Author's Notes:

Just so I don’t leave you thinking that I’m going to end the story here, let me assure that there’s one more chapter after this, already half way written. Oh, and have a song that I COULD NOT find on Youtube or downloadable, and thus, was unable to post in the story. Cheers!

Enjoy the Beauty of Colors!

The pair of ponies were still in the dreamscape, the alicorn holding the pegasus close to her. Twilight had both of her forelegs wrapped tightly around Dash, leaning against her silently. Rainbow leaned her own weight into the mare, hiding a portion of her muzzle as she did so.

The world around them was still one of ice, a tundra of snow and cold. The hollow whistle of wind echoed around them, drifting over the ice and billowing over the blankets of snow. From their hooves to the far horizon, the land was nothing but a barren, cold land.

Neither Twilight nor Rainbow felt the cold, just as they had not felt the heat of the sauna nor the moisture of rivers when they were flowing. Twilight didn’t feel any of the bitter frost cling to her coat, nor the sharp winds stinging her sensitive ears. All she cared to feel now was Dash’s coat against her own, the soft warmth between them both. She hoped it was enough to beat off the tundra she felt inside.

“I’m… I’m sorry Rainbow.” Twilight muttered to the pegasus, strengthening her hold with what little she could. “I had no idea. I had… absolutely no idea.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow replied emptily, “Not many ponies do. None of the girls do at least.” The pegasus rubbed her muzzle deeper into the alicorn’s fur.

“If I had any idea, I wouldn’t have brought up the poem in the first place.”

“You didn’t even know what the poem was about. I’d bet a feather that you would have ended up here even if you did know.” Twilight bit her lip at the comment. Dash was right, of course, that being Twilight would have needed foreknowledge of both the poem and Rainbow’s loss.

“That just makes me regret it even more.” Twilight twisted her head until it was lying on top of Dash’s, holding the pegasus close to her. She felt Rainbow breathe against her fur, tickling her despite the ice that surrounded the pair.

“It’s okay.” Dash let out a soft sigh as she spoke. “It happened a long time ago. That poem…” Twilight felt her mate smile against her fur. “My dad wrote it after it happened. Probably why I couldn’t stand reading for so long.” Despite what Rainbow finished with, Twilight was far more intrigued by what she began with.

“Wait, your dad wrote the poem?” The alicorn stopped the slow kneading of her hooves, though her grip did not release. “That’s… amazing. The chances of that are astronomical.” Twilight stared out into the land of snow that surrounded the pair, watching as the billowing of the snow slowly ceased. It was likely due to her shocked state that things began to freeze, movement wise.

“Yeah,” Rainbow agreed. “My dad gives away the one poem he never put his name on, and it some how ends up in the hooves of the one mare I love more than anypony else almost a decade later. That’s something alright.” Twilight could taste the bitterness in Dash’s voice.

The alicorn sucked in a breath of air, drawing it from between Rainbow’s prismatic mane. She could taste the sky from between the mare’s multi-colored hairs-- the dampness of clouds, the aloofness of the air, the freedom of the sky, but more than anything else, the sourness of an old wound. Twilight only wished she knew what to say, but there was ever only one thing anypony could think to ask.

“Do you want to talk about it?” It was a horribly overused question, one proposed by every pony that had not endured the loss or pain another pony was shouldering. It always sounded so false, so fake. But Twilight, despite her lessons in friendship, could not think of anything else to ask.

Rainbow snaked one of her hooves upwards, stopping only when it hung off Twilight’s leg. She twisted her neck, taking in a deep breath through the alicorn’s lavender fur. Twilight made a small note to ask what she tasted like later, amending the question to be in relevance to her fur and not her… other faculties.

“Sure.”

Twilight honestly wasn’t prepared for Dash to reply in such a way, so sure that the pegasus she knew would simply offer words that she was alright in spite of how she honestly felt.

Just as carefully as the wind had stopped, the snow around the pair began to melt. The empty tundra disappeared in the place of barren land, mountains falling until they left an open horizon to gaze into.

Twilight leaned back, focusing her lavender gaze on the cyan mare. She watched as grass bloomed behind Dash, green blades that complimented her blue fur so well twisting around them. A sad smile was etched over her lips, a somber expression of acceptance. It was not one Twilight was used to the pegasus wearing.

The land around her continued to diminish, the grass-patched land fading into a dreary landscape, an empty land that begged for life, for joy, for something. But much like Twilight felt inside, it waited for something it itself could not create. The cracked and dusty land could grow no trees or grass, and the alicorn could not make her own happiness, not without the aid of the mare she was holding at leg’s length.

Twilight swallowed on nothing, trying to force a bulge in her throat downwards. Dash must have seen the action, or perhaps something else that Twilight was not aware of. The hoof she had hooked over the alicorn’s leg slowly began to slide upwards, tracing the length with a delicate touch.

With a mesmerizing pace, it finally reached Twilight’s muzzle, softly grazing the alicorn’s cheek. She found her eyes fluttering at the touch, curious of how often she had wanted Dash to touch her so gently out of the bed.

“It’s alright Twilight.” Dash’s words kept the veil of Twilight’s mind from shutting, keeping her attention focused on the mare. “It happened a long time ago. Like, more than half my life ago.” Her hoof left Twilight’s cheek, but her pink gaze remained just as fixed on the mare as before. Twilight found herself falling into those eyes, so similar yet so vastly different to the look the prismatic mare usually gave her.

There was confidence, hanging on the edges of her vision, and her love was never out of sight for Twilight. But deeper now, she could see a subdued form of sadness, the wound of what remained when the time of grieving had past. A cold breath was taken in by the alicorn, chilling her to her bones. The sky high above them became just as cold, every cloud gone from its canvas.

“Who… who was it?” Twilight found herself asking, unsure if she had thought of the question before it had left her lips. She wanted to know, but not at the expense of digging a fresh grave. Her cloud of fears was easily batted away when Dash started to speak, her smile still hung over her lips.

“My brother.” Her voice was softer than a freshly formed cloud. It was all that kept Twilight’s eyes from tearing.

“Your… brother…” Twilight breathlessly repeated. She didn’t have to check to know that the land around her was changing again, forming once more the arctic ice of her sorrow. How could she not feel the pain of remorse at such words?

“Yeah, he… he wasn’t good at flying.” Dash closed her eyes, twisting her head as if to rock the memory out of herself. “Really I… I don’t remember much of it. Like I said before, I was little, like, maybe just out of my foal years.”

Twilight said nothing, keeping herself still and focused, memorizing every word Dash spoke. The words around them stilled to mimic her focus, letting not a thing but Rainbow move. She had both of her forehooves on the ground, wings at her sides, and her eyes at the brink of shedding tears.

“He was a foal, hardly old enough to talk. I don’t even know if he ever spoke, really.” Dash gave an empty breath. It was the saddest chuckle Twilight had ever heard, forced out to keep the pegasus from crying.

“When I was flying with my mom, he watched from the clouds beneath us, giggling as he saw us up above. My dad would keep him between his hooves, trying to keep him from getting any bright ideas. Turns out, that’s exactly what was happening.”

Twilight didn’t like where the story was going. Then again, she already knew the end. It only made sense the path was just as tragic as the destination. She could feel the cracks in her heart forming, preparing for what was going to happen. Fissures opened up along the world they were in, chasms growing and swallowing the snow and ice that sat atop of them. Neither paid them any mind.

“One night, he was able to get out of his crib, popping down on the clouds like they were pillows. He just walked right out of the room, my mom and dad too passed out to even know it. He didn’t even make a noise when he walked out the house, not whining or gurgling or nothing. Just… nothing.”

Dash’s mouth was halfway open, and it stayed that way for some time. By the way her eyes were focusing on an uninteresting piece of snow, Twilight could safely assume the pegasus was caught in her memory. Wet trails finally started to smear the fur on Twilight’s face. It took only a breath of air longer before they started appearing on Rainbow’s as well.

The world began to change again, and once more, it was nothing like what Twilight wanted to see.

Dark clouds formed overhead, blacker than night and twice as ominous. Thunder rumbled through them, threatening to dampen the ground far beneath. The ice and snow quickly melted, their wet remains falling into the many fissures over the landscape. Just as quickly, the cracks in the land began to close, each one giving a soft boom as it shut tightly.

No sooner did the fissures close when the rain begin to fall. It was not a torrent of water, gushing down at an unbelievable pace. It was soft and gentle, like a heavy mist over Twilight’s dream land. Though neither mare felt even a drop from the rain, as they had felt neither heat nor cold before, the tears falling from their own eyes more than made up for it.

“When we… we all woke up the next day, my parents flipped. We couldn’t find him anywhere in the house. His crib, the kitchen, the playroom…. Nowhere.” The pegasus sniffled. A rumble of thunder came above the pair, a clear sign to Twilight that she already feared what was about to be said.

“Turns out, we were looking too high.” The bitterest of laughs came from Dash, as if she was leaking acid as the words were spat from her mouth. A crack of thunder echoed over the land.

Lightning erupted over the land, the only thing keeping Twilight’s gasp from being heard. The misty rain became a monsoon, falling in droplets far heavier than before. They pelted the ground viciously, churning the dirt and splashing the puddles.

Twilight found herself breathless, too shocked to complete even the simple action. She was stuck, only able to stare at Rainbow in mute horror. It only became worse when Dash finally offered her pink gaze to the alicorn. Tears were falling from her eyes as her chest shook.

The princess’s jaw worked uselessly, not even able to conjure an overused statement for the situation she was in. There were no sympathies her words could properly convey, no eloquent metaphors to remind Dash how far she’d come. There were just her tears. Her tears from her eyes and the tears from the sky.

Against the constricting feeling of her own chest, Twilight sucked in a breath of air, feeling the speed of her tears increase as they came. She took a few testing breaths, making sure her throat would not choke her before she began to speak. Words did come to her, but as she suspected, this didn’t come close to expressing what her heart was feeling. The roar of thunder above made it clearer to her.

“I…” Twilight, once more, found herself saying something that sounded fake. The tears were the only evidence that she was honest in what she spoke. “I can’t even imagine it.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to.” Dash was shaking her head as she spoke, keeping her eyes trained on the ground beneath them. Twilight watched her tears fall into the puddle forming beneath them.

Twilight was taking slow breaths, doing her utmost to regain control of her emotions. Every slow exhale came out as a whine, and every other inhale came as hiccup. Her chest was tighter than the bark on a tree, constricting her breathing and forcing out more of her own bitter tears.

That’s when she felt a pair of hooves wrap around her.

“Shh…” Dash softly hushed into her ear, soothing the troubled mare. “It’s alright Twilight. It’s okay.” Twilight couldn’t imagine this situation being anything close to okay. She wrapped her hooves weakly around Dash, pulling her tear-stained muzzle into the pegasus’s underbelly.

The storm around them drowned out the soft cries of the alicorn, already muffled by the cyan fur of Dash. For every tear that Twilight shed, the storm unleashed a thousand more, drowning the land no differently than Twilight’s sorrow was drowning her.

Rainbow continued to hold her, rubbing circles between the alicorn’s wings, whispering sweet nothings into her ears. They were nearly inaudible against the crashing thunder above, but simply the soft rumble of her voice was doing wonders for Twilight. Greedily even, she continued to grip the pegasus, unwilling to let go of her.

She was crying for a foal she had never met, for something that had happened years ago, but still she continued to cry. This wasn’t just anypony, and this wasn’t just any secret. This was Dash’s most protected memory, the most sacred thing the pegasus had ever offered anyone, and in the confines of Twilight’s dreams, she had spoken it.

That was why Twilight was crying.

The storm began to subside, with all the pace a collection of clouds would show in the real Equestria. Their dark colors lightened, the heavy rain easing, and the light eventually began to peek through the cover above. Twilight kept her hold firmly against the pegasus, savoring the warmth of the mare and the soothing words she spoke. If she weren’t already asleep, she might have done it again against Dash.

Carefully, with a few sniffles to control her still-leaking eyes, Twilight leaned away from Rainbow until she sat on her own haunches. Her eyes, blurred from the tears, looked at the pegasus, watching as the light from above continued to shine down upon her. A halo would have been too obvious. Right now, it appeared to Twilight that her wings were made of gold.

It made the alicorn realize a crucial fact.

“You aren’t the real Dash, are you?” Twilight was already sure of her answer. She was wrong before, but right now. The sad smile Rainbow gave her was answer enough. “I thought so.”

“And here I thought it was the way I got you off earlier that would have made it clear.” Twilight blushed at the bluntness of the statement; just like Rainbow. This wasn’t the real Dash. She was just a figment of her highly accurate imagination. The world heated with Twilight’s body as the blush intensified.

“Can… Can I ask you a few more questions, then? Not about the poem?” Rainbow gave a light scoff of air before nodding. She gave a verbal answer regardless.

“You hate keeping secrets. It would be kind of weird for your mind to be hiding something from you, wouldn’t it?” Twilight felt herself laugh at that logic. It was a bit twisted, but straight enough to make sense to her rigid mind, even if she was talking to it.

“Well… is he… real?”

Were Twilight talking to the real Rainbow Dash, her marefriend of only a few months but love for close to a year, the question would have been far longer and far gentler. But since this was, as Twilight had come to conclude, a verbal storage of information, it was not necessary. That being said, she still couldn’t suppress the ball in her gut that threatened to consume her.

The Dash in front blinked before her sad smile became a little more somber. It threatened to turn into a frown at any second.

“Yeah,” Rainbow answered. “He was.” The pegasus, be it because the real Rainbow knew Twilight so well or because she was literally in the alicorn’s mind, was already to answer the unspoken question.

“Twilight, you pick up on a lot more than you think. You’ve been dating me, the real Rainbow Dash, for months now. You’ve seen her home, her work, and met her dad, too. You know… you know that Dash had a younger brother, and you know that she’s heard this poem before.”

“How would I… how could I possibly know that?” The question came out as far more pleading than Twilight intended it to be. It didn’t stop Dash from answering.

“Cause you love me, and I love you.” Just as before, the land bloomed with hearts at the sincerity of the pegasus’s words. Twilight’s wings unfolded in tandem with the world around her. “We know just about everything about one another, things we talk about and things we’d rather leave unsaid.”

“Then… the real Dash?” The sky above began to shine a blinding light down on the pair, brilliant in its glow. It made the pegasus look like an angel, with her prismatic mane glimmering with all the brilliance of a fresh dawn. And yet, the soft confident smile over the mare’s lips was all Twilight could focus on.

“Who knows what she knows.” Rainbow lightly trotted closer to Twilight, stopping only when she was close enough to touch the alicorn.

“Rainbow?” Twilight was confused. It didn’t last long.

“I love you Twilight, and I always will.” Dash spoke easily, her hoof stroking the alicorn’s face as she did so. Twilight leaned into the touch, loving the care that Rainbow was giving her. She felt her cheeks warm at the sensation. Thinking on it, the rest of her body was getting rather heated.

A low moan left the alicorn, far more erotic than she believed the simple contact of the pegasus would produce from her. Her legs were beginning to shiver and her wings tense. Twilight opened her eyes, hazed as they were, and she looked at Dash. The pegasus was staring back at her with such a peaceful expression.

The world around her was slowly evaporating, her books turning to fine mist as they gradually seeped away from thought. Each shuddering breath the alicorn made had more and more of them evaporating into nothingness, turning her filled mind into a white void.

“… gonna have to wake up soon.” The alicorn was having a hard time understanding the words, her hearing slowly fading. Her eyes were as heavy as she was hot, which was to say dangerously so.

She took in another shaking breath, and then nothingness consumed her.