Lavender

Silence.

The only sound to grace my ears, even as I whipped towards the ground at near terminal velocity, despite myself and the wind blowing with a ferocity recognized only by my sense of touch, was complete and utter silence.

It was a scientific phenomenon in itself - here I was, plummeting at a substantial enough speed to incur loss of a sense.

Then again, I had tossed myself off the edge of the gorge in the first place, so anything that happened afterwards was rather unimportant in the scheme of things.

That's right. I jumped off a cliff, as some ponies might simplify it down to. I was not sky-diving, as I had no parachute, and it was not an instant decision either. After weeks of meditation, it seemed both the best and the only choice.

Whether or not it was the right one, I'd likely never know.

As my sense of touch continued to assert itself over hearing, the full force of wind began tearing at my eyes, instinctively making me wriggle around mid-air the best I could to face the sky. If I was truly going to take my life, the most sacred thing I possessed in all of eternity itself, it seemed a sort of paramount perseverance of every modicum of comfort I could get would be for the best.

My eyes tore away from the raging, rushing river below, and rested above on the biggest patch of cerulean I'd yet seen, dotted with cerulean, cerulean, and a spot of cerulean to top it off.

Only the last patch differed from any other, though - it moved with speed, a steadily increasing speed that closed mere inches upon me with each second. Strands and trails of rainbow flew behind it, and wings flapped furiously next to it, forming a desperately flying, and though she would never admit it, bitterly crying Rainbow Dash.

Even though my sense of hearing seemed shot, my perception of time slowed, and my sense of touch heightened, I could make out the lonely echoes of a single, desperate cry that her glistening rose eyes echoed with each second.

"Twilight! Don't do it!"

I stared blankly upwards, only half-registering the words that had been there, but were no longer. My focus was no longer held to the sky, or the imminent outcome of a pony falling at roughly terminal velocity. Instead, my gaze slowly drifted to her billowing rainbow mane, and back down to her features that were so often chiseled and unbreakable, strong and soft in the strangest ways.

No matter how much I loved her, I could not deny that I would be the one to break her heart in the end, as I already had. Maybe not how I thought it would be, but still a break nonetheless.

Yes, that was right. I, Twilight Sparkle, loved Rainbow Dash. Ordinarily, if anypony found out, I'd likely bite back with only the sardonicism necessary, 'Why don't you just kill me over it?'.

And yet, against my better fantasies and hopes, I'd done the exact thing of my own free will.

Not that it scared me at all, honestly - from the torment I'd managed to endure, this seemed the only logical option. Ponyville didn't want me, my friends didn't understand, and my crush didn't even notice me. Not often, at least. But the word, twisted in their cruel visages, and forever echoing in my head, drove me to it. It drove me to change myself, to doubt who I was, and for all of the right reasons - if I wasn't 'natural', at least I could go out in a natural way.

And so, even as she inched ever so closer, every single muscle on her athletic form taut and straining to get closer, I simply lay back, all four hooves extended as if to slow myself, when the reality was so much more different. 'Leave me alone,' I would have screamed if I'd had the energy or even the conviction to. 'You can save yourself! You don't need to be with a fillyfooler!'

After all, it was the truth. Nopony wanted me, much less her, and I was a freak of nature. I'd had means to an end, but never known how vile they actually were.

Speaking of 'end', the sound of water began to fill my ears. It was then that I reluctantly tore my sight away from her, and shut my eyes tight. Impact would be in 10 seconds, no more, no less. The ridicule, the stress, the impurity...it would all be over soon.

Release came in a rather strange manner. I felt a very, very strong tug that seemed to slow my descent, and my breathing instantly became hard to come by. I plunged into the water, seamlessly floating through the last few inches before finally hitting the riverbed.

The last thought I ever had would, sadly, be oddly 'Starswirl the Bearded era', but nopony could read my mind. They would never know. It was a fitting end to a disgrace like me:

Goodnight, sweet princess. It was a love never meant to be.

As it turned out, my last thought was not my last thought.

I first became aware of this by the very fact I was thinking, and not being a lifeless vessel slowly drifting down a river. My breath came, indeed, but it was mechanical, and labored. Every single gulp of life-essential air brought great amounts of pain, and as much as I wanted to stop, I knew I couldn't. It was the body's natural defense mechanism to prioritize breathing to keep itself alive, no matter how painful it was.

I appeared stuck for the time being, wherever I happened to be.

The first thing I reluctantly noticed, was the fact that the water I'd last heard was nowhere to be heard. Out of earshot, most likely gone. I still, however, felt strangely soaking wet. Maybe I'd floated to the shore, and the job was not finished. Such an assumption made no sense, though - the river would still be in earshot, if that were true. My calculations could have been flawed, considering I made absolutely none. The question remained: how did I still exist?

The next answer I came to receive did not answer that question, or any question - but it gave me a clue to my surroundings.

While I did feel wet, my head was propped up gently across something curved, slightly soft, and my general midsection was wrapped in a sort of feathery cocoon. Such a thing left my forehooves immobilized at my side - not free to swing, but also not restrained with force. It was a very warm way to lie injured, and I might have dared to say that I enjoyed it, had circumstances been different.

The sound of rushing water remained nowhere around, but I slowly became aware of a steady, rhythmic crunching: crunch, crunch, crunch, followed by a slight gap, and it would begin anew. With each crunch, I could feel the oddly soft surface beneath me shift slightly, and I was able to draw the conclusion that I was moving.

I struggled weakly, trying to dislodge the cocoon around me. My eyes felt just about as heavy as the weight of the world itself, and I couldn't even manage more than just a single flutter of my eyelids. The instant I moved, I set off flashes of pain that were both expected and unexpected, starting in both my midsection and my left foreleg. Had I been strong enough, I might have cried out, but the best I managed was a weak mumble of protest: "...mmmnnff..."

"Twilight?" The response was immediate, echoed by the sudden lack of movement that came to being. I was still more or less in a comfortable stasis position, despite the constant twinges of pain that followed the recent flash - I made a mental note not to move. "Twilight! Can you hear me? Just...say something, anything!"

My brain, still in a fairly muddled state of what I could assume was shock, decided the best course of action was to deduce even further instead of responding to the immediate problem.

I was in a soft sort of embrace, on something else that was both soft in firm. The voice I heard was one that I'd regrettably come to adore over the years, and it belonged to Rainbow Dash.

The conclusion came a full three seconds later, and it was already too late. My thoughts had already drifted to the fact that I happened to be on her back, as she quite literally carried me, and that it was her wings that held me in the embrace that I'd enjoyed so much. I could already feel my face coloring, from a sense of guilty pleasure that I tried my hardest to suppress, and yet it still escaped with another small sound. "Nnngh..."

It was lucky for me that ponies could not look directly behind them while facing forward, so that Rainbow couldn't see my expression at all, and so my response was taken appositively.

"Oh Celestia...just hang in there!" I could feel her start forward again, with that strange three-crunch gait again. "Ponyville's just in sight! You'll be fine! We'll get you to the hospital!"

Her words might have comforted me any time besides that time, but right then...they didn't work. 'Hang in there'? How could I do that, knowing that I was one of the worst plagues to ponykind, and worse, I'd thought nothing of it? I could live with it, but it was a terrible, burdening pain. To have to both bear the pain of loving one who would probably never love me, and to have to deal with what I was...that wasn't easy to grasp.

I was not in the mood to grasp anything, though. As much as I hated myself for enjoying it, being wrapped in pegasus wings was almost like the perfect blanket. It was that fact that made it incredibly easy to slowly let go of consciousness, and to fall back into the deep, black, thoughtless depths of unconsciousness. Where the pain couldn't reach me, and what little pleasure I had remaining permeated throughout. Even if my soul was shattered, emptiness didn't distinguish. It welcomed me with open arms, and it was there, on my oh-so-beautiful crush's back, in a cocoon of feathers, that I finally surrendered myself to it.

I could deal with the fact that I was a lesbian later.