. She'd sat back on the couch, the impact far lighter than before, her arms crossed. "Alright then." Her voice had cracked, more so than usual, enough to mask the sound of Trixie's heart doing the same. "Feel free to go."

Trixie had stood there, as the room had spun around her, with Rainbow as the only solid anchor point to her vision. Long enough to notice the quivering of her lips, and the way her eyes were starting to glitter differently in the light. Long enough for her own tears to start blurring her vision. But she hadn't known what else to say, so she'd said nothing. She'd slowly moved to the front door, then out of it, then faster as she'd run away from the house and left Rainbow behind.

She told herself it was for the best. She told herself it would have hurt more the later it would have happened, and it would have happened at some point. She told herself metaphors about cutting branches and removing portions of songs that weren't working. She told herself lies about what she'd felt before. She realised at least part of the reason she had never done all too well in school had to be that she was a terrible listener, because nothing of what she was telling herself seemed to work or stick.

She was back in her room. Back sitting on a bed that had taken on to feeling like it was supposed to bend differently under her. Like there was supposed to be something else pressing on it. Her eyes went to the last discarded sheet of music she'd tried her hand at composing on. It was meant to be a good way to get out her feelings. It didn't need to be something she ever played more than to herself. Good therapy, bad poetry, all that, she'd heard it in response to a documentary about a documentary about a famous band's infamous album that had ended the peak of their career. She hadn't added any snare drum parts to her songs yet, and she doubted she'd ever go insane enough for that, but she'd still dropped the composition midway through. Around the point she'd looked at it and played it in her head, and realised it wasn't her composition.

It wasn't even one of the songs she liked. She hadn't bothered with trashing it, the bin was overflowing with crumpled paper anyway. Some failed attempts at music, mostly tissues. She told herself that was the reason why that particular paper sat on the floor almost untouched. Besides, it wasn't like she could read it properly anymore with how wet it had gotten.

Lying on the bed. The pillow didn't feel soft enough. It didn't feel warm enough. It didn't rise and fall. She rolled to her back, dug her hands into her hair, shut her eyes to not have to look at the ceiling. She'd done that already, for what had felt like an hour and had possibly been one. It really was a nice ceiling.

Long, deep breaths. She needed to calm down. She needed to think, to be intelligent for once in her life. It was a lot easier to self deprecate when feeling horrible, she'd discovered. She needed to do something. She hated not being able to do anything about her situation. She'd always hated the thought of it. She'd gone her whole life doing whatever she could to fight back against the idea of things being stuck a certain way she could not change, even if it meant spending years chasing the slimmest of odds.

Trixie sat up, staring at her guitar. She was not about to let Rainbow, of all people, get the better of her.

Wildfire, Part II

"What are you doing here?"

The music stopped. Trixie was quiet as she stepped up on the podium. She'd brought her own amp, freshly bought, higher quality than the ones CHS offered. She plugged it into the available socket, plugged her guitar into it, and waited.

It had been a while, the kind of indistinct amount of time that is only distinguishable as a while, or at least that was what it felt to her. Somewhere more than hours and less than weeks, and anywhere in there. Things had been one way, and then the while had passed, and now things were different in her mind. The storm had settled and decisions had been made after she'd picked up her guitar again. She was there to act on them.

Rainbow looked at her in silence for another while, a short kind of while, contemplating leaving and deciding against it. She did not speak, but she looked back at her guitar and began to play again.

Trixie began to play too. This time, not to interrupt Rainbow's song. She tried to play along, not disturb, not upstage. It took her a bit. A stutter from Rainbow as she realised what was happening, a few moments to get the proper hang of the rhythm and notes, a bit to get lined up properly and playing things in a way that worked, a way that sounded like it worked instead of just working in theory. There were some hiccups along the way, but it was resolved. It took a while. Shorter than Trixie's while, longer than Rainbow's while. Then the girls were playing in unison, the same song, the differences in their guitar tones complementing each other.

Then Trixie spoke. She spoke quietly to not disturb the music, slowly to keep her pace and not falter or stammer, carefully to make up for her unsureness. "I wanted you to know that I'm sorry, if nothing else. Sorry about what happened, and sorry about being quiet since. I needed some time to think."

Rainbow didn't say anything. Neither did she stop playing and walk away, and her expression did not look overtly angry.

Trixie continued. "I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what I... what we were getting into. It felt nice and I wanted to roll with it and once I actually had to think about it, look at it, it was too much. I was..." She kept playing, struggling to find the right word. "Childish, I guess, but it's not something a child would do. Shortsighted. Foolish and overconfident. Like I usually am."

Rainbow kept on playing, looking down at the ground. Trixie did so too, and eventually Rainbow found it in her to speak. "Me too."

The sudden response made Trixie play a few notes off, but she quickly recomposed herself. "Yeah?"

"I've been thinking too. I wasn't thinking either. I just kind of did it, and... Yeah, when you actually have to look at it, think about it..." Rainbow looked up from the floor, at Trixie's eyes. "It's a lot. I didn't get all of it either."

"But it was fun," Trixie said. "What we had. Some parts of the whole thing. It was good." She looked around the gym, then back at Rainbow. "I miss it, honestly."

Rainbow's expression soured a bit, and she looked away again. "Are you here to try and get back together?"

"I'm here to talk."

"What makes you think I want to talk?"

Trixie smirked at that. "You were playing my song when I walked in."

It was Rainbow's turn to play her notes off. But she got back on track, then she sighed and let her shoulders down a bit. "I miss it too." She did that thing with her arm and her neck, without her arm on her neck, just with her neck and her face. "And it's weird. I've never really missed something this way. It's not how much, it's how. I miss it different." The notes from her guitar began to vibrate and slow down a little as she reminisced.

"I get that. It's weird for me too."

"We're both a lot, and I get through things fast." Rainbow almost chuckled at her own joke. Almost. "I'm sorry if I messed it up. I do miss it though."

"Me too."

They kept playing awhile, starting over the portion of song they were practising and playing it together properly. Finally Rainbow broke the silence again. "You were an idiot."

"You too." Trixie didn't falter in her playing. "You always are. Rushing into things without thinking and deciding you'll just roll with it because you can handle it, not caring about how you might hurt others."

"I try to be better nowadays." Rainbow was still playing too, her hands basically on autopilot as she talked without looking at them. "I think I've got it down to thinking I'll come out on top. I don't worry because I think I'm good enough, and I'll be alright in the end even if things are not. But you think you can't fail at all, and you don't have anything prepared if things start to go wrong. That's why you run away."

"I do. I did. Now I'm back here."

Rainbow looked at Trixie. "You sound different today."

"Because for once I care about something." Trixie sighed, but she managed to force the words out. "I may act like an idiot, but I'm not that much of one. I know what people say. I know what I come across like. I'm okay with it. I'm not okay with this. So for once, for a bit, I thought it was best if I forced myself to drop the act."

The music stopped, both guitars at the same time. Rainbow let her guitar hang from her body. "What do you want?"

"I want it back." Trixie began to tune her guitar differently, slackening the strings without testing what it sounded like. "I want to try again."

Rainbow looked at her, really looked at her, and thought back to their time together. "We'll mess it up again."

"And that's okay. That's what people our age do." Trixie looked Rainbow in the eyes. "Have you looked around? Everyone's acting like they have it figured out, and sooner or later they all get hurt. It's hard to be good at something the first time around. But if there's a time to get hurt and mess up it's now."

Rainbow had a look around the empty gym. "What if it doesn't work?"

"Then it'll have gone wrong the right way." Trixie began to play a different song. The notes came out right. She had enough practice and control in her fingers to tune her guitar to that state. "But I need to give it a proper chance. I don't want to look back one day and wonder what could have been."

Rainbow was quiet, mulling things over, but after a while she began to play along with Trixie's music. "How are we even supposed to start with it?"

"I start with asking you if you want to do this. It ends if you don't."

Rainbow kept playing, quiet, limbs tense. Finally she closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. "I do," she replied, and her music covered the thump of Trixie's heart. "But I think we'll just mess it up. I think maybe we both deserve better."

"But that's not what we want."

Rainbow hesitated. "This isn't how it normally starts. It's not something you just ask."

"For some people it is. For others it builds up from something else. We didn't do it right the first time, we just sort of happened. We have something to work with now though. That's good enough."

"Is it?"

"You don't sound like yourself today."

Their music played for a while. The two looked at the ground between each other. Rainbow spoke again then. "Where will you draw the line?"

"We'll find out," Trixie said. "Other people might figure it out in advance. Smarter, less rash people than we are. People we wouldn't be with."

"I miss you," Rainbow said. "It was nice. To have someone to think about that way, to have someone to hold like we did. You messed up, but you're here apologising now. You're back. And I want to trust you. I want it back too." Her frame shivered slightly. "I don't trust myself though. I don't think I'm taking it seriously enough yet. I'm not sure I even can. What if I snap?" She looked at Trixie with uncertain eyes. "I don't want to hurt you like you did."

Trixie smiled. "You will. And I'll hurt you too. When it happens, we'll talk it through together, and hold each other. That part is normal, and I think I didn't realise it." She chuckled softly to herself. "For once everyone else was pretending."

"So what? We walk out of here, pretend it's all okay, play along?" Rainbow began to play a different tune on her guitar, without taking notice of it.

"Pretty much." Trixie smirked. "You best do your best out there, I can't be seen with just about anyone."

Rainbow's new song, different as it was, fit together with Trixie's. "What's the point then? What's different?"

"The difference is that now we know." Trixie winked. "The point is that it's what we want. Is there any other point you need?"

Rainbow thought about it, quietly. Then she smiled. "You're an idiot."

"And you're the only person allowed to call me that, but please save it for the times it's particularly bad."

Rainbow became conscious of her guitar playing again, and broke into a solo over Trixie's notes. "What do we tell them, then?"

Trixie shrugged, amused. "We don't tell them anything. It's none of their business." As Rainbow's solo died down back into its own riffing, she broke into one of her own. "We'll just let them figure it out."

Rainbow was smiling still. "It's not supposed to be this easy."

"Do we look like ordinary people?" Trixie smirked. It was different from her usual smirk, and yet the same, and yet not. There was something about it. A certainty, a sense of awareness and perhaps maturity, Rainbow thought. She'd never realised how much she liked that expression on her, or how much she could like it.

"Of course not." She joined in on Trixie's solo. "I'm doing it wrong again." She was smiling, and didn't want to stop, and wasn't sure at all why she wasn't stopping. "I'm going too fast again. Why are you pushing me?"

"Because it's the you I want. The only you you are that's you. I don't see a point in it otherwise. I want to do things right, and that means doing them wrong where they're supposed to."

"That's what we did the first time. Does that mean this was all right from the start?"

"I don't really believe in fate."

"That's not what I was saying."

"You still owe me an explanation for the magic horse land." Trixie began to play a different solo, one to go along with and accompany the one Rainbow had made to go along with and accompany hers. "Let's pretend the past doesn't matter apart from the parts you enjoy looking back on. I think that's how it's supposed to be, anyway. You don't take pictures of the bad days."

"I want to stroke your hair again," Rainbow said. "I want your head in my lap and I want the world outside to stop mattering while the only thing I can hear is your breathing."

"Dinner at my place today?" Trixie asked. "About time I properly introduced you to my mother."

And both guitars slid off into a tuneless array off ill-fitting notes as both girls looked at each other in terrified realisation. Then they both laughed at the sight. And outside the gym's door, Sunset begrudgingly passed Rarity a twenty dollar bill.

Larger Than Life

It's a strange feeling to see the sunset through someone else's hair. An even stranger one to see the sunrise the same way, the first time at least. But the oddity of it leaves quickly way to an understanding of what is happening, and, barring strange circumstances, to a deep enjoyment of it, and so it did. Then laughing, and smiling, and the soft stroking of hands against cheeks and awkward shuffling to move closer and taste each other again. Because they could. Because they wanted to. It didn't matter what the taste was.

Time had always been a fickle thing, one they had learnt to keep track of in their own ways and unlearnt just as well for different purposes and different causes, and once more they were to learn not to understand it in yet another way. Not an unpleasant experience though, far from it. It was weird. It wasn't something either had experienced before. To not need something more, to not have somewhere to go, something to do. To be at peace, for a little while. It was unusual. Maybe not sustainable. Maybe not repeatable. Had either cared to reason on it they would have come to the conclusion that all that was merely more reason to enjoy the moment.

It was awkward, physically, for a set of reasons, and not just the bed being too small. Human limbs tangled in rather unintended ways when horizontal, and being sideways had unfortunate consequences for arms and shoulders on the bottom even before choosing to place another body on them. Hair got in the way a lot, and one of them ended up with pigtails as a result. They swore to never let knowledge of that leave them, and for once the other actually followed through with it. That was just how things were then, how they were going.

And it was weird. It was weird to care. It was weird and new and wonderful and nothing else mattered for a while, until it did, until it didn't, and looking back it was still there and it kept on being there, and they kept on being there. The taste wasn't nice and that wasn't the point, and it was nice for what it was and not for how it was and it would be different later in the day anyway and it was too early, the night's sleep too late. The window was open, the night hot, the placement of it questionable. Some sleep past the morning, but how could they with what they were seeing?

And yet too weak still to wake, not fully at least, not properly. Lying in that stare of bubbling half-consciousness where dreams flow into ideas and ideas boast the gravitas of dreams, and memories muddy themselves with conjectures and invention. And yet clear as the sky outside, eyes each on the other and there was nothing else, no thoughts or wants or nothing. No looking at the time, no caring about the time. No certainty where the evening ended and the morning began, and which parts of the night came before which other ones. But they didn't care.

Time would pass, as it always did, and maybe one day would on and over them too. Not that day, not the next, and there was no use planning further than that. Plans needed regardless to be made, not right then yet, not for a few hours in the way time was measured outside the confines of their bubble of waking dreams. Or maybe it wasn't that, it didn't have to be that even if it felt like it, maybe that was the point proper. That they could wake and it wouldn't end, that they could want to wake. There was a foreign concept. A wish to open one's eyes in the morning, a wish to lay in bed early at night, to hold and to be held.

Stars had they never known how much a body liked to be held. How the first time left a hole that needed filling and every new time dug it deeper, and they could only imagine how much it would hurt to go without longer than they had. It was such a strange thing. Such a strange and irrational thing to find such a moment of stillness where nothing needed to change, where everything was fine as it was for its own short eternity. Where everything that felt felt right and everything else was denied feeling. To have a life so completely taken by another.

They'd heard the word. They'd never understood it. Never found a proper description of it, never been interested, never read the right material for it, but still they'd found the concept. They'd thought about it. They'd been oh so wrong. It wasn't something they had the skill to put to words. They wanted to write songs about it. Music. Not lyrics. They would try and they would mock each other and they would throw sheets of words in trash bins never to speak of them, but in those moments of lucid drunkenness of feeling where they knew, they knew they wanted to write music about it. They knew it was the only way they could get the feeling through from their soul onto sound. They knew it wouldn't be good enough to do it justice, never enough to make those listening feel even a fraction of it, but they would try nonetheless. It was too much bigger than them to keep it all in.

Sometimes they wanted to cry just to have a way to pour it out. Sometimes tears did come out, no more than calm streams flowing from their eyes without fanfare or throbbing. Just an overflow of emotions. They touched each other, and smelled each other, and looked into one another until they couldn't see what they were looking at. Until they couldn't know what the other was doing. It barely mattered. They kissed. They were both terrible kissers, and they both wanted to go again, to figure out new ways to do so, to find what else they could do. They kissed again, kissed around each other's lips and faces, bit and pecked and licked and nuzzled and then pulled back for no reason other than a whim and a desire to look at each other's faces again. Dazed eyes and messy hair and that subtly purple tinge blue cheeks took on when blushing.

Long fingers entwined and refused to let go, holding tighter as if the other set wasn't doing the same. Tugging, and pulling, and pushing, then resting. Breaths slow as the fog of sleep cleared and their hearts didn't. Kissing again, deeply, embracing each other like they wanted to be one and the same. There was something fascinating about how much give flesh and skin could have before it was bones holding against each other beyond them. Hearts close enough for one to feel the other's beat, lungs breathing the same air, all thoughts abandoned just awhile longer.

Time passed. Less than before, more defined in their wakefulness. One left, with caresses and tender eyes and wordless sighs of longing. The other thought of her while she was gone. Time passed. The roles switched. The rest of the world was at their fingertips' reach, but it would stay there. At least until breakfast. The returned awaited the missing who'd awaited her, and refused to do anything else. Refused to put anything else to her mind but her. Time passed. Together again. As close to one as their clothes allowed again.

They'd slept in their day clothes, only taking the heavier and more rigid bits off. Weather was still merciful enough to afford doing so. The night had run late, and deeper with tiredness than usual. The window sat open too long to pretend the Sun wasn't up. Too late to go back. But they didn't want to go back. Their then was wonderful as it was, and every feather of fear towards the future was outweighed by the joy of living through each moment leading to it. And why worry past the now when it was so?

Awake. Awake enough not to lie, awake enough to speak, but still quiet. There was a beauty to the almost silence, a comfort in the sound of breathing, and a pretence of perpetual stillness in their peace. They knew it wasn't so, but it was nice for a while to pretend they could remain like that forever. Speaking would have broken the spell, and neither wished to do so. Yet both wished to hear the other's voice, for no reason other than who it belonged to. The things a cherished voice could do. They'd never known, they'd only had the faintest ideas through parents or friends. It was nothing like that. It was just as well comparing fireworks to lightning.

A finger on the tip of a nose, a slight pressure, the short lived imprint of a nail on blue skin. Words mouthed, breathed through, with no loudness behind them. A gesture returned. Laughing, of that quiet, soundless variety of smiles and breathy shakes and happiness beaming and simmering without erupting. Fingers found each other again, softly, cautiously, afraid to hurt each other even though they would not. Held against each other without holding on. Fingertips tracing patterns without reason or rhyme over hands and wrists. Soft touches, here and there, looks of questioning curiosity and longing. It was all so wonderfully, unbelievably off.

Things were still so far away. Dozens of minutes, it may as well have been aeons in that state. In some part they wished to sleep again. Physically, certainly, somewhere along mentally too. Biologically they couldn't. Life could wait still, but the silence stretched thin. Competing, then, maybe, over who would break it first. They didn't need to say it, and they knew they wouldn't drag it long, but they both understood what they had chosen to do. It was one of those wonderful, almost mystical moments of shared understanding, where they each just knew. A look at each other, a slight bend in their expression. There was so much to be said with so little when with someone you knew well enough.

And yet, still so much to know. Still so much to learn, to find out, to understand. So much missing. So much uncertainty, of things not told that maybe never would be. Was that right? Was it fair? Was it okay to keep secrets one from the other, to hide those parts of truth that went unquestioned? And when the day came when those questions were asked, what then? Diversion, and gloom looks as a shield? It was a possibility. It was a probability. It struck as unpleasant. Still, yet, it was far, not something to think of then.

A worried look. A frown melting away. There was so much there to live through, so little point in souring the moment thinking of a future that might come. It was not a wise attitude, but wisdom was not their forte in the first place. Their little contest still ongoing, the clock still ticking, hunger began to slither in. She wanted to cook for the other. She said so. Candidly, pretending they'd never been trying to keep the silence in the first place, pretending all the dizzying ways the moments between opening their eyes and finally speaking had felt were not there. To keep them feeling like that. To keep whatever strange spell was on them, by refusing to acknowledge it when entering a proper conscious wake for fear of shattering it.

The other agreed. Smiles. It was all they could wear on their faces that morning, and yet each new one shone through their expressions as bright as the last. They'd never thought anything could be so wonderful for so long, so insistently refusing to grow dull. It wouldn't last forever, they feared and knew somewhere in some part of their minds they refused to shine a light on right then and there, but it didn't matter. It felt like it could. That was still so much better than anything else. They knew how it would hurt if things broke. They'd always both been of the opinion that greatness justified the risks involved, at least within certain limits. The risks there stretched those limits, but then what they had stretched their concept of greatness more so.

It was not something expected, nor expectable, nothing anything could have prepared them for. Nothing anyone had ever managed to communicate to them, despite them having known and closely knowing others who could. It was the most likely option that they didn't want to, but it was a possibility too that they simply couldn't put it to words. They themselves struggled with thinking about the possibility, and saw little reason to attempt. There was nothing to say after all, not when the one they could have wanted to say it to was right there and words weren't needed. Expect when they were. But not for those things.

Another room. They hadn't walked there properly together, and time spent alone scarcely counted for them. They would need to leave each other, physically, at some point, and that wasn't something they wanted to think about. But texting to each sounded like a better way to fall asleep staring at a screen in bed than what they usually did, and they'd always see each other the morning after. And an empty bed was only so much worse than a cramped one, and definitely not at all on their spines. Maybe they'd try a different room another time. Stacking was fun but sadly unfit for long time periods.

The metal clicking of pots and pans and bowls and cutlery was a nice, comfortable backdrop to the scene, occasionally spiced by the dull thump of the fridge door being opened. A few clicks, then the sounds shifted to the softer tune of the fire burning and wood scraping gently against the contents of a pan, and the fizzling bubbling noise of something heating up quickly joined in. That's when proper smell came from the food, and the girls both realised they were hungry despite waking early. Or maybe the smell was just good enough to convince them to eat. Biology was a strange thing, and one neither of them had good grades in.

They did not have many good grades all around, but that was a problem best saved for later. For when they could be terrible at school stuff together, and doubly so by distracting each other. Much like they were already distracting each other. The food came out a little burnt on the bottom, but at least they caught on in time and didn't completely ruin it. The pan would need some extra cleaning, but it was no big deal.

Food was set down. They shared a look. Maybe kissing didn't taste great, but it certainly didn't taste as good after food. Except for chocolate, and some other sweets. Sharing those with a kiss was nice, they'd found out. They would continue to experiment there. But they weren't having anything sweet for breakfast, so they kissed again. It was short, sweet, more focused that the previous ones in bed that morning. Another sign of clarity coming back. They weren't honestly sure if they wanted that, but it was how things were. And if they were together it didn't matter too much.

They weren't going to stay together. Not permanently at least, not the whole of that day. They'd have to say goodbye before night, likely not have dinner together, certainly sleep alone. It was such a silly yet dreadful thing. Such a strange thought that the bed that had been fine until then and overstuffed that night would feel empty the next. Such a strange thought to reach out in the darkness as they'd only recently learnt to do, and find nothing there, and somehow be bothered by that.

The food was good, just a little burnt on the bottom, nothing majorly bad. It was actually good, not merely cooked by the person one loves good. It wasn't stellar, but it was a better breakfast than no breakfast, or a store bought snack. It was tasty, fittingly filling given how early it was. They would have lunch at the other's place. They both thought about it, they both realised it was the most sensible solution regarding how they should organise the day, they both looked forward to and dreaded it in equal measure. But one awkward conversation with older people was worth standing for unquestioned access to each other's homes, dozens of times over.

That fear was still there. That nagging, that uncertainty, that refusal to plan for the future too far ahead. It was scary to march on blindly, but at that point it was scarier to let go. They would try to hold on. Even if things went wrong, they would try to fix them. Maybe it was just as foolish as the first time around, but then as far as they knew that was the point. It was worth getting hurt over, even if getting hurt by it. It brought a strange kind of understanding to know that they were there because someone had felt the same way once. It is often that people play unwillingly ignorant to the depths of each other's spirits compared to their own, and for the two of them that was an above average occurrence in its frequency. Yet to find a depth to themselves still unknown was to be forced to confront that there was more out there. That, and having to account for one another's feelings helped the broader picture too.

They ate in silence, sharing loving glances and gentle taps and rubs with each other's legs, and marvelling at how wonderful it could be to see something as simple as another eating food they liked and feel one's heart swell at their contentment. It was so strange and foreign, to them especially, to be that deeply happy over someone else's smile. They were no strangers to rejoicing at a friend's success, of course, but that was different. Spurred on by far simpler things, reaching far greater depths in intensity. It was unreal, so much it felt almost wrong. Yet they knew it was great enough they would have made themselves miserable for it if that was what it took.

Cutlery rested over empty plates and the two were looking at each other, then aside, blushing, giggling, reaching out to take one's hand into the other's, letting a little more time pass as they pretended it would not. The Sun was high enough through the morning to start taking the room from merely pleasant to warm, but they didn't want to leave it just yet. The outside world would be walking and talking and seeing things and choices and it would be wonderful, it would be together, but it wasn't then yet. Just a little longer. Just a few more minutes they could pretend it was just the two of them. Just a bit more they could pretend it was all a dream, perfect as it could only be in one, an instant stretched on for however long they pleased. Because it felt like it, it felt every bit as good as it should not have been allowed to feel, and they were afraid at any moment it would end.

And yet with every moment it didn't. It was stupid. It was shortsighted and childish and foolish to act and pretend like that would be it. Like there would never be cracks. Like there would never be wrongs. But as long as they could, as long as luck and life let them get away with it, that's what they wanted to do. In there and out of there just as much, whatever may happen, whatever may come. It was not how things would stay. They knew that much, they'd already felt that much. But if it couldn't be forever, it was best to enjoy it all while it was still there. And if they'd fixed it once, they could fix it again, and maybe it really would last so much longer than they thought it would.

There was no finding out without trying. Still, they were silent. Still, they waited a bit more. Looking at each other. Looking straight, deeply into each other, and never seeing an end. Just more and more, enough to get lost in, enough to drown in. Trying to drink it all in. The creases of their skin and the way sunlight touched a face and every strand of hair out of place, and the light quiver of a lip and soft beating of an eyelid and nervous, unattended sliding of a finger against another on a carelessly rested hand. Take everything in, as much as one could, because it would be gone the next breath. Then all new, all again, just as wonderful as the moment before. It was more than they could ever want, and it was theirs, and it was all they cared for.

Silence stretched a bit too thin, and the last shrouds of sleep drifted away from them. It was time to get up, time to prepare, time to head outside and be and exist for others and not just for each other, but for each other too, and not alone. It could be done. They'd gone their lives doing it the other way, there was not really anything hard now that they'd found the good one. But pushing past the little barrier they'd built up still took a moment, a short bit of reflection, a while of shared decision. It wasn't hard, but it took effort, and conscious thought.

No reason it had to be painful though. There was a nagging still, of something forgotten, something it would do no good to leave behind and fester. It was good to set things straight, to answer questions left hanging still, to make things clear and wipe clean the shreds of remaining doubts. It was just as good to sweeten up the moment, to finally let things go and take hold of them and move along. To new things. Different things. And it would be nice, still. It would be together. As long as they managed to, as long as they could, as hard as they could. Still looking at each other. Hearing each other breathe. Seeing each other and knowing what was going on behind one another's eyes, thoughts and dreams whispered in the darkness the previous night. Love. It had seemed such an overplayed word what felt like another life before. She finally understood the point of it. She finally understood, and she spoke.

"I don't know. I honestly have no idea, never had one, and by now I'm starting to think I'll never know. But I'm past the point of worrying about that. I don't know, and by now I don't care. Because I don't think there's a point in me worrying about it when after so much worrying I still can't find an answer, when so much wasted time could be better spent doing something else, anything else, anything without the gnawing worry of the reason why. I don't need one. I've been telling myself that's not true, maybe because others pressured me into thinking that way, maybe because of how I saw life. Not anymore. I don't know, and that's okay, and it's more than okay. I don't know and I don't need to know, because I don't need a meaning to enjoy the now. I don't need anything else beyond how it feels to live right now. Especially not when it feels like this. And I'm not sure I ever would have admitted it to myself without you, so beyond everything else thank you. Thank you for being the reason I don't need a reason."