Dreams of Las Pegasus

    “...filly, do you realize just how dangerous it is for you to be out on...”

    Rainbow Dash sat on the floor of the train’s baggage compartment, not even listening to the dressing down she was getting from the conductor.

    “...strange ponies all over the place these...”

I did it!  I’m on a train!  A real train!  Her mind exulted in the new sensations.  The floor continued its constant side-to-side sway, and the steady click-clack of the rails was an infectious rhythm.

    “...one bit for a ticket, where do you think you’re going, little...”

    She clutched her train ticket in her hooves like it was a gift from Celestia.  I—I did it...  I’m on my own—  Rainbow turned to stare blankly at the conductor, suddenly noticing that he had stopped ranting and was merely staring at her expectantly.  “What?”

    The old pony sighed.  “Whatever.  Foals these days.  Just don’t get into any trouble, okay?”  He wandered off, muttering to himself the whole way about “fillies these days...”

    Rainbow shrugged and started wandering in the opposite direction from the grumpy pony.  She quickly came to a door.  Hoping for a bathroom, it instead opened to show her a view she never could have imagined.

    The landscape rolled on endlessly in every direction, flat and barren and fierce.  The filly grabbed the safety rail, jaw slowly falling open as she took in every sensation.  The heat was incredible, rolling off the ground in waves that were almost visible to the pegasus.  I bet I could get lift without even flapping in this, she thought in awe.  The flat-pack earth was dotted in the distance with mesas, and sprinkled with cacti and scrub brush closer in.  The colors were saturated in a way they never were back home.  Rainbow’s eyes almost hurt from the intense wash of brown and yellow land and glorious blue sky, completely absent of clouds.  Without the rhythm of the rails and the track speeding by mere hooves under her, there would be almost no reference whatsoever that they were speeding down the line instead of standing still.

    Even the mind-numbing view could only distract her for so long, however, and it wasn’t long before the unconscious dancing from hoof to hoof got Rainbow’s attention again.  She galloped back into the train, finally finding an unoccupied bathroom.

    Feeling much refreshed, she started heading further into the train, looking at everything.  There were bench seats facing each other up the length of the car, covered in some sort of greenish fabric.  She could see the odd set of stairs going up into the top of the car, presumably another level like the one she was on.  Ponies of every style and color were scattered throughout the train, giving her the sporadic odd glance as she wandered from car to car with a look of pure awe stamped on her face.

    Rainbow stopped short as she saw something entirely new—or rather, somepony.  She stood in the aisle, staring at the strange sort of pony.  Or, was it a pony?  It almost looked like a pony...

    The not-quite-pony was intent on his book.  He flipped back and forth between pages, more and more agitated each time, before he finally set the book down on his lap and turned to glare at Rainbow.

    “WHAT?” he growled.

    Rainbow was so intent on figuring out what he was that she didn’t even notice his tone.  “Are—are you a... donkey?” she finally asked.

    He stopped, his mouth hanging open.  “Uh, yeah?  So?”

    “Oh, nothin’,” she replied easily.  “I’ve just never seen a donkey before.”

    He hmmphed.  “Well, you have now.”  He picked his book back up as pointedly as possible.

    He set it back down with a frustrated sigh as Rainbow clambered up into the bench opposite him, a gleeful grin on her face.  His expression softened as he watched the filly practically bouncing on her seat, staring out the window.

    “First time on a train, kid?”

    She nodded emphatically while trying to figure out what the pull handle near the window did.  “Yup!  I’ve never even seen a train before today.  We don’t have trains in Cloudsdale.”

    “Uh, don’t touch that.”  He rubbed the back of his head with a hoof.  “Hey, don’t you think you should get back to your parents before they wonder where you ran off to?”

    The filly stopped bouncing.

    “Oh,” she started.  “They’re not on the train.  I’m here by myself.”

    He arched an eyebrow at her.  “What kind of parents send their foal from Cloudsdale to Las Pegasus on their own?”

    The filly stopped grinning.

    “Um...” she hesitated.  “They, uh, they don’t really know I’m here.  I sorta ran away.”

    “You ran away?  From home?  What in Equestria for?”

    Rainbow sat down on the seat and turned away from the outside view.  “Well, I just—um, I dunno.  I guess I just felt like I was being kept down and nopony seemed to want to help.  So I wanted to find a place where I could do it myself.”

    He leaned back against the bench, looking the filly over.  “So, why Las Pegasus?”

    “They say it’s where the best go.  The best cloud sculptors and weather pegasi, the best performers, the best athletes, the best everything.  So, that’s where I want to be, because I’m gonna be the best flyer in Equestria someday.”  Rainbow puffed her chest out confidently, earning a chuckle from her companion.

    “Heh, I like your style, kid.  Name’s Cranky.  Cranky Doodle Donkey,” he said, extending a hoof towards the pony.

    “Rainbow Dash,” she replied, clacking her hoof against his.  The two remained silent for several minutes, until Rainbow began to lose interest in the unchanging scenery outside.  “Soooo, how long is it until we get there?”

    Cranky gave her an irritated look.  “You’re not going to start asking that every ten minutes, are you?”

    “No.”

    “Well then, it’ll be at least another 5 hours.  So get comfy.”

    “Jeez, I didn’t know it was that far,” she said, deflating.  “Oh, hey!” she said, perking back up, having found a topic of conversation.  “What are you going to Las Pegasus for?”

    The donkey stiffened noticeably.  “Eh, I’m just traveling.”

    “Oh, that’s cool.  You do it a lot?”

    His sigh seemed almost wistful.  “Yeah, more than I’d like sometimes.”

    The pair passed superficial conversation back and forth for a while, but comfortable topics soon ran out.  Rainbow wandered back to her crate and managed to dig out her comics, but those only lasted until nightfall.  The brilliant sunset did give her something else to stare at, but with about an hour to go left in the journey, Rainbow found that she was quite bored.  It was dark, and quite a few ponies had wandered off to sleeper cars, or just propped themselves up against their packs on the benches and dozed off.

The donkey seated across from Rainbow was still engrossed in his book, leaving her with nothing to do but sit and think.  Cranky’s off-hoof comment wouldn’t leave her alone.

Don’t you think you should get back to your parents before they wonder where you ran off to?

    She hadn’t even left a note.  She hadn’t even thought of a note at the time she was planning her escape.

That was part of it, right? she thought, a bit anxiously.  I mean, if they had found it, somepony might have stopped me before I made it to the train.  Again.

    It was a sound, logical analysis that completely failed to make the filly feel any better.  Her parents were probably panicking, or heartbroken, or more likely both.  She’d been gone for an entire day by this point.

Should I send them a letter?  Would it help?  If she told her parents where she was, they would almost certainly come looking for her.  I can’t get carted off back to Cloudsdale before I’ve had a chance to even train, much less have a shot at proving how good I can be!  Rainbow felt a sinking feeling in her stomach as she realized she couldn’t win, no matter what she did.

    Her dreams warred inside her head with her family.  Rainbow gritted her teeth in frustration as she tried to decide if she should go through with her plan or just stay on the train as it went back the other way, when she was interrupted by a tap on the shoulder.

    “Hey, kid,” Cranky said, pointing out the window.  “Now there’s a sight for you to see.”

    Rainbow followed his hoof, and her jaw dropped.  She pulled herself up to press her face against the window as Las Pegasus came into view around a hilltop.

The city glowed like Celestia’s sun—a gem of pure light in the dark desert air.  As the speeding train drew nearer, more and more features came into view.  There were two cities stacked, one on top of the other.  The lower city had tall buildings, but the light coming from it was muted and overblown by the mesmerizing display of the upper city.  The famous Cloudwalk of Las Pegasus was just visible.  Indistinct blobs of ponies and carts and crowds flowed along the solid, cloud-banked surface between enormous and decadent buildings.  The sections of the city hung like a blanket over the desert floor, with stunningly built solid bridges joining the major cloudbanks together.

    The train slowed as it drew into the Las Pegasus station, the conductor wandering through the cars calling out to rouse passengers who needed to get off.  Rainbow rushed to gather up her belongings and get them back into her crate.  She trotted up again, standing by a doorway, bouncing eagerly from hoof to hoof.  With a final lurch and a burst of steam, the train came to a halt.

    The door slid open, and Rainbow burst out onto the platform, trying to stare everywhere at once.  Rainbow’s jaw fell a little further open at every new detail that came into view.  The crowds were massive.  The ponies were dressed extravagantly.  There wasn’t a single piece of the entire Cloudwalk that wasn’t covered in lights or simply shining like a diamond in the sky.  Even the stones of the road surfaces were polished, almost to the point where she could see her own form in them.  A small fleet of luxurious coaches stood by, waiting to ferry the passengers up the winding stone path to the Cloudwalk.

    Rainbow waited on the platform until her crate was unloaded, shivering slightly.  The air was already surprisingly cold, even with the barest hints of wind as the desert released its heat into the night.  The filly sat, trying to figure out her next move.  I guess I need someplace to stay first.  Maybe I can rent a room somewhere.

    Tugging her crate awkwardly along behind her, she made her way over to one of the coach-ponies.  He tugged his driver’s cap down on his brow and stared at her.

    Rainbow straightened up and tried to look like she knew what she was doing.  “Um, hi,” she began.  “I need to go to a hotel.  Can you take me?”

    The pony kept his face impassive as he looked her over.  “Any one in particular?”

    “I—don’t think so.”

    The driver sighed.  “Is somepony meeting you on the Cloudwalk?”

    Rainbow began to sweat.  “Uhhh...  No?”

    “Look, little filly,” said the chauffeur.  “I seriously doubt you’ve got enough bits for anyplace up top.  You should probably look into a place down in the Undercity.  Now, if you’ll excuse me.”  He trotted off to intercept a couple just getting off the train, and they climbed aboard his coach, chatting animatedly.

    Rainbow huffed and looked around, until she saw a promising sight.  “Hey, Cranky!” she called out, tugging her crate back the way she had come before.

    Cranky looked up from giving the driver of a nondescript wagon a hooffull of bits.  “What, kid?”

    “Are you going to the, um, Undercity?” she asked, taking note of the wagon’s much less fancy appearance.

    “Yeah.”

    “Can—can I hitch a ride with you?”

    Cranky sighed.  “Yeah, sure.  Climb on.”

    The driver was nice enough to help Rainbow get her mostly empty crate onto the wagon, and the three began the descent off the platform and into the heart of Las Pegasus.

    Rainbow Dash forced a smile onto her face.  Sure, things had hit a bit of a bump, but she would manage.  Once she had a place to stay, then all she had to do was worry about being the best darn flyer in Equestria.

    “How many bits?

    “It’s seventy bits, young filly.”

    Rainbow stared in disbelief at the desk clerk.

    “Per night,” he amended.

    “You’ve gotta be kidding me!” she protested, feeling all optimism beginning to drain out of her.

    “Look,” the irritated stallion began, “we’re pretty much the cheapest place in the Undercity.  If you can’t afford a room here, then you’re just out of luck.  Now get out before you start bothering our actual customers.”

    The filly walked out the front door, not really paying attention to anything around her.  She couldn’t afford a room, and the difference between what she had and what she needed was quite a lot.  She dropped the rope to her crate and slumped against the side of the building.  Was this really the end, and so soon?  Was her dream really that far out of reach?  It had only been one day and she was already on the street without a place to stay.

Just survive until tomorrow, she told herself.  How often had she tried to do that back home, to just make it until the next day without breaking down?

    Disappointed, cold, and alone, Rainbow drug the crate over to a nearby corner.  She flipped it onto its side and huddled inside, just hoping to get through the night.

Things will turn out better tomorrow, I know it, she thought dismally.  They’ve gotta...

    Rainbow tucked herself into the box, laid her head on her hooves, and drifted into an uneasy sleep.