Six Truths From Discord

Rainbow Dash
Flies
With a spiked collar
Around her neck.

Its spikes point inward
Scratching
Poking her
Drawing blood sometimes.

You see,
Rainbow
Lost a friend recently
And that
Injected the poison
into her brain.

You see,
Rainbow
Is getting older, now
Her body
Doesn't heal as fast
Her bones
Are a little more brittle.

So what if
The next flight
Does her in?

What if she
Misjudges a turn?
(She'd never do that, she tells herself)
(But what if)
And she careens into a barricade
And her skull fractures
And there's bits of bone in her brain
And so much blood
And there's nothing
The doctors
Can do?

She's already past her prime
(Though she doesn't want to admit it).
Already on
The way out.

But what if
She doesn't make it
To that nice Wonderbolts retirement package?

This never bothered her
Until now.
She'd never even thought about it.

And she compartmentalizes it.
She has to.
Tucks it away in her mind
Any time she's on the job.

But at night
In bed
It always escapes its confinement.
Gnaws at her.

The spiked collar
Gets tighter.

Is this it?
Is tomorrow's race...
It?

She thinks about resigning
But that would be cowardly.
Disloyal.
This was her dream, she can't be
Scared now, she
Put so much
Time
Effort
Sweat
(Blood)
Into getting here, how can she
Be so
Afraid?

One day
Fate will grab that spiked collar
And give it a yank
And her head will come flying off.

One day.

Who knows when.

(Me)

(I know when.)

But for now
All she can do
Is not sleep
And barely eat
And tell everyone she's fine.