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Brevity

by darf

Chapter 3: Cumuliform

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Cumuliform

Over the static bustle of afternoon Ponyville, great white clouds ambled through the sky, lazily drifting towards and away from each other as though there was a game to play in their pointlessness. On the largest, fluffiest of these clouds, a blue pegasus with a mane of seven colours lounged, yawning and tucking her head back into the puff of white.

Without any notable change in atmosphere or happenstance, her eyes snapped open.

What day is it?

Rainbow Dash rolled sideways off the cloud like a firepony rolling into a call out. She spun with an unparalleled calculation of movement as she tumbled towards the ground, eventually landing on the grass with barely even a whiff of her hooves on the green blades.

What day is it?

Dash scanned sideways in either direction. The cloud had taken her further out of Ponyville proper than she could recognize. As much as she knew the town like the back of her hoof, the bit she was in now looked the same as every other bit she didn’t spend any time in: Green. Bland. Boring. Full of trees and tall grass, save the single path carved through.

A sudden thump of wheels and hooves snapped Dash’s attention to the right.

“Howdy, Rainbow Dash.” A familiar voice, and a face to go with it, lugged themselves slowly into Rainbow Dash’s vision: Applejack, hauling a cart of apples, which somehow would have managed to look fitting and appropriate even if it were to happen in the most fearsome, fiery depths of Tartarus. Applejack pulling apples. The world was at least in some sense of organization.

“Do you know what day it is?”

Applejack’s brow furrowed. She scrunched up her face as though she were chewing something unpleasant.

“Well hello to you too,” she said, stopping in her cart-pulling and shuffling the harness on her shoulders.

“What day is it?” Rainbow Dash repeated, not even bothering to bat an eyelash at Applejack’s pointed passive-aggressiveness.

Applejack sighed and rolled her eyes. “It’s Wednesday, last I remember. Why—somethin’ important happenin’ today?”

“I... don’t know.” Rainbow Dash stood up with her sentence, high on her hind-legs. She held the pose for a moment, looking around as though something might emerge suddenly from the horizon. As seconds passed, nothing seemed eager to make itself newly apparent, and Dash settled back onto all fours with anxious eyes and a fallen frown.

“Somethin’ the matter, RD? You look like you’re a bit out of sorts.”

“I just realized I had no idea what day it was,” Rainbow Dash said. Her voice was higher than normal, coloured with a tinge of tenor that seemed out of place. Anxious, maybe.

Applejack raised an eyebrow and chewed down on the strand of hay between her teeth.

“So what? I thought you’d be the type to brag about not knowin’ what day o’ the week it was. No responsibility, and all that.” Applejack looked upwards to the puffy white blobs looming over Ponvyille, threatening to burst into rain any moment. She lowered her eyebrows and chewed down on her hay again.

“I didn’t know what day it was yesterday,” Dash said.

Applejack blinked. “Yeah, and? Now you know it’s Wednesday, so ya’ should be able to figure out yesterday was Tuesday. Remind me to get you a calendar some time—”

Applejack’s sentence ended abruptly as Rainbow’s hooves on either side of her face squeezed out her last syllable. Her eyes widened as she became aware of the blue blur that had materialized in front of her, holding her head like it was a worrisome mirror to be stared into.

“No, AJ. I mean I never know what day it is. What week it is, month, year...”

Applejack pulled her head back with considerable effort and rubbed a hoof on the side of her cheek where Rainbow Dash’s grab had left a slight mark.

“Yeah, so? Maybe you’ve just never heard of a calendar...”

“You don’t get it!” Rainbow Dash huffed herself up suddenly, her volume raising loud enough that it echoed off the branches of the nearby trees.

Applejack’s expression of perpetual incredulity, at last, softened. “What don’t I get?” she asked.

“That it doesn’t matter what day or month or year it is... just that I didn’t know. I’ve never bothered to know. It could be thirty years from now, tomorrow, for all I know...”

“Well, some of them do have the year in nice pretty big letters at the top...”

“Applejack!” Rainbow Dash threw her hooves up in the air and turned, hauling herself up and then falling back to all fours with her head settling against her chest.

“I could...” Rainbow Dash trailed off as Applejack stared at her from behind. Applejack waited for something to break the rapid onset of silence. After a series of long, uncomfortable seconds, Rainbow Dash sighed, and turned back around.

“I could wake up tomorrow and my whole life might be gone,” she said.

Applejack’s tongue felt heavy in her mouth. Though the sky overhead was bright, despite the ambling overcast, Applejack was certain the air had just thickened with the hint of rain.

“Now... come on now, RD. That’s blowin’ things a bit out of proportion, don’t you think?”

“What if I wake up tomorrow and I’ve never gotten into The Wonderbolts?” Dash began to pace, then seemed suddenly to think better of it and stopped, flapping her wings in quick bursts on her back. “Or if I wake up tomorrow and all you guys are married with foals and friends and I’m still asleep on a cloud somewhere...”

“Where is all this comin’ from, Dash? You ain’t the type I woulda pegged for gettin’ all existential-like outta nowhere.”

Dash hung her head again, looking sideways with a glimmer of precipitation in the corner of her eye.

“It just kinda... hit me all of a sudden.”

Applejack looked on, and cleared her throat to allay the sudden pause. Rainbow Dash kept her head low, unspeaking. After a few more seconds, Applejack cleared her throat again.

“Well,” she said, “there’s a not too tricky way to not hafta worry about all that anymore.”

Rainbow Dash’s ears seemed to perk, but she only raised her head slightly, turning her eyes in Applejack’s direction.

“Yeah?”

“Well... start doin’ stuff. Make the most o’ your days, and you won’t have to worry about them goin’ away.”

“But what if no matter what I do, every day is just a day? What if even if I try hard, starting right this second—and let’s be honest, motivation is not my strong suit—I still don’t manage to do anything more than remember, in thirty years, that it’s a Wednesday?”

Applejack scratched the back of her head with her forehoof.

“Geez. That’s uh...”

“What did you do today?” Rainbow Dash asked, stepping suddenly closer, so close Applejack could feel a breath on her nose. She tried to back up, but found her progress halted by the impedance of her apple-cart.

“Uh...” She could feel Dash’s stare, closer than she’d ever be keen to let any pony stare. “I, uh... I helped Big Mac get the last of the west orchard all holed up, and I’m draggin’ ‘em back to the cellar now until we ship ‘em out next week.”

“So what if you just do that for the rest of your life?” To Applejack’s great relief, Rainbow Dash pulled her head slightly back, though her stare stayed, unrelenting. “What if on a Wednesday thirty years from now, all you can say is that you hauled thirty years worth of apple shipments?”

Again, Applejack scratched the back of her head. She eyed the surrounding ground as though it might be worth looking at, but returned to Rainbow Dash after a few seconds.

“Well... I mean, I did more than that today.”

“Oh?” Dash leaned in closer.

“Yeah. I, uh... I helped Applebloom with a school project, and uh... well, I added a stitch to my quilt.”

Rainbow Dash stared, blank-faced, at Applejack.

“Do you think any of that meant anything?”

“It’s more than I did yesterday.”

Rainbow Dash stared, her expression frozen like a glass carving. Applejack looked back at her: Not staring, but with an unshaking glint in her eyes regardless.

After a few seconds, Dash pulled her head back. Her face softened.

“Huh.”

Applejack blinked a few times, then lifted her head properly to give Dash a small glare.

“Whatta you mean ‘huh’? I had a good enough time helpin’ Applebloom, ‘specially when she’s at the age where she’s gonna be too old for spendin’ time with her big sister soon. And my quilt—”

Rainbow Dash held up a hoof like a stopper, waving towards Applejack and halting her mid-sentence.

“No... that’s okay. Sorry. I didn’t mean to... I bet you have a really nice quilt.”

“Darn right I do,” Applejack said with conviction and just a hint of self-humoured chuckle.

Overhead, the clouds danced and parted dances between one another, swirling in circles, breaking off bits into newer, smaller clouds, and then joining again into puffy formations that threatened to become voluminous white masses if left unchecked. The wind blew, nudging them across the sky, helping them along on whatever it was clouds decided to do on a Wednesday.

Rainbow Dash flapped her wings for a moment. The ground felt hard underneath her hooves.

“Thanks, Applejack. I’ll see you later.”

Without giving time for Applejack’s look of bewilderment to clear, Rainbow Dash crouched, leapt, and took off, flapping her wings faster than any pegasus ought to be able to, before she exploded into a jetstream of colour, soaring in a direction behind that Applejack wasn’t quick enough to see.

After a few seconds, Applejack cleared her throat. She adjusted the harness on her shoulders and began to walk again. The cart was heavy, but it was only a mile or two more to the orchard, and the day was still young. She might even have time to ask about calendars on the way back through town.

As the grass bristled underfoot, a hint of a grin caught AJ’s lips.

She’d have to do some more quilting when she got home.

Next Chapter: A Quiet Cave Estimated time remaining: 22 Minutes

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