"Hello," you had whispered to me.

You were as pale as the morning sky that day, all shivers and tears, and you had stumbled so many times to find me here. It had taken you so long - why had you waited so long? Was it the fragility of your wings that kept us apart? Or was it the fact that I flew too fast for someone as gentle as you to keep up?

Was it my fault? I loved you, no, I love you. I always have. From the day I raced to catch you-

Did I never tell you? That when I made the Sonic Rainboom, that thing that you helped me so much to perfect, I saw you falling and went faster? I didn't know what it was then, the warm and sparkling thing that you gave me with your presence, but I felt it all the same. I never felt that with anyone else.

It was always for you.

When I came to Ponyville without the rest of my family, it was for you. They all stayed in Cloudsdale, and they took my leave hard, but they never understood the life you breathed into my wings with your absent humming and your gentle wings. When I left again to join the Wonderbolts, it was for you. All of the money I would have raised, every race I would have won, all for you!

It was the worst mistake I ever made, leaving you there. I'm so, so sorry I wasn't there-

No. No, I can't dwell on that. I love you. I love you enough to forget it, to forget that I made a mistake as long as I can be here with you now.

You're here now, right?

Please, tell me you're here. Tell me you can hear me. I can't hear myself over my own heartbeat, or is it yours? Is it your life inside me or is it my own? I can't understand this pain, this hurt. I never felt this when I left for-

-No! No! I told myself...

...I told myself I'd never forget you. If I forget what happened, I'm forgetting a part of you.

Help me, please, help me remember.

There was wind and... and fire in the trees. You were yelling, calling to your animals, and I was there to help you. I was there with rainclouds and rainclouds and rainclouds, as far as the eye could see and farther. But you cried and cried, and the flames grew and grew, until it was all smoke and death. It was then that the sky fell, wasn't it?

You were trying to find all of your animals, darting in and out of the flames with nothing but a fire blanket tied around your neck, when the trees fell.

But you didn't fall far enough for me to keep from catching you.

But who caught me? Did anyone?

Or was the smoke and death part of me instead?

...

You were with me then, weren't you? Peeling off the charred Wonderbolts costume - because that's what it was, you know, nothing but a costume - and kissing me as if to hold me awake for the rest of time. And I could do nothing but breathe in breathe out breathe in breathe out until it was all that I was, and when I couldn't do that any more, then-

The rain fell then, from the corner of your eyes and the sky afterwards, and the fires and a single spark went out. But you took that spark's smoke and breathed it in until it was your own, and you lived off that smoke until you were nothing but smoke yourself.

But we're both smoke now, so that's okay.

"Hello," you had whispered to me.

You were cold that day, but not any more. Your hooves had rested on the edge of a stone marker, but now they were with me. Someone would find the shell you left behind, maybe before the winter ended, but then you spread your wings free from your blasted cocoon and joined me with wings and coat of stardust and spider silk and suns in your eyes and you saw me because I had been waiting for you, waiting, waiting, waiting.

I took those beautiful, shining hooves that you had rested on my grave and pulled you close to me, my wings strong enough now for the both of us instead of just me, and I took back the spark that you had saved for me, that you had held for me.

"Hi," I had whispered back.

"Is it over?" You had asked. You went to look down at your forgotten skin and I pulled your eyes back up to mine with a kiss, gentle and moving, until you forgot that you were scared, like you had calmed me back when the fire inside me was on the outside instead.

And I took your smoke under my shimmering wings and promised you, "it's only just begun."

You had cried again, then, but it was nothing more than motes of dust that shimmered like diamonds that fell from your eyes. "I never said goodbye to you."

"You didn't need to say goodbye," I replied, running my hoof into your pink mane as you buried your face in mine, "because goodbye means leaving, and leaving means forgetting. You should never say goodbye, because you should never forget."

"B-but you-you-you,"

"I love you," I breathed, and the words rang clearer than I had ever said them - had I ever said them before? - and you heard them too, "so just say hello instead."

"Hello to what?"

I had grinned, in that foolish, cocky way that you always seemed to smile at, and told you the truth.

"Life."