The dawn was a dim, pinkish smear along the east horizon, barely visible through the bedroom window, when Rainbow Dash woke.

She sucked in a gasp of air. Her lungs burned as though she had held her breath for a dozen minutes or more. Just as quickly she coughed, choking on the thick wet air that smothered the world’s surface. She sometimes forgot she was a creature of the airless reaches of the clouds, and she would always be a visitor on the ground. An intruder in their warm homes and loving families.

It’s not for you. You don’t belong here.

She sat like that, gasping, shaking, dripping with sweat. The last moments of the dream played out in her mind, as vivid and real as if she had just lived them. They did not fade away like a normal dream; they did not slip through the holes in her memory like water through a net. Every scene was crisp and sharp. Perfect. Real.

And impossible.

She had never visited Rarity’s shop in Fillydelphia. She certainly hadn’t tagged along for her amorous night with Wicker Spark. A vision of the earth pony stallion mounting Rarity swam through her mind, and she could smell the faint, pleasant tannic scent of his coat. She still tasted his sweat on her tongue, this stallion she had never met.

What the fuck.

More scenes unwound themselves. The Wonderbolts. Soarin. Cloud Fire. Rarity. Always Rarity; every memory stank of her lilac perfume and the faint intoxicating musk of an aroused mare. It made her want to sneeze.

The imagined, pungent scent was not the only odd thing. Her eyes crossed to see a faint, unfocused glow emanating from from her muzzle. She reached up and touched her face with her hoof. A few drops of liquid clung to it as she pulled away, radiating a gentle silver light, like moonlight on the ocean. It smelled of junipers.

This, this was weird. Wrong. She knew magic when she saw it, and when she went to bed her face hadn’t been smeared with a glowing, juniper-smelling potion. Bits of conversation floated back into her mind.

“Your dreams have been troubling you, haven’t they?”

Rarity. She turned her head to the warm weight at her side. The unicorn sharing her bed was still asleep, though a sheen of sweat covered her coat, and her face twisted with pain. Little twitches shook her body, and Rainbow heard her wheezing for breath.

And all along her forehead, between her eyes and running down her muzzle, shining like a star about to fade into the sunrise, were droplets of that same liquid.

“Twilight said dreams can’t hurt anypony.”

“What did you do, Rares...” She extended her hoof toward Rarity’s face. Inches away she paused. Rarity’s whole body jerked as some nightmare played itself out beneath her closed eyes. Inches away she stopped. Her hoof trembled, and deep in her hollow bones something begged her to push forward, to touch that soft white coat and still that trembling body with her lips.

“What did you—”

Rarity’s eyes flew open. Her back arched violently, peeling her chest and head away from the mattress to gape up at the dark ceiling. Her mouth opened wide enough to swallow a hoof, and the breath she sucked in was loud and shrill, like a scream in reverse. The covers twisted beneath her hooves, their seams snapping with a series of staccato pops.

The gasp trailed off into silence, and for a long moment Rarity held that pose, head craned toward the sky, her eyes wide and unseeing, her legs taut as iron bars. The ends of her long amethyst mane vibrated in time with the beat of her heart. The tang of fear pouring from her body stung Dash’s nose.

Like two statues they sat, frozen in the act of waking. Dash realized her wings were spread, ready to launch her into the air. Rarity’s eyes darted about the dark room, never stopping, never focusing, never seeing. Her legs began to shake, and just when Dash thought she was about to collapse back onto the bed, she stood.

Tried to stand. Her legs straightened, but her hooves tangled in the torn covers, and she stumbled to her knees. She stood again on three legs with her left foreleg held awkwardly against her chest, but the soft bed betrayed her footing, and she slipped again, this time sliding off the mattress entirely to land on the wood floor with a dull thump. Rainbow Dash heard more than saw her scramble away from the bed. The scratch of her hooves against the floorboards filled the air until Rarity came to rest against the far wall.

Silence, broken by sound of Rarity’s harsh, panting breath, smothered the dark room. Rainbow Dash took a careful step off the bed toward her friend. She paused halfway across the floor.

“Rarity?”

The frantic breaths caught, like cloth snagged on a thorn, and for a brief moment true silence returned. Dash saw Rarity’s dim figure pressed against the wall, her left foreleg held against her chest. The faint glow of the liquid slathered across their faces was completely extinguished; only the cool touch of the air on her muzzle and the lingering scent of junipers reminded her it had ever existed at all.

“D-Dash?” Rarity’s voice, tremulous and halting, returned from the darkness.

“Yeah.” Dash moved closer. A phantom pain in her left foreleg protested the movement. As always, she ignored it. “What happened, Rares? What did you do?”

“I... I...” Rarity stopped and gulped for air. She seemed unable to hold down a breath for more than a second. “I wanted to... I just wanted to...” Her lungs failed again, and she resumed her desperate gasping.

A part of Rainbow Dash’s mind absently noted the signs of shock on Rarity’s face – the pale lips, sweating, disorientation, hyperventilation. If Rarity were a Wonderbolt trainee, Dash would order her to lie down before she collapsed. As Rarity was already lying down, there was little Dash could do but wait and see if she would continue speaking or simply pass out.

“Right, just… hang on, okay?” Dash kept her eyes on Rarity and slowly moved toward the bedside table and its lamp. It was an older kerosene model, with a blue base covered in musical notes and a tall glass chimney darkened by soot. Although the customer area of the Carousel Boutique had used electric lights for years, Sweetie had apparently not seen much point in upgrading the bedrooms just yet. Dash fumbled with the spark wheel in the darkness but managed to light the wick after a few false starts. Within seconds the lamp’s warm glow had chased away the night’s dark shadows.

“Okay.” She paused to take a breath, then turned back to Rarity. The unicorn huddled in a ball against the wall as though trying to press herself into it. Her head twisted hard to the side, and her eyes were scrunched shut in pain. She held her left leg off the floor and hugged it against her chest with her right. Sweat painted shining streaks down her coat and plastered strands of her mane all across her face.

“Listen to me, Rarity.” Dash moved as she spoke, and settled down in front of her friend. “Listen. Can you do that?”

Rarity was still for a moment, then gave a jerky nod with her head. Her cheek left a dark, wet smear on the wallpaper as it moved.

“Okay, good. I want you to breathe with me.” She set her hoof on Rarity’s shoulder with just enough pressure to be felt. The coat beneath was cold and clammy, and the heart deep within beat a frantic, panicked tattoo. “Breathe with me. Slow in.”

“Breathe…”

“Yeah, breathe. Like this.” Dash drew in a long, slow breath through her nose, held it, and let it out with a soft hiss between her lips. It set the free hairs in Rarity’s mane dancing.

Rarity gave another sharp nod and tried to pull in a long breath. It was weak, and broke several times, but she managed to fill her chest with air before letting it out in a ragged rush.

“Good, good. You’re doing great.” Dash rubbed her hoof in a circle between Rarity’s shoulders. “Now, do it again. In…”

A few minutes of breathing exercises later, the shaking had stopped and Rarity’s eyes were open. She looked everywhere in the room except at Rainbow Dash.

That could slide for the moment. Dash ran her hoof down Rarity’s left shoulder and forearm, stopping just above the knee when her friend’s body tensed. She held that pose for a long moment, waiting for the shivers to subside, for Rarity’s breath to unhitch and her heart to calm.

“It was just a dream,” she whispered. “Your leg is fine. Look.”

Rarity’s head jerked. Left, right, left again. Her eyes squeezed shut, and the hoof holding her leg against her chest tightened its grip.

“It is. It is. See? There’s no blood. It’s fine.” Dash moved her hoof further down Rarity’s leg, pausing every few seconds to let her breathe. Finally, she reached that spot just above her knee, where—

She looked down to see a wide spur of bone slick with blood. Her entire lower leg dangled by a scrap of wet flesh.

—a thick bubbled scar bisected the coat on her own leg, and still ached when she least expected it.

Rarity’s leg was perfect and unblemished, just like the rest of her. Dash pressed her hoof down on the imagined wound.

“See? It’s fine.”

Slowly, a millimeter at a time, Rarity’s hoof fell away. She turned her her head down to regard her unharmed leg. For a long moment, utter silence filled the room – even their breathing ceased as Rarity tilted her leg before her eyes.

“See?”

Rarity rolled her hoof, like an athlete stretching before a race. Her lips parted, and her jaw hung loose as she gazed in wonder at her leg, miraculously whole. The shivers that set her coat trembling died away, and when she let out the breath long trapped in her lungs, her eyes closed, and a look of pure relief came over her face.

Dash reached out and pushed Rarity’s hoof down with a gentle pressure. “Feel better?”

Rarity didn’t answer for some time. Instead, in the silence, her leg twisted around Dash’s and drew it to her chest, where she cupped it between her hooves. She pressed her cheek against Dash’s leg, against the ugly scar, and let out a long sigh.

“I’d forgotten, I think,” she said. Her breath was a warm current against Dash’s coat. “How afraid we were, waiting for you in the hospital.The first few minutes after we arrived, we didn’t know if you’d even survive the night.”

Dash felt her throat tighten and threaten to close. She closed her eyes before they could betray her.

“They told us you’d make it, once we were all in the waiting room.” Rarity rubbed her cheek against Dash’s leg, just beneath the old break. Warm drops of some liquid spilled across her coat. “They said they’d managed to save your leg, and everypony was relieved. Everypony except me.”

More silence. Dash licked her lips. “Why not you?”

A quiet chuckle shook the bones in Dash’s leg. “Because I passed out.”

Oh. Dash swallowed again. “They never told me that.”

“I asked them not to.” Rarity turned her head a few degrees, enough to press her lips against the scar. “You had enough to worry about.”

“Yeah, but…” But what? She frowned at her inability to finish the thought. The soft feel of Rarity’s lips against her coat, just above her hoof, pulled her mind away from the question. How easy just to lie there with her friend, ignoring the dim glow of morning, until sleep claimed them both again.

And maybe something else, as well. Rarity would not protest, Dash knew, if she leaned in, and pressed her cheek against that soft white face, touched those lips with her tongue. The silly charade of the past few days would be over, and—

No.

Dash pulled her hoof away. The cool kiss of air against her coat replaced the feel of Rarity’s lips, like a ghost haunting her with its memory. Rarity looked up, a startled, hurt expression on her face.

“What did you do, Rarity?”

“I’m not sure what you mean, dear…”

“The dreams. That stuff on our muzzles.” She crossed her eyes to look down the bridge of her nose. The glow was gone, but her coat was speckled with dark spots as though still wet with droplets of the magical liquid. A quick glance at Rarity confirmed that her own face was similarly marked.

“Oh, that.” Rarity’s chin tilted fractionally up, and her eyes slid to the side. “It was just something Twilight showed me. We thought it might help you sleep better.”

“Sleep better?” The casual answer was like a slap to the face. “Rarity, warm milk helps you sleep better. It doesn’t mess with your dreams!”

“There’s no need to yell, dear. It’s still early, why don’t we just go back to bed, and talk about this in the morning?” Her hoof reached out as she spoke, reaching for Dash’s leg.

Dash stood and stepped away. “I saw you in there, Rarity. You were in there with me. You were in my head!”

“We shared some things, Dash, that’s all.” Rarity stood, wobbled for a moment as her left foreleg took her weight, and took a step toward Dash. Her voice quivered as she spoke. “Isn’t that what friends do?”

“Share? We… you…” Dash felt her wings begin to rise, and her whole frame trembled with fury. “We didn’t share! You stole those!”

“Dash, you’re going to wake Sweetie—”

“You saw me with Soarin! You watched us in bed!”

And on the clouds. And in the shower. The thoughts did nothing to calm her. Rarity had seen – had experienced – all those sacred bits of intimacy. Their first kiss, the endless lazy mornings spent wrapped in each other’s embrace. The most private memories, the only things she had left of her lover, stolen away in the night. The scope of Rarity’s theft was breathtaking.

“And you watched me, remember?” Rarity shot back, all pretense of calm deliberation gone. “You followed Wicker and me for an entire night. During dinner, back at the apartment, into my bedroom, onto my bed.” She leaned forward to whisper those last words into Dash’s ear. “Where were your objections then, hm?”

“Like I had a choice!” Dash’s wings lifted, and she hopped back onto the bed, away from Rarity. “I was trapped!”

“Yes, and I’m sorry. I didn’t… well, I didn’t know it would work like that.” Rarity sat next to the bed and set a leg upon it. Her hoof stopped just shy of Dash’s. “You know I would never intentionally hurt you. None of us would. We just… we just want to help you.”

Dash could believe that. It was easy to believe – of course Rarity meant to help. She couldn’t imagine any of their friends doing any less. And Rarity, the most generous of them, was always the first in line to help. Her intentions were pure.

But ponies are judged not by their intentions but their deeds. For a Wonder Bolt it could be nothing else. When death stalked them at every turn, when it flew every maneuver at their wingtips, a pony’s intentions counted for nothing. Only their skill and courage and strength mattered. A pegasus who relied on her friend’s intentions to save her would survive only as long as it took to hit the ground.

Rarity was still talking, Dash realized. She blinked away the images of streaking clouds and uprushing ground.

“...all been worried about you. You can’t tell me you’ve been eating enough, and you haven’t been flying. Flying, Dash! I would sooner expect Twilight to surrender her magic than...”

Rarity’s hoof was still just inches away. A slight twitch of her leg, and that gap would be bridged. She could already see the rest of the night proceeding from that single act: they would lie down together, and say all the things they had kept pent up, opening the terrible secret wounds that festered on each of their hearts. They would cry until the sun rose, then fall asleep again, resting against each other, lulled into peaceful surrender by the soft warmth of their bodies pressed together. And they would kiss. She could see that as well. With the secrets dwelling in their hearts erased, so too would vanish the flimsy barriers they had erected against each other in the night, and there would be nothing to stop her lips from brushing against Rarity’s cheek and neck and flanks, further and further, until all their body’s treasures lay exposed.

She could do it. It was there, waiting for her, just inches away from her hoof. She could be happy again.

Moving on, they called it. I could move on.

Rarity had stopped talking. Her eyes, wide and wet, stared up at Dash, then down at their hooves and the inches of space between them. Dash heard her breath catch in her lungs, and for a long moment everything was still. Everything waited.

Moving on. Dash closed her eyes. She felt the covers shift as Rarity leaned forward, reaching out to touch her…

Dash stepped away. Her hooves found the floor and took her straight to the bedroom door. Behind her, Rarity never moved as she exited through it into the dark hallway and the night beyond.

The cool air a thousand feet above Ponyville helped clear her head.

The city below was hard to recognize at night. As a young mare, before she left for the Wonder Bolts, only a few lights burned in the streets of Ponyville after the sunset. The town square, the hospital, a few other main roads. Darkness claimed all the rest. Once, only the faint shimmer of moonlight on the lake provided definition to the surrounding countryside.

Not anymore. Now the city blazed with light – each road sparkled with a dozen gas lamps, all chasing away the shadows of night. She could read the city like a map, and she spent the better part of an hour in a lazy orbit overhead. Too much had changed for her to pick out more than a few buildings.

You can’t go home again.

She snorted softly and shook her head to chase away the thought. The fierce winds slipped around her wings, and for a moment her steady course decayed, leaving her to tumble a hundred feet before a shift of her pinions caught the air. Her clumsy flying earned a quiet grumble, and she admitted that, maybe, it was time to land.

The sun was a fiery presence to the east, above the horizon but still hidden behind clouds glowing a brilliant red, when she reached the orchards of Sweet Apple Acres. Small figures moved around the barn and farmhouse as she approached. It didn’t take long to find the one she wanted, and her wings folded to bring her in for a soft landing in the branches of a mature apple tree.

Applejack must’ve heard her. She looked up at the tree, her green eyes darting around before settling on Dash’s form lounging on a branch above her head. A small smile appeared on her lips.

“Well, howdy stranger. Don’t tell me you get up this early every day now.”

Dash shrugged. “Depends if we have a show. Takes a lot of time to get ready, and no one wants to watch a sleepy pegasus.”

“Mhm.” Applejack unhitched her wagon from the yoke around her neck and began setting empty bushel baskets on the ground beneath the nearby trees. “So, what brings you out this way? Some breakfast, maybe?”

“Eh.” Some breakfast would be nice, but it could wait. “You know, just wanted to talk.”

“Talkin’. Lotta that goin’ on lately.” Applejack’s mumbled response floated up to Dash’s ears, and she wondered if she were meant to hear it. She shucked the yoke around her neck – a smaller version of the one Big Mac often wore – and set it inside the wagon. “Well, was about time to take a break anyway. What’s on your mind, sug?”

Dash’s eyes flicked over the empty baskets, then to the distant figures of other ponies milling about the barn, still draped in mist. “A break? Looks like you just started.”

Applejack brushed that aside with a wave of her hoof. “It’s my farm, I’ll take a break whenever I want. Now stop stallin’ and talk.”

Right, talk. Dash licked her lips and glanced back at the ponies in the distance. They seemed too far away to overhear and too busy to care. An impatient sound snagged her attention, and she looked down to see Applejack sitting against the tree, looking up at her with that open, honest face of hers. Its edge were a little sharper and more refined, now; a sculpture of a full-grown mare, not the adolescent on the cusp of adulthood Dash remembered from the first time she’d snagged a few apples from these trees for a snack.

Applejack had been angrier back then, Dash recalled. The wound of her parents’ loss was still fresh and weeping blood. “How dare you steal mah father’s apples!? Git out of that tree!”

Dash shook her head again, banishing the memory. Applejack raised an eyebrow but remained silent.

“Rarity did something stupid,” she said.

“Mm. You know I love that filly, but she does do silly things from time to time. What now?”

What had she done? Dash still wasn’t clear on all the details; she had only Rarity’s vague confession to go by. She let out a slow breath before continuing.

“She got a spell from Twilight. It let us share our dreams.”

Applejack was silent for a while. “Well, Dash, it kinda sounds like you’re both a bit to blame if that didn’t go well for—”

“She didn’t ask my permission to use it.”

Applejack’s mouth snapped shut with a quiet clack of teeth. The muted sounds of a farm at work filled the space between them.

Eventually, she spoke. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“So you and her, uh…”

“Yeah.”

Applejack looked down and was silent for a while. Dash studied a drop of dew tracing a slow, wet trail down the face of an apple leaf. It reached the tip of the leaf and hung there, growing larger and heavier as it gathered more water into it, edging ever closer to the critical mass that would free it from the leaf and send it plummeting to the earth below.

“Well, I guess that was stupid,” Applejack said. There was a long pause before she spoke again. “These dreams, though… you’ve been havin’ problems with them, I guess?”

Dash’s eyes flicked down at Applejack, who was doing her best to look up without meeting her gaze. When Dash looked back at the leaf, the dewdrop was gone.

“Everypony has dreams, AJ.” She rolled over, letting the rough branch scratch that delicious spot between her wings. Above, the leaves presented her with a dappled, dark sky, just barely shining through with the light of morning.

“Not everypony has nightmares. Every night, from what I hear.”

Dash’s mouth twitched with the start of a frown. “You listening to rumors now, AJ?”

There was a brief pause before Applejack answered. Dash imagined her shrugging in that void. “I listen to my friends. Maybe Rarity does talk a mite too much, but that’s just who she is. It’s why we love her.”

“Yeah, well, so what if I am having n— bad dreams?” She rolled over and stood on the branch, her wings outstretched to balance her upon that thin perch. “They’re my dreams. How would you feel if someone snuck into your head?”

Applejack waited until the orchard stopped echoing back Dash’s shout before answering. Her voice was low, quiet enough that Dash had to lean forward to hear it. “I guess I’d feel upset. Like you feel now.”

“Upset?” Dash spit the word back at her. “What else would you feel, AJ?”

“Angry.”

Dash barked out a quick, humorless laugh. “Only at myself. I forgot who she was. Only four years away, and I forgot who she was and I let her get close to me. You know animals, AJ. What happens when you let a snake get too close to—”

“You sound hurt, too. But don’t let that lead you into saying something you’ll—”

“Hurt? Hurt?” Dash dropped off the branch and landed with a thud on the packed earth in front of Applejack. “What do you know about being hurt? When have you ever suffered, AJ? When have you ever lost somepony you cared about?”

Even as the words left her mouth, Dash realized her mistake. For a brief, irrational second she imagined reaching out with her hooves to grab that terrible question and stuff it back in her teeth before it crossed the distance to Applejack’s ears. But it was too late; she saw Applejack’s eyes widen by a hair.

Silence followed.

Dash licked her lips and opened her mouth, the apology already forming on her lips. Applejack beat her there.

“You done?”

Yeah, she was done. She gave Applejack a tiny nod.

“Right. I know you’re hurtin’,” Applejack pronounced the word slowly, carefully, “so I won’t blame you for sayin’ those things. You wanna know what I think?”

Another nod. She didn’t trust herself to speak yet.

“I think you feel betrayed,” Applejack continued. She paused to look over her shoulder, then stepped closer. “You let Rarity get close, and then she stomped all over your trust. I think that would hurt any of us, but you most of all.”

Silence again. Around them, the morning mist finally burned away at the first touch of the autumn sun, bringing color and life to the farm. A light breeze tousled their manes.

“Yeah, well…” Dash tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. “Yeah.”

She wasn’t sure what happened next. Only that Applejack moved, and then she was wrapped in a pair of rough legs that nevertheless felt as gentle as any cloud. She lowered her head to Applejack’s shoulder, closed her eyes, and cried.

Some time later, the tears were all gone. Dash lifted her head and tried to look away.

That was never an option, of course, Applejack’s hoof caught her chin and pulled it lightly around, until Dash had no choice but to meet those wide green eyes.

“It ain’t all lost, Dash. Not as long as you’ve got friends.” She gave her a gentle nudge with her foreleg. “Speakin’ of, I bet Fluttershy’d love to see you right now. C’mon.”

They left the bushels and wagon behind.