Invited & Confused

      "Can you tell us what's going on?"

      "A royal wedding? And I'm making the dress again? Eeeee!"

      "WEDDING PARTY!"

    It was in short her worst nightmare. She'd been on her way to the library to tell Twilight and ask if she could help her tell the rest of her friends, but they'd all been invited. And they'd all ambushed her a whole quarter mile away from the library. And they all wanted answers.

    "I.....I have a brother...." she began...

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   Her brother blew by her as she fluttered her tiny wings, trying to lift off the cloud stands. He made another pass around the arena, leaving an endless rainbow trail that was a perfect oval. She wished someday she'd be as good as Rainbow Blitz, maybe even better.

      Or maybe they'd become co-captains of the Wonderbolts! Their shared bedroom was plastered with Wonderbolts posters and filled with shelves that were cluttered in Wonderbolts figurines and collectibles, and they even had an entire dresser dedicated to Wonderbolts attire.

      Her brother was five years older than her, but they'd both been born looking exactly alike, years apart. Their parents had told them that it was, in short, a genetic miracle. They'd even sent DNA samples from both of them to the local science lab, to be analyzed. It turned out that their parents's genes had blended in the same exact way twice, except for gender.

         Their rather small home was lonely without their parents, as their father was away serving in the Equestrian military and their mother had had a heart a week ago and was in the hospital still.

       They went to see their mom every day, and she was getting better and better, strong enough to stand up for short periods. She would be released from the Cloudsdale Hospital in under a year. Naturally, that was when it all went downhill.

       It was after Flight School one day that they went to see their mom, but were puzzled by the fact that her bed was empty and there was no hospital staff in the room. So they went home, to an empty house. So they flew back to the hospital and waited in the lobby until they could speak to the receptionist, an older pegasus with a light pink coat and a purple mane and tail.

    She gave them a sad look and led them to the morgue, where they were just in time to see the beautiful sky-blue body, the elegant tricolored mane, be covered for the last time with an ugly white sheet, to be shoved into a metal box that looked like the filing cabinet inside their house.

      Dash remembered being confused when her brother started crying. Her big, tough, brave brother.......collapsed. He sat there in the morgue, just holding her there for what seemed like an eternity.

      He let her go and promised he'd explain everything to her when they got home. When they got there, it turned out he didn't have to, because their father had beaten them home from the hospital and was sitting in the living room with moist eyes as he gazed at the ceiling.

     They together explained all that had happened. The heart attack left her weakened, and then the next one was so severe she didn't have the strength to cope. Her heart had simply stopped, but she managed to write out a scraggly note to the nurse, telling her to tell her husband and children she loved them and was waiting for them in heaven.

     When her brother was eighteen, her father 'died of a broken heart', as the doctors put it. Blitz was the only pony she had left in the world. Then when she was nineteen he said he'd gotten a job offer, and he was taking it. He visited her in Ponyville whenever he could, flying for whole days and whole nights to reach her.

       But lately he'd only been able to write. Now she understood why. He was too busy rutting a princess in Canterlot to come see his little sister.

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   "Oh Dash..." Twilight started slowly. "Why didn't you tell us before?" Pinkie added her agreement to that statement, Fluttershy broke two of her ribs attempting to squeeze the life out of her (at least it felt like it), but Rarity was stunned speechless.

   Applejack just gave her a tight nod, touching the hat on her head every time the word 'father' was brought up in Dash's life story. At the end, Dash knew why. Applejack's parents hadn't had much to leave their children, but they'd left Big Mac's yolk, Applejack's Stetson, Applebloom's hair ribbon, and the farm.

    In short, they'd left their children all they could.

    She couldn't blame them. The part of her that wasn't remembering the good old days was shocked and mildly upset. She felt like she finally understood how Twi had felt upon learning that her brother was marrying Princess Cadence.

    And how badly Twilight had probably wanted to beat the crap out of him until he apologized for sending nothing but an invitation.