You wake up as a beam of light travels across your face. You squint, annoyed, and roll over in your bed. The covers around you fall off, letting the chill of the morning air crawl over your coat. A groan of disappointment leaves your lips. A sigh of defeat follows soon afterwards.

You roll again onto your stomach, letting a blurred vision of your pillow fill your half-lidded gaze. Your legs behind you extend to their fullest, stretching out the muscles that were forced to remain still for so long. The sigh you let out this time is more of relief.

Your forelegs push against the springy material of your bed, letting your back bend backwards. A few cracks echo in your room, followed by a soft cheer of success.

Your wings flutter, your mane shakes, then you stand to your tallest and jump from the bed.

Your hoofs are silent as you trot across the floor of your home, no sound to make over the surface of clouds. The path to your bathroom is obvious, and the door shuts behind you quietly. Standing on your rear hooves, you balance yourself on the sink, letting the image of your morning features reflect off the smooth glass.

A grin, confident and proud pulls itself across your face, complete with your hoof tracing the smooth lines of your features. Your bright pink eyes, your sky blue coat, and your messy rainbow mane. There isn’t a thing about you that looks off, and you know it. Satisfied, you lift a toothbrush to your teeth, setting to work on preparing for the day.

It’s not long before you’re downstairs, heating up some bread and pouring a glass of milk. There’s no work for you today, so you have every hour of sunlight left to practice your flying. The earlier you start the better. Toast and milk is all you need.

You chug the milk with a few full swallows, munching on the toast in between bites. It took you longer to brush your teeth than it did to earn your breakfast. As the thought passes through your mind, you let out a soft snicker.

Your wings twitch at your sides, ready to feel the wind beneath their feathers. You’re only too happy to comply. You let them beat against the air, preparing them. Your mind fills with a hundred ideas of what to do now.

One part of you wants to charge the door, blowing the cloudy surface into oblivion as you race to greet the day. Another wants you to dive through a nearby window, testing your agility. But the side of you that you listen to the most tells you to fly straight up, as fast as you can. They are all overridden by the solely logical side within you, reminding you in a tone full of wisdom and pride, that any of those methods would mean an extra hour or two of repair. That was time you couldn’t spend flying.

A dejected sigh passes your lips, and a small grumble of disappointment as you trot to your door. It was almost agonizing, having to wait even a few more seconds before you could fly, but that nearly venal side of you has a point. Patience now prevents work later.

Your hoof pulls the door open, letting a small gust of wind rush past you. The sensation is riveting, immediately putting the smile from earlier back on your face. Your eyes flutter shut for a moment as you let the cool sensation of the air surround you.

You knew from years of experience that this was a feeling you lived for. Staying in the sky, feeling the cool air that was reserved for the highest of heights, it reminded you of home, of your dream, of everything you enjoyed, and ever everything you wanted to be. It was something you couldn’t live without.

Another pleasured sigh leaves your lips, letting your eyes open. They hold a fire in them that you’re prepared to kindle. Your wings are flared, their muscles tense, and your legs crouching for the inevitable.

With a single strong flexion of your wings, you take off into the air, faster than most eyes can see.

The wind rushes past you, deafening your ears and tunneling your vision. The mountains in the distance turn to peaks, the blue sky just a horizon, and the homes below nothing but thatched roofs. The wings at your sides beat and push through the air as fast as they can, loving every second of the burning sensation of fatigue they feel.

The smile across your face grows wider with every little bit further you move, growing until it splits your face from one side to the other. You’ve done a lot in your life, from travel, to adventure, to even saving the world, but nothing has ever made you feel so alive as flying.

You spin through a cloud, embracing the feeling of the fluffy surface surrounding you before it poofs into oblivion. You perform a deft spin in the air, twirling through the misty remnants of the aerial obstacle. It cools your already worked muscles, letting you feel the oddest mixture of pain and relief.

Your smile turns inwards, knowing that you can only feel this way when you are flying.

You turn your flight into an ascent, moving higher and higher into the morning sky. The chill of the wind high above wakes faster than any shower, drawing a slow breath across your muzzle.

You stop your wings, letting the momentum of your ascent carry you upwards. It’s not nearly as fast as if you were flying yourself, obviously, but sometimes, moving without effort is just as exciting as pushing yourself to your peak.

For just a second, a split second, a fraction so small you couldn’t even name it, you catch a sight that isn’t meant to belong in the morning sky. You're drifting slows as gravity takes a hold of you, your momentum reaching its limit.

But for that moment of a second, you see the stars above the blue sky.

Then gravity starts to pull you again.

You feel the greedy grasp of the ground trying to pull you in, moving you fast, almost as fast, as you could fly. The wind roars in your ears as you rush by it, the mountains and tree lines around Ponyville growing larger and larger as the ground comes closer and closer. Your smile had yet to leave.

You twist your body until you're facing the ground, nose-diving towards the unforgiving surface. You push a hoof outwards, curling the other closer to your chest. The wind forces you to squint your eyes, but you don’t let them close.

Then you start to beat your wings again, letting your already terminal velocity go even further. You want to laugh, but the pressure and vacuum you create makes it impossible. You settle for continuing to smile.

You feel the pressure around you growing stronger, pushing against you like you’ve felt only a few times before. The ground is getting even closer, and you know you still have time to stop, but stopping would be giving up. You never give up.

It’s always a game of chance for pulling it off. The drag force, the angle of impact, the constant acceleration, but most importantly time. You have to remember so much.

But what you’ve done before, you can do again.

The cone around you tightens, and you ready yourself for the inevitable. If you had breath to give, you would scream with excitement. Then an explosion rips through the air behind you, shattering the sky and sending you to speeds you never want to leave.

A Sonic Rainboom.

You wish for a moment that you could cheer, but the vacuum you created stops you.

You’re flight path levels with the ground, sending you soaring parallel to the town beneath you watching it vanish beneath you faster than you could blink.

Then you’re above the forest, pushing the trees and straining the barks with the wind you pull behind you.

Then you’re at the mountains and the colossal pillars of earth seem thin and gaunt as you zoom past them.

You never drop your smile.

But you know it has to end, before you travel further than you can travel back. You want to sigh out of disappointment, but like the cheer before, you can’t produce a sound. Your wings twist at your sides, turning your rainbow trail into a bow, turning you back towards the town far behind you.

You’re speed is incredible, beyond even the most unimaginable limits of awesome and insane. But you aren’t invincible, no matter what you want to believe. Your lungs beg for oxygen, your wings fighting themselves. The fatigue is quickly catching up to you, and you have to stop before you regret it.

The mountains are far behind you, the forest nearly past you, the town is just in sight. Regrettably, you let yourself slow, allowing the friction of the air to return you to the simplicity of the ground.

You’re still moving fast as you come to land; hooves outwards towards the ground, but you’ve landed at faster speeds. Your hooves scratch at the dirt as you touch down, sliding and scraping at the hard surface as you try and slow yourself. Your body twists with the uneven forces. You grit your teeth and shut your eyes, hoping you won’t hit anything.

You’re speed finally reaches zero, and you come to a dissatisfying halt.

Breath enters you in eager gasps, filling your lungs to their fullest. The coolness instantly fills you, shaking your already trembling legs. Your pink eyes open, seeing the small path of destruction in your wake. A few bricks from the Ponyville path are torn from the ground, the dirt patches barren of any vegetation, but no stall is knocked over and no ponies are running scared.

You do see a few wide-eyed ponies looking towards you, caught between marveled and terrified. Your body is shaking, close to collapsing. But you still manage to give your cheeky grin to the wall-eyed ponies. Your satisfaction only increases as they smile in return.

It’s too early for there to be a crowd, let alone a small orange filly to fawn over you, but seeing the appreciating grins on the other ponies seems more than worth it.

Your muscles still burn, as angry at you as you are happy towards them. They beg you to let them lie on the ground, even if for just a few minutes, but you know that it wouldn’t be a good idea. Sleeping in the streets, right before ponies started going to work, would be beyond awkward to explain.

You also know that your Rainboom isn’t something to be taken lightly. There wasn’t a chance that any pony was still asleep after it.

“Rainbow Dash!”

The sudden shout knocks you off your carefully built balance. You hit the ground in a slump, more embarrassed than pained. Your muscles aren’t happy, but you push yourself to stand back up. Your perked ears search with your eyes for the pony that called for you, looking over the still sparsely populated streets.

Your pink eyes land on a lavender unicorn. Her equally purple eyes are glaring at you with a furrowed brow, a scowl already churning beneath her frowning lips. For a moment, you’re confused, honestly curious as to why she’s so angry with you.

Then you see the door behind her is still open, and you see the state of her home.

Your eyes widen further as your ears flatten. This time, your smile is far more nervous than confident.

“H-Hey Twi.” You can’t help the shake in your voice. It isn’t the first time that you’ve made a mess of your friend’s homes, but then, that just makes it a bit worse. “What’s going on?”

“I was preparing my list of activities for the day, but somepony decided to shake my home so bad that every book had to fall off the shelves!” You cringe every time she raises her voice, already knowing that there isn’t a way out of it. Still, you can’t admit you're wrong, not that fast.

“You… think it was me?” You remind yourself to thank Pinkie later. Pulling pranks with her forced her attitude to rub off on you. Playing ignorant was almost as easy as flying to you, almost. Unfortunately, ignorance doesn't do you much when you're talking to the protégé of the Princess.

“There is no other pony in existence that can do a Sonic Rainboom, let alone one that lives within trotting distance of me.” Your hoof scratches at the ground idly at the words.

“How do you know it was a Sonic Rainboom?” You try and put on your confident grin again, but all it falls into is another guilty smile.

“Because nothing makes a boom by flying at very fast speeds, except that. I don’t need a rainbow cloud to know that it was you, Dash.” You see an opportunity in her words. You jump at them as fast as you can. You can jump fast.

“Hey, you can’t be sure about that.” You answer the best you can. “I mean, I could have been a dragon. Those guys are blowing all kinds of smoke.” Twilight, however, is already one hoof ahead of you.

“There aren’t any dragon dens or migration patterns within forty miles of my home this time of the year.” She states with all of the confidence you have in your flying. Twilight trots towards you with every word, making the gap between you smaller and smaller. You bit your lip as you try for another excuse.

“O-or Luna in a bad mood.”

“The princess hasn’t used the Royal Canterlot Voice since her visit to Ponyville on Nightmare Night two years ago.” You raise a hoof to the back of your head, scratching at a heavy sensation that’s settled there. No matter how much you rub, the weight on your shoulders doesn’t seem to lessen. Taking a breath, you try once more.

“Hay, it could have been one of your crazy experiments going haywire again. You always do seem to mess things up.” You regret those words the second they leave your muzzle. Your body tenses at the realization of what you said. Your gaze focuses on Twilight, hoping that she might have missed what you said.

The shocked expression you see tells you everything you need to know.

She hasn’t moved any closer, but her furrowed eyes are now broad, pupils shrunk into dots. You tell yourself to leave now, probably planning to come back later and apologize, but you don’t. Instead, you stand just as still as she is waiting for what you know will be a lecture on how rude you are.

Slowly, the muscles in Twilight begin to move. You watch her form give a small shake as her eyes relax as her lips are tightened into a straight line. The look reminds you of being scolded at flight camp by some of the instructors, after you ignored the flight path and tried to have fun instead.

Your head lowers as you wait for the harsh words, some words that mean the same thing as “rude,” or “inconsiderate,” maybe even “thoughtless.”

“It was good to see you Rainbow.”

You look at her with your own wide eyes. She still there, still wearing that mask of indifference. You blink once, but nothing changes. Twice, and you realize she’s already turning away.

“Whoa, Twilight, wait!” You call to her before you realize you want her to stay. It only takes two beats of your wings until you’re by her side, but she keeps trotting forwards regardless. “What do you mean ‘It was good to see you’?”

“It means that I enjoyed seeing you, but I have work to do.” Her eyes never once look at you. Somehow, that’s worse than anything she could have said. “So please, leave me alone.” No, that hurt the most.

“No way.” You say back to her. You want to flare your wings, but your muscles still burn. However, it will take much more than that to keep you from your friend. “I’m not leaving.”

But Twilight didn’t stop for you. She moved past you again as she walked into her disheveled home. Your mouth opens, ready to speak again, but then the door slams right in front of your muzzle.

You’re left shocked outside Twilight’s home.

You stare at the oak door, eyes never moving. You feel terrified, hurt, angry, even a little depressed. You want to fly away, but your muscles won’t let you. You want to trot home, but your legs are still as stone. More than anything else, you want to call to Twilight, but the coldness she gave you tells you that speaking to her now would only make things worse.

You know one thing now, more than ever before.

You don’t feel confident today.

Author's Notes:

Do you know what this is called? Spontaneous. It means I thought of this, on the fly, while thinking of other stories and homework to do. I'm busy. Very busy, but I still can't get ponies out of my head.

At least I'm controlling the volumetric flow...