Winter Wrap Up is in full motion. Rainbow’s pegasi troop is on the way to bring back the southern birds, and since she couldn’t clear the clouds just yet, she figures that she’d join Fluttershy with waking the critters, starting with a very specific reptile.

Landing by his spot, she starts to carefully clear the area of the snow. “Taaaank~ it’s time to wake up, sleepyhead. Spring is here!” She sings and announces cheerfully. She couldn’t wait to have him by her side again.

Only, the more she digs away the dirt, the more she’s realising that there’s nothing beneath.

Figuring that maybe she’d simply missed his spot by a few inches, she tries again a bit further to the right.

Nothing.

She tries again, and again, and she doesn’t find anything.

Starting to panic, she looks at the area. It’s exactly where he dug himself into the ground. She could find this exact spot blindly.

So why isn’t he anywhere?!

“Tank!!! Taank, if you hear me, please just…. Do something!” She calls desperately, her eyes jumping all over the place, ears straining to hear a single noise.

It’s strangely quiet, come to think of it. She turns around, and finds that she’s completely alone. There’s not a single pony or creature around. Only snow and a painful coldness that feels like she’s slowly being frozen alive. It leaves her feeling weaker and weaker, and it’s becoming a struggle to breathe.

“TANK!!!” She shouts at the top of her lungs, attacking the ground again, but even when she’s dug a deep enough hole to almost fully disappear, herself, there’s just no sign of her beloved tortoise anywhere.

“This.. can’t be..” she says to herself, and when she makes to find her friends to help her, she still finds all of Ponyville deserted. She’s all alone in the world, and the realisation causes a horrible pain in her already tight feeling chest.

“Rainbow Dash, what is the matter?” She distantly hears Princess Luna, but the growing physical pain and rising panic pull the pegasus awake.

Rainbow wakes up with a gasp. She has to pant and gasp for air as her heart races at such fast rates that rival Sonic Rainboom speeds. Grimacing in pain and clutching at her chest, she whimpers, not understanding what is going on.

She is used to her heart racing sometimes, especially when she’s very stressed, and obviously when she’s working out a bit harder than normal.

This doesn’t feel like those times. This is different, a lot worse, and she doesn’t know what to do. Her eyes immediately seek out the familiar shape of Tank on her bed, and is utterly crushed when she remembers that he won’t be with her until spring. A bit like in her dream, she’s all alone.

Alone, in the dark of the night, immobilised by a pain in her chest that makes her feel like she’s suffocating no matter how hard she tries to get air, and absolutely scared to death.

Princess Luna stares dumbfounded at the dream realm that she’s been sent back to. She still doesn’t understand what in Equestria the pegasus had been dreaming about, and she curses Rainbow’s extremely active brain for processing things so fast that Luna still struggles to comprehend what it was even about.

It’s becoming a challenge for her to help the pegasus with her nightmares, because the dreams that she’s had as of late, evolve in a matter of mere seconds, and the pegasus apparently feels the emotions caused by the dreams so strongly that they pull her from sleep, before Luna has even had the chance to comprehend what is happening.

Luna isn’t the youngest anymore. And not knowing what a ‘Tank’ is, or why the pegasus had been desperate to find it, is not helping her ability to help her troubled subject.

She isn’t sure if this particular dream is any better than all the food and falling related nightmares, if it stressed Rainbow Dash out just as much.

She seeks out Twilight’s dream, hoping that she could tell the young alicorn about the situation and have her help Dash in the waking world.

Unfortunately, Twilight isn’t having a particularly positive dream, either.
Luna watches her horrified expression for a moment, until she sees what the lavender alicorn is staring at: an emaciated version of Rainbow Dash, the pegasus only skin and bones.
A few, thin, dull strands of what was once her colourful mane and tail are all that is remaining.
Her feathers — what’s left of them — are broken, lifeless and sparse, barely covering her half naked wings.
Her eyes are just glassy, hollow, empty, holding none of their usual fire.
As if there’s nothing left of what makes her, her. As though all that’s left of the once strong, fierce, crazy, amazing, true friend, is nothing but a hollow shell.
A weak and broken spirit.

To Luna’s horror, the pegasus then dissolves into dust, right in front of their eyes. The Princess of the Night has had enough and cancels the dream.

“Twilight, it’s alright, it was just a nightmare.” She tells her gently, briefly pulling her into a hug.

“But…” Twilight tries to reply, but breaks down instead.

“Twilight, I need you to listen to me, because this is important: I need you to wake up and get to Rainbow Dash, she needs you.”

“W-what? What’s wrong with her?” Twilight manages, looking at the darker alicorn with tearful eyes.

“I am not sure, but she was quite distressed. I presume you know what a ‘Tank’ is, and why it’s buried in the ground?” She asks.

Twilight nods, wiping away the tears, a bit embarrassed to have broken down like that in front of her once again. “He’s Rainbow’s pet tortoise. We brought him to the same spot as last time, today, so he can hibernate.” She explains.

Realisation dawns on Luna, now understanding the panic when Rainbow Dash hadn’t been able to find him. The bit of information gives her an idea.

“If he’s hibernating, then we should be able to find his dreams.” Luna says.

“You can see the dreams of animals?” Twilight asks in curiosity.

Luna nods. “I normally stay away from them, I’m already busy and struggling, trying to keep my subjects nightmare-free.” She then closes her eyes, and Twilight and her fly past hundreds of dreams.

She couldn’t catch more than fleeting glances of squirrels and chipmunks dreaming about finding nuts, bears about their playing cubs, and deer about hopping through wide, grassy fields.

Twilight finally catches sight of a dream where Tank is flying in the sky with Rainbow Dash, the pegasus laughing happily. It brings a smile to her face. “I found it.” She tells Luna.

The older alicorn watches the dream with curiosity for a moment, mostly because she has never seen a flying tortoise before, especially with a magical propeller of some sort.

“I am sure that Rainbow Dash will be happy to hear that he is perfectly fine and having nice dreams.” Luna remarks. “I’m afraid that this is where we have to part ways. Good luck, Twilight Sparkle.”

“Thank you, Princess Luna, for doing this.” Twilight replies, and with a nod in goodbye, Luna casts a spell that expels Twilight from the dream world and wakes her up.

A good thing is that time moves much slower in the dream realm than it does in the waking world, so it has only been a few seconds between the dreams. She still wastes no time, jumping off her bed and hurrying to Dash’s room.

“Rainbow?” She calls, hearing the distressed, quick breaths. “It’s me. What’s going on?”

“Twi, I.. I don’t feel well.” Rainbow struggles to get out.

“Hang on, I’m turning the lights on.” Twilight warns, and a moment later, the room is filled with bright light that is sore on both their eyes, so she dims them a bit with her magic.

Two things become instantly apparent: Dash rubbing at her chest, and the look of panic on her face.

“What’s wrong?” Twilight repeats, coming to her side immediately. “Let me see.” She gently pushes the cyan hoof out of the way, so she could check her heart rate. The organ is pumping rapidly underneath her touch, feeling almost like a small bird with the way it was fluttering.
Not good.
Not good at all.

She readies a dosage of what’s left from Zecora’s potion on pure muscle memory. “Here, let’s see if this will do the trick.” She says as she passes it over.

Rainbow has to take several smaller sips in between quick breaths, her lungs forced to try to keep up with her racing heart. They wait anxiously for it to take effect, Twilight trying to make her as comfortable as possible and calm her down.

In doing that, Twilight notices that Rainbow’s coat is damp with sweat, which isn’t too surprising, given the current stress on her body, but it seems to add a definition to her body that makes Twilight bite her tongue, because she could swear that Dash looks thinner already.

It’s not a huge difference, of course, but she could make out hints of the tips of her shoulder blades and a rough outline of a few ribs as the pegasus continues to breathe hard. She can’t help herself, staring vacantly at her friend’s reminders of how quick and bad it had become, when this whole thing started. Her own nightmare is flashing before her eyes again, and for a moment, her tired eyes hallucinate Dash becoming thinner and thinner, until she becomes the emaciated ghost that she’d watched turn into dust.

“It’s slowing down.” Rainbow suddenly informs her. “Finally…”

“G-Good.” Twilight replies shakily. “That’s good…” She closes her eyes and blows out a breath, trying to block out the mental images.

“Are you alright?” Dash asks, now realising that Twilight wasn’t fully there, in the room with her. She sits back up and fills her own glass with water before handing it over.

Twilight shakes her head at the offer. “I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me.” She defends, nudging the glass closer to Rainbow. “You should drink it, you were sweating a lot, you’re probably dehydrated.”

Rainbow doesn’t look happy about the rejection, but decides to humour the alicorn — for now. Mostly because she truly does feel weak and overall unwell right now.

“I’ll leave you be once you’re alright.” Twilight says, not looking anywhere near her. “I’m sure you’re sick of having me around, after today. Or, well, yesterday.” She corrects when she remembers that it’s the middle of the night.

“No, stay.” Rainbow pleads. “I-I mean, if you don’t rather want to go back to your own bed…”

Twilight is surprised by this. “I thought…” she shakes her head. “I haven’t been a good friend. I’m sorry.”

“Twilight. What is going on?” Rainbow asks seriously, easily able to tell that something is not right with her friend.

The alicorn looks like she wants to say something, but then squeezes her eyes shut and turns away at the last second. “I shouldn’t say anything.”

Rainbow has finally had enough. She embraces her in a surprise hug. “Stop keeping secrets all the time. I don’t want us to argue a third time.”

“I can’t! I- it would only trigger you- again.”

Dash sighs. “If it’s about the weight loss: I already know.” She admits quietly.

Twilight pulls away from the hug. “W-What?!” She then sees the pegasus reaching up to her own shoulder again.

“It’s… kinda hard to miss, when I can feel all my ribs through my wings.” She admits, pressing one of her wings tightly against her side for emphasis. “I may not be able to see it, but I can kind of imagine what I actually look like, through touch.”

Twilight doesn’t know how to respond. She’d known that Dash has started ‘body checking’ in this new way, rather than the obsession with mirrors (that almost always only ever caused more distress than it brought comfort). She hasn’t had the chance to bring it up until now, but she has been wondering if this is a good or a bad development.

Rainbow chooses her stunned silence to come clean. “I know how stupid it sounds, and is, that the sick part of me …likes it. That it’s much more acceptable to be even just slightly underweight rather than at a normal weight. Heck, I would even go as far as to say I’m thin, right now.”

Twilight is, of course, not very happy to hear that. Her mouth is pressed into a thin line, as she tries to find a way to reply without letting her emotions get the better of her again.

This is exactly what she’s been so afraid of. Dash may see it as okay right now, and then the disorder will strike back full force, take over completely, and that will be it.

She couldn’t take it anymore.

“I’m sorry. I-I can’t do this right now.” She finally forces out, and before Rainbow has any chance to react, flees from the room.

The pegasus is overcome with an urgency that makes her ignore everything besides her friend in obvious need for support — until she briefly collapses, a couple of steps away from her bed, her vision needing a moment before the blackness has fully disappeared again.

She realises with a frustrated groan that she needs to eat something again, but it’s far from her top priority right now. Besides, eating at nighttime is simply not allowed, in the first place.
Old habits die hard, and eating disorders even more so.

Twilight has a clear advantage, being able to teleport wherever she wants to. Dash has her own advantages, in the form of her extremely sensitive, attuned feathers, a naturally heightened sense of hearing, and the ability to see with very limited light. If she focuses hard enough, the pegasus could even pinpoint Spike’s faint snoring from inside his room.

It doesn’t take long before Rainbow finds her upset friend in the study, even with the door closed and the lights off.

“Twilight…” She whispers as she approaches the alicorn. She lays a careful hoof on her shoulder. “Please talk to me. I want to help.”

She sniffs. “I should be the one helping you. I shouldn’t… be this way!”

“You haven’t done anything besides help me for months, Twilight. I know that you’re scared, you know that I’m scared, we’ve been over this.”

“How can you do this?” Twilight asks airily.

“Do what?”

“Act so nonchalant about this, like it’s no big deal anyways!”

Dash gulps. “That’s not true.”

“No, my bad. You’re probably enjoying this. Congrats, you finally got what you wanted.” Twilight snaps, but the rivulets of tears rapidly trailing down her face are speaking of the opposite.

It takes a moment, but Rainbow catches on to what she means. “That’s not what I meant, earlier. I’m not enjoying it, it’s just… easier to live with, in a way.”

“Easier for you maybe.” Twilight mumbles to herself before sobering up. She finally turns to look at the pegasus. “You really shouldn’t be up and about like this right now. I don’t want your heart to have another such episode.”

Rainbow glowers back. “If you didn’t want me to go after you, then you shouldn’t have run off. And I’m not leaving until I know you’re okay.” She says with that confident finality that Twilight knows all too well. “What are you doing here, anyways?”

Twilight sighs and turns on the lights with her magic, temporarily blinding the pegasus. “Sorry…” she apologises, dimming the lights again. When Rainbow could see again, she notices a small, open notebook, as well as a book on the nutritional values of food on the desk. “I wanted to calculate the calories from today.”

Rainbow raises an eyebrow. “Now? It’s the middle of the night.”

“It just crossed my mind again, that I didn’t get the chance to do it, yesterday.” Twilight admits, opening the book to look up the first item on the list of her notes. “Gives me something to do…”

“Finding comfort in numbers?” Rainbow asks knowingly without judgement, because she absolutely relates.

Twilight nods as she reads. “Numbers are secure, in a way. Solid. Unchanged. Like, even if King Sombra suddenly returned, or if we had to fight a full on war, 2+2 is still 4, and Pi will still be 3.141592-… you get the idea.”

Rainbow joins her side to glance over the notes, if just to make sure that she isn’t forgetting anything she ate, for her own calculation. “For me it’s the other way around. I like being able to change the numbers. Like… change means progress, of some sort. You know, higher wing-power, flying longer distances, more training minutes before I have to stop,…” she hesitates before saying what they are both already thinking. “…less calories…”

“Do you already know yours?” Twilight asks, changing the subject, gesturing to the list, on which she is slowly adding the calculated numbers behind the listed foods.

“‘Course.” Dash replies. “It… happens automatically.” She admits.

Twilight pauses for a moment. “What goes through your head, when you eat something? How do I have to picture it?” She asks curiously.

“Why when I eat something?” Rainbow asks, confused.

“Let me rephrase, then. When and how do you count them?”

That, she could work with. She looks at the things on the desk, getting an idea. “Okay. Pretend that we’re looking at different foods, rather than a messed up study session-”

“Hey!”

“It’s the truth.” Rainbow shrugs, before getting back to her own demonstration. “So. We’re looking at an apple pie,” she points to the larger book, “a small sized apple,” the notebook, “and a nut, a cashew if you want,” she points at the quill that Twilight is using to write. “Now: one portion sized slice of apple pie is around 300-400 calories, with around… let’s say 6 slices, which brings the whole thing to about 2400 calories max. The apple is easy, you already wrote it down, yourself: 82.”
To get everything as correct as possible, Twilight had weighed the apple beforehand.
“A single cashew has about 5 or 6 calories. Now, the numbers alone would make you go for the smallest option as the obvious choice. But you also have to factor in carbs and sugars, salts, proteins, fibres, fats, water content.
But also how much you’ve already had of each, and how much you’re still allowed.”

“Allowed?” Twilight interjects.

Rainbow sighs. “Yes. Let’s say that all three of these are all you’re going to have today. You had one slice of the pie, plus the apple, for breakfast. How much is that, so far?”

“Uhm.. well, depending on how big the slice is, you’re close to 400 or 500.” Twilight replies.

Rainbow nods. “If you’re only drinking water, you’re good. If you drink one glass of cider, you add another 50, which brings us to 550. The problem now is that nothing so far has had much of a protein content, the carbs are quickly digested and turned into sugar, and once that spike in blood sugar crashes…”

“…you’re hungry again, and your body is going to want more carbs.”

“Exactly! Sooo, we add another two slices of pie.” Dash’s brain instantly does the calculations. “We are now at 1550 calories, and we haven’t actively burned much because it’s a lazy Sunday.”

Twilight giggles at the joke.

“That is fine, because we burn calories just by existing. But let’s say that… uh, let’s go with 1700 being all you’ll burn in 24h without working out. We’re almost there already, and the day is only halfway over.
Anything you consume above those 1700 will eventually lead to weight gain if you go over it for days or weeks on end. And as an athlete, that’s not really something you want.”

Twilight bites her lip to keep from saying something to that.

“We could simply stop there, eat nothing more for the rest of the day, and be fine.” Rainbow looks back at the desk. “But… just for the sake of this.. demonstration, let’s say we finally realise that today hasn’t been going too great, nutrition wise. All we had so far has mostly consisted of unhealthy food and pretty much empty calories.
So, pack up the rest of the pie and put it away, minimise the temptation to mess u- I mean….” She tries to think of a better way of saying ‘mess up your progress any more’. “To.. take another slice. Y-You already had enough…”

“Are you okay?” Twilight asks alarmed when the pegasus suddenly blinks rapidly.

“Y-Yeah.. Yeah… just…” she clears her throat. “Feels weird to say it out loud, what the voice is telling me.”

Twilight’s eyes widen at that.

“Never mind that.” Dash shakes her head. “We need protein, and our only option for now is a bowl of nuts.”

“How much is a ‘bowl’ of cashews?” Twilight asks. “How many grams?”

“150g?” Rainbow offers without hesitation. “Give or take.”

The alicorn seeks out the pages of legumes and does a quick calculation in her head. “Oh, wow… you weren’t kidding.”

“How much?” Rainbow asks interestedly.

“870 calories?!” Twilight exclaims in disbelief. She honestly hadn’t expected it to be this much. Maybe 500 at most.

“Huh. I thought it was 900.” Dash remarks, and her brain does the calculations again. “Oh well. We’re at 2420 total calories now, but at least we get a good bit of protein from that.” She thinks for a moment. “Adding a bit from the amounts of the pie we ate, we’re at about 25g of protein now.” She turns to Twilight. “That would be way too little for me.”

Twilight nods. “I know.”

Rainbow goes back to her example. “So, we now know that those cashews would bring us way over our limit. Good thing we calculate all of this before we ate those.”

“Wha- oh.. so you just… calculate everything beforehand, like this?” Twilight asks, and Dash nods. “Always?”

She nods again. “It’s better to know it all beforehand, make the right decisions based on that, rather than to only calculate everything after you already ate it, and regret your life choices.” She says, pointing to the calories listed for 100g of natural cashews in the book.

Twilight thinks back to her surprise at the unexpectedly high calorie number, understanding what Dash means with that. “So…” she starts, still trying to process all of this. “You’re telling me that you’re doing these calculations, with how much you’re ‘still allowed’, at everything you see?”

“Well- I mean, not everything I see. But with the things I want to have, or think I need — Yes.” She replies. “Or if I have to make a decision between two things, like a cookie and a cupcake at one of Pinkie’s parties, that’s when things get a bit more challenging. Fruits and nuts, like this, are pure.
Baked things are many ingredients, often many carbs and loads of added sugars, so estimations can range anywhere from 200, all the way up to 700 calories, depending on how ‘inspired’ she is when baking.”

Twilight only stares at her for a moment. “I have honestly no idea how you can process all of this, and still keep track all the time.”

“Welcome to the inner workings of my mind.” Rainbow chuckles. “If nothing else, at least it keeps my brain busy and active.” She says, and lays down on the floor when the lightheadedness is suddenly joined by her face, hooves and wings tingling, and her vision getting blurry. She tries to just wait it out like always, but even the deeper breaths she’s taking aren’t helping. In fact, her hearing is like being under water again, and black spots are now dancing in her field of vision.
Her head suddenly feels too heavy for her to possibly support it any longer, and she couldn’t hear, or see, or feel anything anymore. Nothing, besides her own weakness, and like she’s floating weightlessly in a dark void.
Oh for…

Twilight doesn’t notice it at first, skimming through the pages to make progress on her own list. “Wait a sec, was that a red or a green apple? Because the book- Rainbow!” She yells when she finds the pegasus lying motionless with her eyes closed, her breathing too shallow and her position too awkward for her to have suddenly fallen asleep again. She checks her pulse, finding it to be around 40-45bpm.
Maybe the potion had worked too well?

Before Twilight could dissolve into a panic all over again, the pegasus stirs again.
“Rainbow, can you hear me? What’s wrong?” She asks anxiously, re-checking her pulse again. It was still slower than normal, but at least better than a moment ago, and definitely better than the extremely rapid tachycardia episode from earlier.

The pegasus moans unhappily. “Dizzy… cold…” she mumbles, her speech slurred.

Twilight quickly realises what the issue is, thanks to them literally just talking about it, and because they’ve been through this before. The last clue that confirms her theory is when she notices small, growing tremors in the half open, splayed wings.

She teleports one of the ciders she’d left on the kitchen counter, as well as some leftover cucumber and carrot salad, hoping that the fewer calories in it would make it easier for the pegasus.

Rainbow takes one dazed look at the new items and immediately looks away. “I can’t…”

“Why not?” Twilight asks sternly, nudging it closer to her.

“It’s not allowed.” She whines, trying to push it away.

“…What?! Of course you’re 'allowed'! You just passed out, for pony’s sake!”

Rainbow makes an unhappy noise in protest, but gives in when Twilight practically feeds her a slice of cucumber.

“You’re allowed to eat, Rainbow. And not just when your body starts to give out like this.” Twilight tells her, a bit in disbelief that she even has to explain this.

The alicorn turns back to the books for a while when Dash slowly but surely starts to eat and drink, and starts to improve and feel better.

“I can normally push through. I don’t understand why I blacked out.” Rainbow says when she’s halfway through her midnight snack, puzzled by this unexpected turn of events.

“Yeah, we don’t do that anymore, 'just pushing through', Rainbow.” Twilight berates gently but sternly, wanting to get this weird rule crossed out immediately. “If you’re hungry, it’s because your body needs it. It’s trying to make sure you don’t pass out.”

“But…”

“What’s so different about eating at night, compared to during the day?” Twilight asks curiously. “Do the calories multiply after dark? No. Will every single one be instantly turned into a gram of fat? Also no. So what’s the deal?”

“It’s just… you’re only supposed to eat during a limited timeframe. For me, the ground rule is nothing after nightfall, and the soonest I can have something is once the sun is up. Sometimes the rule is more specific, like it’s only allowed after 8 or 10am, or even after noon at the earliest, if I had too much the day before.” Rainbow admits shamefully.

Twilight is definitely surprised by this. “Rainbow…” she starts, but then gets thinking. There have been days where the girls have pretty much been together the entire day, and if there was a battle involved, it often meant that they couldn’t take any breaks until the evening.
“Are you saying… have you not eaten all day sometimes, when we had to go places and fight villains?”

“What? No-!”

“What about when you fainted at the Traders Exchange?” Twilight asks straight out, suddenly remembering Fluttershy telling them about it fleetingly, as a side comment, when Rainbow had fallen asleep on the train ride home.

Dash’s eyes widen. “Fluttershy told you about that?!”

Twilight nods, now very bemused.

“Can you honestly blame me? We had to go from A to B and C to D and.. just all over the whole place, back and forth, trying to get the thing that the traders wanted, all before the Exchange was closing!” Rainbow defends.
The day had almost ended in an absolute disaster, and she wishes that she could forget almost trading Fluttershy away to train some slobbery two-headed dog thing, for a book.

Definitely not one of her proudest moments, but in her defence, her brain has definitely not been working anymore by that point. She could see and admit that much, now in hindsight.
She had been running solely on adrenaline and the ‘hunger high’, physically demanding too much from her body in that state, until it simply couldn’t take it anymore, and chose that moment of her adrenaline finally crashing to send her to the ground.

“Yes, and she said that you two never even stopped for lunch.” Twilight points out. “Which… would probably have been your breakfast, since we had to get on the train before Celestia raised the sun, to get to Rainbow Falls in time.”

“Urgh, so what? I already told you before: I sometimes go all day and only eat in the evening, if I’m too busy.”

“The problem is that no pony’s body can function like that!” The alicorn snaps. “We aren’t designed to go all day running ourselves into the ground! You’re acting like it’s nothing whenever you pass out.
Or get dizzy.
Or that your hair is always falling out.
Or how you get cold all the time.
Or that you never grow an actual winter coat.
All of that are signs that something is wrong, but it’s become so normal for you that it hardly even matters to you anymore.”

Rainbow goes quiet for a while, for the first time in her life truly considering the weight of her actions and way of thinking. It does sound like she’d have to be an absolute idiot not to notice that she’s harming herself, when it’s all being listed off like this.

“…I don’t like eating at night, because, if I want to eat something, I need to work for it. I have to 'earn' it. For me, eating is a minor necessity, not something to enjoy or do for fun. It’s only to give me energy so I can keep going, nothing more. So there’s literally no point in eating anything at night.” She explains in a subdued voice. “Even if I do wake up hungry sometimes, it’s just not allowed, because I can’t work it off right away.”

Twilight stares at her, stunned into speechlessness. Rainbow takes a couple sips from her drink when it becomes a bit awkward. It brings the alicorn back to reality and she finishes up the last numbers in her notebook and adds them all up to a total.

“Well… I guess I know why you fainted.” She remarks nervously.

“Why?” Rainbow asks, sitting up to look, but Twilight hides it with her hooves.

“What total result did you get to?” She asks.

“…does this count too?” Rainbow asks, pointing to her half eaten portion. Twilight shakes her head. “3120.”

Twilight looks even more stricken now. “2785.”

Rainbow’s jaw drops at the much lower number. “What? Seriously?” She asks in disbelief, and is finally allowed to look over the notes. “Are you sure you didn’t forget anything?”

“Not unless you ate or drank something in secret.” The alicorn deadpans.

Rainbow frowns at some of the individual numbers, and decides to check the accuracy with the nutrition book. Twilight lets her.
She quickly realises what the problem is, especially when she checks from what year this book was published.
“I guess I’m not up to date.” She turns to the alicorn. “I got a little pocket book like that, back when I was a filly. I’ve memorised those, but it looks like there’s been some changes since then.”
She’s just not entirely sure if she could trust these different numbers. It feels like cheating when they’re not as high anymore.

Rainbow expects for Twilight to say something like ‘well that explains it’.
Instead, Twilight’s eyes widen at that information, feeling like her heart just broke. “W-Who gave you such a book, at such a young age?”

“My parents.” Dash replies simply, not understanding the problem. “I wanted to learn about nutrition, because I knew that athletes were on special diets and all that.”

Twilight closes her eyes, utterly crushed. “I knew that you had to get those numbers from somewhere. I just didn’t think it was so early on.”

“…what do you mean…?” Dash asks, getting the feeling that she’s done something wrong.

Twilight sighs. “I’m just… sad, that you started obsessing over this stuff so young. I just get the feeling that it’s robbed a lot of your life, since your fillyhood… How old were you when you got that book? Do you remember?”

“I don’t know. Like 6 or 7?” Rainbow guesses. A couple of years before they all got their cutie marks.

Twilight thinks back to when she was that age. “I was just getting the hang of basic levitation back then. Learning spells with Shining Armor, reading up on everything I could to learn about magic.” She reminisces. A lovely childhood, filled with joy and a healthy thirst for knowledge, long before her life was turned upside down after passing her test and getting Spike.

That’s when Rainbow finally understands what she meant. “…I was trying to improve my flying skills, getting laughed at every time I crashed… I bet they would have lost it if they’d known that my dream was to become a world class athlete, and once I learned about the Wonderbolts, I just knew what I wanted to achieve in life… And I did everything I could to get there…”
When she shares a look with Twilight again, they both look equally sad. “I-I never saw anything wrong with… with the way…” she couldn’t bring herself to finish that sentence.
“It was all just… an innocent hobby. It was just something I had, and I thought it made me better.”

“You couldn’t have known that it would end up like this.” Twilight gently reassures. She almost wants to blame Dash’s parents for it, but knows that it wouldn’t solve anything. In a way, she figures that it was probably in the same manner as when her own parents got her the books on more advanced spells and the history of magic, that led to her isolating herself from other ponies. At least she’d had Shining Armor, so she wasn’t totally alone.

Rainbow Dash, on the other hand, is an only child, who didn’t have any real friends until much later. From what Rainbow has told them long ago, her and Gilda only ever saw each other during the Junior Speedsters Flight Camp, and she didn’t form a real relationship with Fluttershy for years. Maybe because she thought that she didn’t actually need anypony else, as long as she had those numbers to focus on…?
Twilight wonders if this social isolation is perhaps playing a role in the pegasus’ unfiltered, brutal honesty, and not really understanding the concept of social norms. During the first years of the group’s friendship, Rainbow has had to learn a lot, much like Twilight, herself.

Rainbow briefly covers her face with her hooves. “I just feel so stupid.”

“I promise you, you’re not. You’re absolutely brilliant. Having a disorder doesn’t change that.” Twilight tells her seriously. “Eating disorders can happen to anyone. That doesn’t make you weak, or stupid, or worth any less.”

Dash only sighs sadly, her eyes falling on the books again. “I can’t even do this right.” She complains.

Twilight looks back and forth between the desk and her friend. “…Would it help if you memorised this newer edition?”

The pegasus throws her an unsure glance. “Would that be a good idea?”

The logical part of her wants to say no, obviously. Obsessing over these numbers all over again won’t help.
But something tells Twilight that logic won’t solve his, either. Maybe she understands it a bit too well.

If you can’t prevent it, then at least make sure that it’ll happen in the safest way possible.

“I feel like it’s much too deep-rooted at this point, after all those years. So if you’re going to count, anyways, then I want you to at least get it as accurate as possible. Maybe a refresher can help with that.” And with that, she closes the nutrition book and holds it out to her.

Still, Rainbow hesitates. “What if I can stop? I’ve managed to not focus on it at all for a while, because I didn’t need to count the same meals over and over again. I want to try to… not do it anymore.”

Twilight smiles at this turn of events, taking the book to herself again. “Then that’s absolutely fine. But if you do end up counting again, you’re always welcome to have a look.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass. At least for now.” Rainbow replies. “It’s just… Knowing that I’m off so much, anyways, makes me feel like I shouldn’t bother trying to count, in the first place.” She pauses and frowns. “Is that… weird?”

Twilight shakes her head. “Not at all.”

“Life isn’t much fun like that, with so many rules to follow all the time…” She admits.

“That’s because it’s not actually living.” Twilight replies knowingly. “In fact: it’s barely surviving.”

Now knowing how she’s been unknowingly hurting herself for over a decade, Rainbow nods.
“It’s time to start living.” She announces, before grabbing another cucumber slice from the salad, and Twilight does the same with her magic, the two friends sharing a Toast of sorts.

“Time to start living.” The alicorn agrees, and they both munch away, before breaking into a fit of giggles at the absurdity of it.

Author's Note

Merry Christmas / Happy Hanukkah everyone

Unfortunately my whole family, including myself, has come down with Covid for the very first time, and my asthma is not a fan.

Take care, y’all 🫶🏻🖤