Spellbound Fireflies (23 page)

“But it’s your dream, Rainbow!  You can’t get cold hooves now, just because it’s here!  You’re the best flyer I’ve ever seen; you’ll do fine—fantastic even—you have to say yes.”

Taking a long and slow breath, Rainbow shook her head.  “I know I’d be great.  I know they’d love me an’ I could make a name for myself doin’ it.  I could probably make captain after Spitfire retires.”  She took another chunk of their dessert and chewed it slowly.  “Still not gonna do it.”

Twilight stammered in disbelief.  She shook her head again.  “Why?!  It’s your dream!”

“It
was
my dream, Twilight.”  She sat forward and smiled wanly at her marefriend.  “It isn’t anymore.”

Twilight gaped silently.

“Y’know what bein’ a Wonderbolt means, Twi’?”  Her eyes dropped to the table, lingering over the sticky crumbs of the finished tiramisu.  “Month long trainin’ at the academy, then I’d go on tour.  Tours are three months, with two weeks off in between ‘em.  Outdoor stadiums for warm months, indoor coliseums for cold ones.  Couple’a weekends off here ‘n there, a break for Hearth’s Warmin’, and then I’d do it all again.”  She sat back, shaking her head.  “Five year contract to start.  Then another, an’ another.  Most ‘bolts stay active for twenty years.”  Her eyes became hard set and she met Twilight’s gaze unwaveringly.  “
Twenty years
, Twi’.  Twenty years of me bein’ home for three months of the whole year.”

“Rainbow…”  Twilight reached across the table and held her marefriend’s hoof.  “We’ve talked about this before.  We’ll find time.  I can come to some of the shows and we can spend down-time together.  Sure, we’ll be busy a lot, but we’ll make it work.”

Rainbow smiled sadly.  “We talked about it when I went to the academy; that was two years ago, Twi’.”  She set her other hoof over Twilight’s and squeezed tight.  “So much has changed since then.  For us.  We were together then, yeah, but now…”  She dropped her head again, her voice growing even more reserved.  “I love you, Twilight.  I love you with all my heart.  I wake up every day with you right there next to me, and go to sleep every night curled up around you, and I
don’t ever want that to stop.
”

Twilight bit her lip and blinked rapidly.  “Rainbow…”

“Goin’ away for a week regularly was one thing, but a whole month?  Three whole months?  Three months away, stealin’ little bits and pieces of time with you?”  She shook her head, looking back up.  “No.  No, that’s not a dream of mine.  I’ve got too much here.  Too much of
me
here, in Ponyville, to leave like that.  What’m I supposed to do with Tank?”  Twilight opened her mouth, but Rainbow shook her head.  “I know you’d take care of ‘im, or Fluttershy, but that’s not fair to the little dude.  He’s got his home.  With me.  With
us
.”

“Rainbow, I—”

“—Hold on, I’m almost done.”  Her small smile grew a little in strength, taking on a wry quality.  “Tank’s hardly the biggest thing.  What about the other girls?  They’re not gonna be able to drop stuff to come to shows.  I’ll hardly see anypony at all for years.  And…and what about Scoots?”

Rainbow dropped her gaze again.  “…Sure, she’s just about done trainin’, but you’ve seen what those Taker ponies are like.  She needs us there.  She’s spending more an’ more time at the library each week.  I can’t get her flyin’ and then take off for the ‘bolts, Twi’.”  She shook her head, vehemently, angrily.  “I refuse to just take off.  I
refuse
.”  Her voice wavered with emotion on the last word and she paused, swallowing the lump in her throat.  She extricated one of her hooves and wiped at her eyes.

Twilight’s voice grew concerned.  “You okay?”

Sniffling and swallowing again, Rainbow answered, “Yeah,” her voice low and husky.  She cleared her throat.  “My…my dad died right after I got back from Junior Speedsters.  He, uh…he helped train me right before I left for it.  It was the last thing we really did together.”  She sniffled wetly again.  When she met Twilight’s gaze, her eyes looked haunted.  “I
can’t
train Scoots an’ disappear from her life, even if it’s just most of the time.  I
can’t
.  And if I did, I’d miss
so much.
”  She shook her head again.  “I’d miss helpin’ her after her first crash, helpin’ her with her first trick,
seein’
her first trick.  I’d miss all of it.

“And I’d miss you, Twi’.  Stolen weekends and off-hours stuff every once in a while on tour sounded okay two years ago, but it doesn’t anymore.  Does it still sound good to you?”

Twilight paused for a long time, meeting her marefriend’s steady and saddened expression.  Very slowly, she shook her head.  “…No,” she whispered, “No, but I’d deal with it.”

Rainbow nodded.  “I’d deal with it too, if that’s all it was.  But it isn’t, Twi’.  There’s too much other stuff.”  A smile cut through her melancholy and she leaned forward, lifting Twilight’s hoof off the table and holding it fiercely.  “Too much
good
stuff.  I’m so happy, Twi’.  I love my life.  Weather stuff is
fun
most of the time, and even when it isn’t, I’m done so fast it doesn’t matter.  I make just okay money, but uhh…”  She flushed, her face and voice coloring with embarrassment.  “...Well, we’ve been over the bills…I don’t need to make a lot, anyway.  We’re comfortable as it is.”

Twilight stroked Rainbow’s hoof soothingly; she knew the subject was touchy for her marefriend.  Rainbow smiled at her and a bit of the color drained away from the mare’s face.

Rainbow cleared her throat.  “Anyway, so money’s not a problem, and I get to fly for fun all the time already, so who cares if it’s on a team or not?  It’s all flying, an’ I get to do it as much as I want right now.  And work stuff aside, I get to spend all this time with our friends, and trainin’ Scoots, and seein’
you.
  You’ve made me the luckiest mare in Ponyville.”

Still smiling, Rainbow squeezed Twilight’s hoof again.  “Bein’ a Wonderbolt?  That was the dream of a different pony; one who needed everypony to know who she was, ‘cause she didn’t have anypony at all.  Before I met you, I was always on my own.  No real friends, ‘cept Gilda who I never saw, goin’ from place to place, never droppin’ anchor.  I could always be a ‘Bolt, ‘cause I never had a
home,
Twilight.  My home died with my dad.”  Her voice and eyes wavered.  “
You
gave me a home again.  And I’m not gonna give that up for a fillyhood dream that doesn’t mean anything to me anymore.  Not when I have a new dream.  A better one.”

Rainbow let go of Twilight’s hoof and stood from her chair.  A pregnant hush fell over the restaurant as heads turned in curiosity to regard the striking pegasus.  With deliberate and practiced slowness, Rainbow stepped around the table and lowered down in a half bow, half crouch.  Her twitching wings extended from her sides, sweeping in front of her towards Twilight.

Twilight looked down at Rainbow’s feathery limbs with wide and bewildered eyes.  In the crook of Rainbow’s right wing, hidden from view throughout the evening, she held a small, worn, wooden box.  With the strange and innate wing dexterity that all pegasi seemed to have and which Twilight always puzzled over, Rainbow slid the box to the end of her right wing and grasped the lid with her left.

Rainbow’s voice, while gentle and bare, carried across the preternaturally still restaurant.  “Twilight Sparkle.  Will you make me the luckiest mare in all of Equestria?”  She opened the box.

Twilight’s breath caught in her throat.  The humble container, lined in old and worn burgundy velvet, served as a stark contrast to its contents: a single, tiny, blue feather, the sheen on its vane worn dull with time and the quill stained by age to a dirty yellow.  She recognized it immediately: a molted pegasus feather.  Rainbow’s
first
molted feather.  She shut her eyes and tears rolled down her face.

“Oh, yes, Rainbow, yes!”  Twilight leapt to her hooves.  She cupped Rainbow’s face and pulled her up to standing, kissing the pegasus fiercely, emphatically, pouring the full weight of her acceptance into the act.  She wrapped her legs around Rainbow’s neck as her fiancée gripped her waist.  She felt the tears on Rainbow’s cheeks mix with her own.

In their embrace, Twilight’s horn began to glow.  A shimmering field of magic surrounded both ponies and slowly, delicately, they floated off the hardwood floor.  Suspended in space, enrobed in energy, they were two individuals cut off from the world around them.  There, in the moment, they had each other and nothing else mattered.

Twilight had never felt so in love.

Rainbow Dash hadn’t, either.

When they eventually drew away, grinning broadly with happy tears trailing down their faces, Twilight’s magic slowly faded.  As they drifted downwards, Rainbow whispered, “I guess we’ll open that bottle of wine early.”  Twilight cupped Rainbow’s face and kissed her again.  Still tightly in each other’s hooves, their hindlegs clicked down on the floor.

The entire restaurant roared to life in applause.

Hooves rhythmically stomping, cheers and whistles rebounding off the walls, the intimate venue became an overwhelming din of noise.  Twin blushes spread across Rainbow and Twilight’s ecstatic faces, but despite the sense of embarrassed exposure, neither had the heart to let the other go right away.

Rainbow kissed Twilight once more and stepped away with lingering reluctance.  Still smiling hugely, they nodded thanks across the room to the many calls of congratulations and sat back down.  Eventually the restaurant quieted enough that they could hear each other speak, but for a while afterwards all they could do was grin stupidly at each other.

Rainbow Dash cleared her throat.  “So…”

“I love you,” Twilight said simply.

Rainbow paused, smiling fondly.  “…I love you, too, Twi’.”

Her voice growing tentative, Twilight asked, “Are you really going to decline?”

“I mailed a letter saying 'thanks but no thanks' this mornin’.”  She took one of Twilight’s hooves in her own again.  “
This
is my dream, Twi’.  This life we’ve made together.  Might not be as flashy as bein’ a ‘Bolt, but it’s what I want.  Just this…”  Rainbow’s smile lost distinction and her eyes grew distant and introspective.  “This and some other stuff I wanna talk to you about.”

“Oh?”

Rainbow refocused on her fiancée and grinned impishly.  “Stuff about Scoots...but let’s go home and open up that wine first.”

Twilight removed a pouch of bits from her saddlebag to pay their tab and slid the wooden box inside to take its place.  After shaking hooves with a number of well-wishers, they left the restaurant, Twilight occasionally pressing her hoof to the contours of the box inside her bag, assuring it was still there, relishing in its existence.  Twilight and Rainbow took the winding way back to the library, pressed shoulder to shoulder the entire trip.

Once home, the bottle of wine disappeared quickly amidst excited conversation.  Two more fell shortly after that.  As the rays of morning peeked their way over the horizon, Twilight and Rainbow finally nodded off, nestled in each other’s hooves, staggeringly drunk, slightly queasy, and hopelessly in love.

“Ugh, Rainbow, my head…”

“C’mon, Twi’, I feel like mud, too.  But we talked about this; it’s somethin’ I gotta do.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“Um…We
kinda
slept for fourteen hours…”

”What?!”

“Augh, not so loud, Twi’…But yeah, it’s the middle of the night.  And you
know
Scoots is gonna say she’s ready to go—”

“—the first possible second, yeah.”

“So if we don’t leave now, we’re not gonna get back by tomorrow afternoon.”

“…Okay, Rainbow.  Make some coffee.”

“Already did.”

“…I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

The gate squeaked wretchedly at Rainbow’s touch.  She winced, lowering her ears, and forced the old, rusted wrought iron open the rest of the way.  She glanced over her shoulder at Twilight for reassurance before stepping into the graveyard.

Working her way slowly and reverently through the overgrown weeds and worn gravestones, Rainbow traced the ill-used, but familiar path ingrained in her memory.  Twilight followed closely behind, near enough to place a comforting hoof on her fiancée’s back if needed, but with enough distance for Rainbow to make the journey on her own.

Past old and gnarled trees, crumbly mausoleums, and faded markers, the pair wound through the cemetery until Rainbow spotted the small hill up ahead.  That hill carried an almost palpable weight for the pegasus, steeped in years of ache.  She took a deep breath and began the agonizing ascent on tremulous steps, her gaze locked on the single stone ahead of her.

Rainbow pulled open her saddlebag and gripped the bouquet of roses in her teeth.  Bowing her head, she gently set it down in front of the gravestone.  Her eyes traced back up over the well worn and faded contours of the marker’s missive, chiseled as firmly into her memory as they were into the rock.

With reservation in her voice, she read the stone out loud, as much from recollection as actually reading it.  “Here lies Buckaneer Blaze.  Beloved father, friend, and Wonderbolt.”

Twilight quietly marveled, “I didn’t know your dad was in the Wonderbolts…”

Turning from the stone, Rainbow smiled sadly at the unicorn.  “When he was rescued from his parents, nopony thought he’d ever be able to fly.  When he did, it was national news.  The Wonderbolts made him an honorary member.”  She drifted her gaze back to the gravestone.  “Hey, dad…”

Twilight took a step back and bowed her head, closing her eyes.

“I’m…I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve been here.  I, uh…I guess I could say I’ve been busy, but you deserve better’n that.”  Rainbow sat on her haunches, her head and ears lowered.  She ran her hoof over the fading words.  “You deserved better’n you got.  From the world, and…and from me.”

Rainbow inhaled deeply and let out a lingering sigh.  “I’ve…I’ve been angry at you for a long time.  I was
so young
, dad.  All I had was you, an’ then you were gone.  For a long time, I thought that’s why I was angry, and I hated myself for it.  It wasn’t your fault.  You didn’t want to die; I saw it in your eyes.  It was
so clear
in your eyes that you were the first thought for me when I needed somepony for Scoots to look up to.  I felt guilty for so long thinkin’ that I was angry ‘cause you died.”