Purple-not-always-so-Smart
Lost
By Winston
Rainbow Dash pushed open the door to the Golden Oaks library, crossing the threshold from the sun and fresh air outside to warm yellowish lamp-light and the half-dusty, half-faint-vanilla scent of heartwood and old books within.
Spike looked over at the door. “Hey Rainbow.” He waved from where he was busily reshelving books.
“Yo, Spike!” Rainbow returned his greeting. “How’s it going?” Then she turned to Twilight, who was sitting in front of a pile of books at one of the library’s reading tables. “Hey, Twi, just wanted to stop by and see how your trip to Cloudsdale went.”
“Yeah, Twilight,” Spike said, a little sourly. “How did it go?”
Twilight raised her head from her reading, frowning, and gave Spike a look.
Rainbow was taken aback by the unexpectedly bitter tone the conversation was off to. “Oh. That good, huh?” she asked. “What happened?”
“Yeah, Twilight,” Spike repeated. “What happened?”
“Stop doing that!” Twilight snarled at Spike, flitting her wings uncomfortably. “You’re being a jerk, and I don’t like it.”
“I’m being a jerk?!” Spike crossed his arms. “Ever since you got back, you’re the one who’s been riding everypony’s—”
“Whoa whoa whoa!” Rainbow interrupted them uncomfortably. “Hey, I didn’t come here to start something. I just… look, I don’t know what’s going on. Sorry if I brought up something sore. Forget I asked.”
Twilight took a deep breath, and cleared her throat. “No.” She shook her head. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I guess I’ve been a bit testy, since…” she trailed off.
“Everything okay?” Rainbow asked. “Or should I not ask? I don’t know what to think now.”
“It’s fine,” Twilight said. “Just… my trip to Cloudsdale wasn’t as good as it could have been, I guess.”
“Why?” Rainbow asked. “Was somepony being rude? I know Cloudsdale pegasi can be kinda elitist to outsiders. I hope they didn’t get under your skin and—”
“No, no.” Twilight shook her head. “They were fine! Lovely ponies, all around. It was… well, my fault, really…”
“What was?” Rainbow pressed.
“Well, you see, I kinda…” Twilight went from looking irritated to looking embarrassed. “…I didn’t get to do and see all the things I wanted, because I kinda… well. I kinda got lost. A lot.”
‘What? In Cloudsdale?” Rainbow asked.
“It’s a labyrinth up there!” Twilight griped, throwing her hooves in the air.
Rainbow Dash tilted her head at a funny angle and gave Twilight a quizzical stare, like a dog trying to comprehend a command she didn’t know. “The city’s laid out in a grid,” she finally said.
“I… but… okay, sure, the city has a grid layout, but way up in the sky there’s no landmarks to tell what direction you’re facing! A grid may as well be a labyrinth if you get turned around somehow and don’t know if you’re facing north or south!”
“Umm, Twilight…” Rainbow’s voice was slower than normal with confusion. “What the heck are you talking about? Why wouldn’t you just use the sun? You know it rises in the east and sets in the west, right?”
“Okay, but… that doesn’t do much good at noon!” Twilight shot back.
“You gotta be kidding me. We’re north of the Tropic of Cancer!” Rainbow exclaimed. “That means the sun is always in the southern half of the sky. You can just look at the direction shadows are being cast. They’ll always be pointed at least a little bit north.”
Twilight just stared wide-eyed at Rainbow Dash for a long silent moment, while her withers slumped in defeat. “Oh,” she finally said, in a very small voice. “Oh, yeah.”
Rainbow Dash rubbed her foreleg awkwardly. “Yeah. So, uh, anyway…”
But suddenly, Twilight’s face lit up in triumph. “What about when it’s cloudy?” she blurted out the question with aggressive confidence in having found a clever ‘gotcha!’
“Twilight…” Rainbow Dash closed her eyes and shook her head. “Cloudsdale is the clouds! When’s it gonna get cloudy over the clouds?”
“It could happen!” Twilight insisted. “There’s… there’s different types of clouds!”
“Sure, Twilight.” Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Sure, the pegasi are gonna just not manage the clouds over their own city.”
“Okay, what about at night, when there’s no sun?” Twilight tried again.
“Stars.” Rainbow Dash said flatly, now just staring at Twilight in utter disbelief. “You of all ponies know how to find the north star, don’t you?”
“Ye– I– But– Gahhh! Look, I get it, you know how to find your way around Cloudsdale!” Twilight snapped, in now uncontained frustration. “Of course you’d think it’s easy to navigate. You lived there for years. You already know it like the back of your wing.”
“I don’t know, Twilight.” Spike shook his head. “You are pretty bad at navigating sometimes. Remember the first day of magic school when mom and dad didn’t walk you there? You ended up in some alley where a weird mare in a trenchcoat tried to sell you a knock-off sundial.” He giggled to himself at the memory. “Which raises the point, you really shoulda known about the sun thing.”
“Spike!” Twilight rounded sharply on him with sudden anger in her eyes. “I told you never to tell anypony about that!”
“C’mon, Twi,” Spike protested. “That was years ago and it’s kinda funny now. What’s the big deal?”
“The ‘big deal’ is that I asked you not to tell, and you said you wouldn’t, and now you did!” Twilight shouted.
“Okay, okay. Sorry. Jeeze.” Spike put up his little dragon-hands defensively.
Rainbow Dash started edging toward the door. “Oooookay, I’m just gonna—”
But it was too late to say goodbyes; Twilight was already on her hooves and in the process of storming off. Without a word, she vanished up the stairs to her private room in the library, and shortly after, the tree reverberated with her door slamming. It was so severe that loose scrolls jumped slightly on a shelf next to Rainbow Dash, knocking up a thin cloud of dust to float in the air.
“Sheesh.” Rainbow mumbled to herself. “I always forget how scary strong her magic is when she's mad.”
“Yeah. I’m not going up there,” Spike stated, shaking his head.
☁ ☁ ☁
Fifteen minutes later, Rainbow Dash knocked on the window to Twilight’s room.
Twilight turned from where she lay on her bed to look toward the glassy tapping sound that so boldly interrupted her sulking.
“Can I come in?” Rainbow Dash asked, her voice thin and attenuated through the glass.
Twilight just stared at her.
“Please?”
“Fine.” Twilight shifted on her bed and turned away coldly.
Rainbow Dash fumbled with the pane and pushed it open, then wriggled her way through. She collected herself after her awkward entry, then gingerly walked over and sat down on the floor next to the bed.
“I’m sorry your trip to Cloudsdale sucked,” she said.
“Yeah, whatever.” Twilight shrugged. “It was my own fault. Thanks, though, I guess.”
Rainbow Dash sat and thought for a long, quiet moment. “It wasn’t just getting lost, was it?” she ventured.
“What clued you in?” Twilight asked sarcastically, looking up from her pillow with an irritated glance.
“Well, for one, you’re being even more of a Twilight Snarkle than you usually are,” Rainbow said. “And not just snarky, but like, mean. You know you get like that sometimes when you’re all stressed out, right?”
“Yeah,” Twilight admitted quietly. “I know.”
“So what’s got you all twisted up?”
Twilight blanched. “I don’t know if I wanna talk about it.”
“Okay.” Rainbow Dash shrugged. “That’s cool too. I’ll just… sit here, then, I guess. Thought you could use a friend, either way.”
“Thanks,” Twilight said quietly. She paused. “I’m sorry I was being a bitch about it.”
“Meh.” Rainbow shrugged it off. “Everypony has bitch days.”
A few more moments passed, the only sounds being soft breeze and birdsong coming in from the open window. Twilight slowly extended one foreleg and lowered it over the edge of the bed. Rainbow Dash took it and just held Twilight’s hoof for a while without saying anything.
☁ ☁ ☁
A week later, Twilight and Rainbow Dash were preening in a sunny field at the outskirts of Ponyville after a long session of flight practice. It was, as Rainbow always insisted, an important ritual after a vigorous flight, not just for rearranging feathers properly after getting them beaten up by the rigors of flying, but also for calming down and refocusing from the excitement.
The two of them sat side by side quietly working on their plumage until Twilight broke the silence.
“Do you wanna know what happened when I went to Cloudsdale?” she asked, through a mouthful of feathers.
Rainbow looked up from her own wing. “Do you wanna talk about it?” she asked in return.
“Not really, honestly, but I don’t think it’s gonna get better the way I’ve been not talking about it,” Twilight answered her frankly.
“Alright.” Rainbow nodded. “So what happened?”
“It wasn’t really in Cloudsdale itself,” Twilight began. “It happened on the way home, actually. I mean, I did get lost a lot in Cloudsdale and I didn’t get to see everything I wanted to, that part was true. But what happened after that was just so much worse. That’s what’s really been making me crazy.”
“So tell me,” Rainbow prompted her.
“Okay.” Twilight steeled herself. “On my way back, the direct route to Ponyville had a storm blocking it. Not just a little raincloud, I mean a real storm. It was bad, and it was big. I knew I’d have to go around it, but I was tired and feeling irritable about Cloudsdale and I just wanted to get home as fast as I could, so I guess… I kinda cut it close. Way too close.”
“Oh man.” Rainbow’s face fell. “You mean the big supercell Cloudsdale launched that week?”
“That’s the one.” Twilight laughed sheepishly. “Silly me.”
“Holy smokes, Twi!” Rainbow exclaimed. “You gotta be more careful!”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Twilight grumbled. “I didn’t realize how strong the windshear coming off the storm would be. I got too close to the edge and before I realized what was happening, it… it caught me. I got pulled into the dark grey clouds. Into the storm. Into the rain, and the hail, and the lightning bolts flashing around me. It was like… like…”
“I know, Twilight.” Rainbow nodded somberly. “I get it. I’ve been in stuff like that.”
“I was so… so…” Twilight’s chest quivered. Water welled in her eyes.
“C’mere.” Rainbow Dash wrapped Twilight in a hug, and Twilight crumbled into quiet sobs, leaning her head on Rainbow’s neck.
“I’ve never been more scared in my life,” Twilight stuttered out through her tears. “The wind was slamming me in every direction at once and I couldn’t see my own hoof in front of my face through the dark clouds. It roared in my ears, louder than anything I’ve ever heard, like it hated me and wanted to crush me, or… no. Worse than that. Like it didn’t even know I existed, and it just wanted to rage, and it didn’t care, because I was nothing. The storm was so huge, and I was so small. I’ve never felt more tiny and helpless. I felt like it would just swallow me whole and it wouldn't even know. When I was trapped in there, swirling in those clouds, it was like it was chewing, throwing everything back and forth in teeth of wind and hail and lightning and thunder, and I couldn’t see any way out, and got so mixed up, tossed around so hard, sometimes I couldn’t even tell which way was up and which way was down and I was just so, so scared.”
“I know, Twi.” Rainbow held her in the hug while Twilight’s words faded into inarticulate, shaking sobs. “I know.”
“After I couldn’t find my way out, I thought, this is it,” Twilight said, when she was able to compose herself enough again. “This is how it ends for the new princess. This is what I do to myself as soon as I have these new wings. Pathetic, isn’t it? I did get out again, obviously, but after I got over the worst of being scared, I felt stupid instead. I was so ashamed. That was almost worse than how scared I was. That’s why I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Twilight, no.” Rainbow Dash shook her head. “You’re not stupid.”
“Yes I am,” Twilight insisted. “Too dumb to navigate a city like you just know how to do, and too dumb to stay out of a storm I should have known better than to get anywhere close to.”
“Hey, come on, don’t be like this,” Rainbow said. “Look. You’ve had your wings, like, what? A whole few weeks now?”
“So?”
“So, what did you expect?” Rainbow looked at Twilight. “Actually, know what? I think I know what you expected. I think you expected to just instantly be good at flying.”
“Not good,” Twilight protested. “Just, I don’t know. Not so bad I off myself.”
“Alright. Granted, that was a pretty big mistake. Still, you got out of it again, so it coulda been worse. I think it’s just hard for you because you’re used to being good at everything you do right away,” Rainbow continued. “Am I wrong? Gifted kid, and all that? Did you ever really have to struggle at something you just couldn’t figure out very fast?”
Twilight ruminated silently for a moment. “I guess not,” she admitted. “Maybe you’re right and I’m used to everything coming easy to me.”
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” Rainbow asked. “To not just be great at something quickly, once you’re used to it?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. Look, I get it,” Rainbow said. “When I first started flying lessons, it was like that for me too, if you can believe it. Best in the class. Fastest. Everypony said I was gifted. I thought it would all be so easy. But then, after a little while it turned out not everything was, and when it wasn’t, I lost a lot of motivation. I just kinda… I don’t know. Stopped trying very hard, at anything, so I could avoid really trying at anything if I might fail at it. I guess I was really proud of everypony thinking I was great at flying, so I was afraid of anything turning out not to be easy, because if I wasn’t good at it, I thought I’d lose that part of who I was, you know? And I didn’t have a lot else without that.”
“Oh.” Twilight nodded. “Yeah, I get how that can feel. I guess you’re right. I’ve just felt pretty lost with myself, with who I am, now that I have these wings and I’m so clueless about them. It’s been harder than I’ve wanted to admit, I think. But I guess I need to, now, or this is gonna happen again, isn’t it?”
“Maybe. But it’s okay! It took me a really long time to realize that not being instantly good at everything doesn’t make you dumb,” Rainbow said. “It just makes you normal.”
“I just wanted to prove I could make a long flight to another city all by myself by going to Cloudsdale and back solo. I guess I wanted so badly to feel like I would be good at flying that I got overconfident about trying to prove it to myself. I still just feel so foalish about what happened.”
“Twi. Think about that for a second,” Rainbow said. “When it comes to having wings, you are a foal, basically. As flattering as it is for me to finally think I’m smarter than Twilight ‘Purplesmart’ Sparkle at something for once, if I am smarter, it’s only because I’ve got a lotta years of learning on you. And believe me, I’ve had to learn plenty of it the hard way. You might have to, too. It sucks, but that’s how it is sometimes for us normies. You’ll get through it, though. We all do.”
Twilight smiled wryly and nodded. “I suppose I’ll just have to get used to it.”
Rainbow Dash smiled back. “Welcome to being a pegasus.”
Twilight hugged Rainbow Dash again. “Thanks for teaching me.”
“Anytime.”
“Maybe our next lesson can be on not getting lost in airborne cities,” Twilight suggested.
“Twilight,” Rainbow Dash began, with a slight grin, “About that: I’m sayin’ this with all the love in the world, but… sometimes, you’re the dumbest smart pony I know.”
“Heh.” Twilight laughed weakly. “With just as much love, Rainbow, sometimes you’re the smartest dumb pony I know.”
“Yeah.” Rainbow nodded. “I’m awesome like that.”
A beat passed. Then Rainbow Dash’s eyes suddenly shot wide open. “Hey!”
Author's Note
Written for Penguifyer for Jinglemas 2023
