Day 4:

Eleventh hour

I felt so groggy.. my vision swam before me as I opened my eyes. Never before in my life have I felt so fatigued. What was happening to me? I rubbed my face and cleared my eyes. Finally, I could see clearly, but my head was still banging. I had another nightmare.. They returned, as vivid and as terrifying as ever. Did something trigger this? Maybe staying here was too much for me after all..

I gripped the edge of the sofa and stretched. The tension nearly made my fall back down. Was I losing it? I slapped myself lightly. I still had a long day to go. Finally, after a few more minutes, I felt back in shape. For a minute, I was worried that I would be crippled for life. I was eating some apples that Applejack offered me yesterday when I saw a note left from Fluttershy. Besides Twilight, she had the neatest writing I'd ever seen, though, it was fairly loopy and very elegant.

Dear Alan,

I understand that you must have been very tired this morning, so I didn't wake you up.

The rest of us are currently at the treehouse right now - there's no need to come. I'll come

back to get you around 12. Until then, feel free to tend to the animals until I return.

Love,

Fluttershy

That's strange. How did she know that I was feeling fatigued? I finished my apple and stretched. After I was done changing and washing, I did as Fluttershy suggested and checked out the animals. They were a lot more different than on Earth - they all seemed much more animated and proactive. I had the pleasure of meeting Angel, the bunny. Like the show suggested, he was rather distant and grumpy, but upon offering him a carrot, he instantly took a liking to me.

I suddenly remembered, from the night of the party, that I wanted to check out my laptop. I hadn't turned it on since my arrival, so there was a good chance that it still worked. I settled down on the couch and opened it up. The batteries nor the screen or interface was damaged. I sighed and powered it on. With a shock, I realized that internet connection worked. Google looked as friendly as ever, and the signal was crystal clear. I didn't bother to use it too much - there wasn't much to do. However, the link to my email caught my eye.

I went down into the trash bin section and pulled out the spam email. It hadn't changed. It was the same as ever. I wrote a reply.

Who are you?

I got a response instantaneously.

I am you. And you are me.

I glared at the screen. I typed again.

How did you do this?

Another response. It was like chatting, the response was immediate.

It was not my doing. You yourself chose to traverse into the fog. Do you regret your decision?

My eyes widened. My fingers were hovering over the keys, but I lacked words to write. I powered off my laptop and stashed it away. Just as I did so, the front door opened. Rainbow Dash flew in. There was something off about her presence. Her expression looked as if she carried a heavy burden. I wondered what was up.

"Whats up, Dash?"

"Fluttershy was busy, so I came to pick you up."

I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder. "That's cool and all, but whe-"

Suddenly, she disappeared. Where did she go? Suddenly, I felt hooves lift me up by my arms.

"Wha-?!"

"And since nobody's free today but me, I'll show you around Cloudsdale!" she said, with much enthusiasm. She carried me out into the forest, bumping my leg on the way out. I looked down. I wasn't scared of heights, but we were moving at an unimaginable speed. My hair was suddenly matted by wind as I struggled to keep my eyes ahead. There, I saw it - many thick clouds, and a shower of colors everywhere. She carried me to the nearest one. I was very careful, and very much expected to fall through the first cloud I stepped on. However, it was very plush to my surprise, and sustained my weight. Cloudsdale was a large city, with streams of water and rainbows flowing down to the ground. I walked over to the edge of the cloud. The buildings weren't visible; it was just a big blur.

"Whoah…that's cool. We don't have anything like this back at home…"

Rainbow Dash looked back at me. "You don't? Then where do rainbows and snowflakes come from? And most importantly, where do clouds come from?"

"We have a…different way of getting clouds and snow. The only thing is that we can't control it."

"The more you talk about your home, the crazier of a place it seems!" Rainbow Dash paused, suddenly looking very hesitant. Was something up? She gave me a sad glance, then shook her head and continued. "We control all of the weather, all of the time. There aren't very many instances when we have an unexpected turn of the weather."

I smiled mildly at that. "You don't know half of the crazy stuff that happens back where I come from.

Day 4:

Fourteenth hour

"Where are we headed next?"

Rainbow Dash thought it over. "The closest facility is where we make the clouds, so I guess I can show you that." She led me through a series of arches that resembled human Greek architecture.

When we got there, there was a central room with a catwalk that encompassed the production area. "This is where we make our clouds. Usually we can just reuse old ones, but if we need to make new ones, this is where they come from."

She pointed at one corner of the room. "Over there we have water that runs constantly. We use glass prisms to magnify the sunlight, and that in turn evaporates the water. We collect the gasses in giant chambers, and when we need a new cloud, we compress the gasses into a cloud, and viola! A new cloud is born."

I watched the workers focus a giant lens at the water source. After a minute or two, the water began to boil, and the water vapor flowed into a series of tubes down into a storage tank.

Next she took me over to a section of the city where snowflakes were designed. It was cold in the room, with the same water system flowing around the side.

"This is where we create the snowflakes for the wintertime. We hoofcraft every one of them, and we store them in giant containers at freezing temperature until we need to use them."

There were some example snowflakes hanging by threads attached to the ceiling, and there was a table of snowflakes for guests to look at. Most of them were tiny, like the ones back at home, but they also made larger ones, almost the size of my hand.

A sudden shadow passed over us. Rainbow Dash looked up into the sky. "Why is there a cloud around today? *Sigh* That should have been taken care of by my weather patrol team. I need to go take care of this, I'll be right back."

While Rainbow Dash was away taking care of the cloud problem, I watched the pegasi design the snowflakes under a magnifying glass. It was a delicate process of creating fine needles of ice, arranging them in a pattern, and then adding droplets of water to the places where they needed to be joined, and solidifying the joints.

Rainbow Dash soon returned. "Alright, that should be the last of the clouds. Do you want to go see the rainbow production?"

"That's what I've been looking forward to! I want to see this for myself."

We kept on walking until we reached the edge of the city. The whole time I was there I was getting some pretty funny looks from some of the workers, but I had to remind myself that they had never seen a human before. Finally we reached a massive outdoor terrace, where liquid rainbows were flowing from one container to another. The whole production area had to be at least the size of a football field.

"This is incredible! I've never seen anything like it!"

"Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Just be careful about getting rainbows on your clothes, it takes a bit of work to get them off."

"I'll remember that."

I walked in between the pools of color. They started a couple stories above us, each as individual colors of the rainbow. Through a series of channels and pools, they gradually flowed down and mixed together to form a swirling liquid of amazing hues.

I noticed some of the pegasi holding giant paddles and stirring the liquid. "What are they doing with those?"

"If we don't mix the pools of colors, then one color tends group together, making a giant color splotch where there shouldn't be. Then the final rainbow is practically all one color, and that doesn't look as good."

"I guess that makes sense." I looked down at the flow of colors. "Where does all of this stuff go?"

"Rainbows are used for a ton of different things; usually they're used in magic spells, but sometimes we put them in clouds to give the rain a more cheery appearance, and on some occasions people use it to make their food look more colorful. Anything we don't use or store immediately has to be dumped out, which is why there are rainbows constantly falling from Cloudsdale."

I rummaged around and pulled out a small vial I used in science. "Do you mind if I take a little of the rainbow with me?"

"I don't see why not…"

I squatted down and filled each one, carefully examining the wondrous concoction. The liquid itself gave off a beautiful glow that constantly changed colors. I put the vials in my sweatshirt pocket for later. By the time I had taken the full tour of Cloudsdale, the sun had disappeared from behind the hills, and the stars were beginning to show themselves.

Day 4:

Seventeenth hour

"Well, it looks like you're gonna have to stay at my place tonight," Rainbow Dash said. I was seated near one of the benches ( also made out of clouds ) when she had returned. Apparently she had to check up on Fluttershy with some animal control, so I was left on my own for a bit. I turned my head.

"Why?"

"Fluttershy had some trouble with the animals today, and chicken feathers got all over the place."

I sighed. Poor Fluttershy. Before my visit to Rainbow Dash' home, she offered me dinner at one of the restaurants. Like everything else, it was comprised of clouds, but the meals it served weren't very different from the earth pony's diet. A lot of fruits, pastries, and vegetables made our meal. I wasn't a big meat eater, so this vegetarian diet wasn't a big deal for me. Me and Rainbow Dash had chosen seats by a balcony-like area so we had a good view of Ponyville. It looked so small from up here. The stars were much closer, and the rainbow actually glowed as it made it's decent down to Equestria. I sighed and rested an elbow on a the balcony fence, chewing on a carrot. I wasn't directly looking at her, but I knew Rainbow Dash was giving me surveying looks again. What was wrong? Did I have something on my face? Did I look weird in general? I assumed the latter, seeing as they had never seen a human before, but I suspected they had gotten used to me by now.

"Hey.. Dashie?"

It was a bit relentless to keep calling her Rainbow, so I called her by Pinkie's surname. I hope she didn't mind, and she really didn't seem to has she looked up.

"Whats up?"

"Is there anything.. strange about me today?" I asked with careful words.

"Not in particular. Why?"

I sighed and looked back out to the stars again. "I'm just not familiar enough with you all, and I'm pretty sure that you all don't really know all that much about me. It makes me think about wether you all really like me or not, for who I am and where I come from."

Suddenly, Dashie looked crestfallen. Almost like she was about to cry.

"Wh-what's wrong?" I asked, bewildered by this sudden reaction.

"Nothing.." she replied, in what sounded like a dry sob. Tears were actually falling. I grabbed a napkin and, with her permission, dabbed at the clenched eyes. "Come now, don't cry..

..You can tell me. I already know about our differences." I said in a disheartened tone. I tossed the napkin in the nearest waste basket.

She sniffled. "..I like you a lot. We all like you, Alan. You're the coolest, well, human I've ever met."

I was mildly surprised. For a pony as tall and proud as Dash, she actually thought I was cool.  "Oh please," I said jokingly, folding my arms in modest delight, "You'll make me blush."

Things went pretty much alright from then on. Her reactions piqued my interest though - she had almost a pitying look in her eyes on the conversation we held that night. Even though her words were uplifting, I still wondered if anything else was up that she was hiding from me.

Later, we went back to her place. It resembled a lot of other houses and residences in cloudsdale - her had a lot more rainbow pools and waterfalls. I entered to find it surprisingly like a regular house, with the exception that everything was made out of clouds. The floor was a lot softer here - somewhat like carpeting, I guessed. The cyan mare took me on a tour around her relatively small, but quaint home. There was a nice view of the sky and Ponyville in various windows and balconys, and it was very cozy. Rainbow Dash speculated as to how I would sleep. I told her the sofa would be fine, but she said the clouds used on those weren't very sleep material and were usually used for sitting or taking short naps on. Rainbow led me to her room and instead produced a cloud for me.

I had no idea that different types of clouds existed in Cloudsdale, but I guess there must have for me to actually be standing on one. I set down my bag by the door to the hallway - it almost bounced from all the plush in the ground. I neatly folded up a pile of clothes next to it, and settled in the cloud. I had gone to sleep with some shorts and my ordinary dress shirt, as I was sharing a room with her, and didn't want to strip too far. The temperature wasn't too hot or cold - it seemed perfect for rest. I wonder if this was the effect of the weather as well. Eventually, the lights were off, and I took a dip onto the floating cloud. The experience was almost heavenly - it was firm enough to hold my weight, but very plush - like a giant pillow. I sighed and placed my head on top of my folded hands, gazing bleakly at the white ceiling. I was very comfortable, but I wondered if the nightmares would return again. I really didn't want for Rainbow Dash to see me in that kind of state, so I made sure I went to sleep as soundly as I could. Everything went to black, and then I felt nothing.

= = =

Rainbow Dash double checked to make sure Alan was asleep. He didn't snore, which she both appreciated and found unhelpful in her method of confirming wether he was unconscious. Sure enough, after a few minutes, a small inhaling and exhaling escaped Alan's lips. She sighed, then flew from her bed of white fluff and surveyed him once more with a sturdy eye. He had a thin face and a slim structure, and he smelled kind of nice, though, it wasn't the perfume and scents that Rarity often used. It was more of a masculine scent that she couldn't place. Rainbow Dash still couldn't believe it. This human actually lost his family less than a few years ago.. she couldn't understand why he wasn't already broken apart. Rainbow Dash herself didn't believe that she could deal with losing Twilight, or Pinkie Pie, or Applejack or anypony!

Suddenly, she found tears welling in her eyes again, and before she could stop them, a few drops made their way down to the grey-haired youth. The spots quickly dried up on the white dress shirt, but he didn't seem to feel them. He turned his head slightly, which shocked Rainbow Dash, but he didn't show any other sign of response. She wiped them away hurriedly and sighed. She felt so sorry for him - he even was concerned that he wasn't liked anymore just because of her own thoughts. Rainbow Dash shut her eyes and leaned in and pecked him on the cheek.

"Good night, Alan."

= = =

End of the Fourth Day

--

--Sidenotes

A whole day of not releasing chapters? UNACCEPTABLE!

But that's okay. Here, have this giant column of text!

Anyways, I've always wanted for Alan to go up to Cloudsdale and spend some time with Rainbow Dash, my second most favorite pony. Even though this particular day wasn't spread into 2 segments, this is completely planned. Uh, I got this, yeah.

But stay tuned for some action with the Cutie Mark Crusaders on the next exciting episode of this mary sue's tale!

No sexual pun or innuendo implied. Gosh, you guys. @_@