Title: The Wind Beneath Her Wings ========================== Timeline: 2-3 weeks after Author: Anonymous Pastebin link: http://pastebin.com/mq34hF8D First Edit: Tuesday 13th of March 2012 07:44:32 AM CDT Last Edit: Tuesday 13th of March 2012 07:44:32 AM CDT The Wind Beneath Her Wings ==========================   Timeline: 2-3 weeks after the day after the night before. ---------------------------------------------------------   "Dash, where do you keep your shampoo?" Twilight called, her voice echoing around Rainbow Dash's house in the way only a cloud house can, the light, thin walls letting almost all sound pass through unimpeded, and the heavier outer walls blocking it and letting some bounce off. Twilight hated it, it was like living in an opera house. Dash loved it, it meant she got to hear her own voice more.   "My what?" Dash groaned, rolling over and sitting up in her comfortable cloud bed, rubbing her eyes with a hoof and wondering to Celestia why anypony would be awake at the absurdly early time of 10:30.   "Shampoo, Dash! Have you seen my mane? Rarity'd have a fit if I went out like this!" Twilight yelled back, the unmistakable tinge of desperation entering into her voice. Why was her mane such a mess? Dash thought back to the night before, and remembered - the same reason her mane was. The same reason the clouds supporting her were probably going to need cleaning, and the same reason her legs were kinda sore.   "Oh, right, that" Dash awkwardly laughed, scratching the back of her neck with her hoof even though there was nopony around to see it, "I'm all out. Been meaning to buy some more for like, weeks now, heh"   Twilight twitched slightly. Some days she thought Rainbow Dash made it her day's task (Literally, the day's task. Between all of her sleeping and training, Twilight didn't think Dash achieved much else. She'd offered to write up a schedule for her, but Dash had refused) to drive her crazy. Absolutely crazy.   Today was one of those days. Twilight clearly remembered the night before, the way Dash had quite literally swept of off her hooves and carried her up to her house, intent on ravishing her body and leaving her a sticky mess come morning. Twilight, of course, had complained bitterly - not only was it unplanned, Twilight had a report that needed to be finished by midday and sent off to Celestia. Should she miss her deadline, who knew what could happen? It was unlikely that her report on the life cycles of one of the indigenous species of insect was of critical importance to the running of the kingdom, but Celestia worked in mysterious ways.   Twilight had relented, on the condition that Dash wake her up bright and early so she could go and finish up, there wasn't really more than a few hours work left to it. Dash had, of course, agreed quite enthusiastically and immediately gotten on with the ravishing, and Twilight had found herself quite unable to care about small insects soon afterwards. Now, of course, was quite different. Twilight had a headache from oversleeping, her left hindleg ached every time she twisted it to the right, she hadn't had any coffee, and her mane kept getting in her eyes.   "Dash, I can't believe you! I asked you to wake me, now I'll never get this done! Oh, Celestia's going to be so disappointed" Twilight shouted through, rummaging through Dash's ill-stocked bathroom for something - anything - she could use to clean her mane and coat.   "Just keep it under the water a while, Twi, that's what I do. You like my mane, don't you?" Dash replied, rolling back over in bed and pulling the covers closer to her, relishing in the heat and closing her eyes again.   Twilight sighed, ceasing her search and giving the cloud on the bathroom roof a quick buck. Moments later, it started to rain heavily, and warmly. Shower-clouds were fascinating, the first time Twilight had slept over at Dash's house they'd tried the shower out together. Unfortunately she'd been a little distracted and hadn't looked around for shampoo, else this whole disaster might have been averted. Twilight had looked up how they worked the very moment she got back to her library and spent the rest of the day engulfed in a pile of books on cloud-tech, discovering everything from how rainbows are synthesised, to what the purpose of lightning was. She'd started to gush about it all to Dash the next time they met up, only to find out that Dash already knew it all, and in more detail than the books went into to boot. They didn't sleep much that night, but Twilight didn't mind, she learned an awful lot.   The water was hot - not quite scalding, but hot enough. Twilight preferred her water a little colder than Dash, but she was nowhere near experienced enough to feel comfortable reconfiguring her clouds, and the wet heat rushing against her face wasn't that bad. The water flowed over her body, soaking her to the bone and hopefully dissolving all of the remnants of the last night's activities. It dripped off of the tip of her horn, and rolled down her legs in tiny winding rivers, always bending and shifting as the water took different paths over her body.   Focussing her mind, Twilight imagined a brush. Something simple, with dozens of little spokes on it that she could run through her hair to eliminate the knots and remove the tangles. A simple enough task to make such a shape with her magic, and she was soon running the invisible tool through her mane and tail, wincing slightly every few moments as the magical force caught against a stray loop or bend in a hair. Without any kind of shampoo or conditioner that was the best she could do on short notice.   Imagining the spokes growing shorter, Twilight took her mental device over to her coat, brushing it as clean as she could. She liked this bit, it felt nice - calming. She made a mental note to buy a physical brush that Dash could use, and maybe a bouquet of roses to convince her to use it. Dash always loved a snack after a long shower.   Sighing quietly as she ran her magic over her still-sensitive body, Twilight let her neck stretch upwards and allowed the water to run all over her face, against her closed eyelids and around her mouth and nose. She spluttered slightly as a little water gathered around her tongue - doing that always felt like a better idea before you'd started.   "You done yet, Twi?" Dash casually asked from her position leaning against the open bathroom door, where she'd apparently been standing for quite some time, watching the purple mare effectively grope herself. Twilight blushed and shoved the door closed with a horn-pulse - she didn't mind Dash watching, per-se, but she'd appreciate a warning, If only so she could try and act a little more dignified.   The mood ruined, Twilight quickly finished up, shutting the cloud off with a magical push and grabbing a set of towels from the corner of the room, wrapping a few around her mane, tail, and body. What was the time? 11:00.   Dash, still slightly dazed from being roughly thrown into the soft wall, was knocked over once more as the bathroom door was flung open. "Dash, I'm do- Dash?" Twilight called out, stopping when she realised the blue Pegasus was nowhere to be seen. "Oh, there you are! Don't stand so close to the door next time, then" Twilight not-apologised, motioning back to the bathroom with a wave of her hoof to tell Dash that it was free now. "Anyway, I've got an hour to do 3 hours of work, so see you around Dash" she continued, punctuating the end of her sentence with a bright flash and a teleport.   "Twi, wait, I... damnit" Dash quickly interrupted, hoping to catch Twilight's attention before she vanished. "Love you" she bitterly added, wandering into the bathroom and giving the showercloud a potent buck. The torrent of water hit her like a tonne of bricks, flattening her mane against her body in an instant. The water was too hot, Twilight liked it colder than this, Dash realised with a grimace. Nopony had told her that having a "special somepony" would be as much work as it was play. When Derpy had sold her that hearts and hooves day card (The one she'd almost, but not quite, gotten the courage to actually use) it hadn't come with a disclaimer.   "Warning", Dash muttered to herself, "Gorgeous purple unicorns are probably too good for you anyway". She sighed, dropping her head and letting the water run over her face, part of the stream running down her nose straight into her mouth and down her throat. Coughing, Dash pulled herself out of the shower and landed against one of the drier walls, the cloud quickly absorbing most of her excess water. No shower today, then. Twilight would nag at her, but Twilight seemed to do that a lot. Dash knew she didn't mean anything by it, but she still did it. Maybe she should take a little more care of herself, and maybe she should take life a little more seriously, but she didn't. That was just how she was.   Dash punched the wall in frustration, her hoof going straight through the thin cloud. Why did she have to be so insecure about all this? Because what, Twilight left without saying "I love you" again? Twilight was right, Dash should have woken her up. She was rushed now, it was entirely Dash's fault. With a sigh, Dash resigned herself to just apologising later and got on with getting ready for work, trotting over to her towel cupboard and pulling out absolutely nothing, because there were no towels in her towel cupboard. Twilight's habit of teleporting back home on a morning had finally robbed her of every towel she owned.   "Okay, no problem" Dash thought to herself, "I live in a house made out of clouds." She shoved her head into the nearest wall, moving around and trying to collect as much cloud against her mane as she could, hoping they'd suck the excess moisture out.   What was the time now? 11:05. The one schedule Dash had let Twilight write up for her was her weather shifts, it proved a lot easier to have them all on one sheet than having to page through dozens of different lists to find where she was meant to be and when. Thus, it took her no time at all to find out that today's shift had started 35 minutes ago.   "Oh, Dash, you featherbrain" she groaned into the inattentive house and set off towards the window at a gallop, jumping through and spreading her wings the moment she was clear. Shaking her head to knock off the cloudbits, Dash began to beat her wings, picking up speed with every flap and feeling the wind rush against every part of her body. If hooking up with Twilight had taught her one thing, it was that when she'd said that flight felt better than sex, she hadn't been lying.   Her wet mane quickly dried as Dash cut through the air as quickly as she felt comfortable going this close to Ponyville. The Sonic Rainboom had long since become her signature move, and she could do it with a hoof tied behind her back, but ponies tended to complain about the noise, never mind the shockwave. Dash kept subsonic most of the time, it was easier. Even so, feeling the air currents whip around her, each feather on her outstretched wings sensing almost imperceptible changes in temperature, air density, wind speed, updraughts, humidity, and more factors - only some of which Dash could pronounce - and shifting slightly to keep her flight steady.   Nothing could touch Dash in the air. In her element, she felt indestructible. Her unshakable self-confidence took over from the part of her that still felt like a scared filly and let her forget her problems - so Twilight didn't say "I love you", so what? She could see it in her eyes. Everyone could, half the town had come to congratulate her on finally getting her mare. Even though she hadn't told them, and she was pretty sure that she'd hidden it perfectly. Dash assumed that Pinkie had told them, even though she swore blind she hadn't.   Even though Dash's shift today was on the outskirts of the land around Ponyville, and basically as far away as you could get without actually entering Manehatten's airspace, she reached it in barely any time at all. Dash was proud of her cruising speed, always straddling the speed of sound but never actually going over it. Twilight said she'd heard the other Pegasi being quite jealous of it.   "Dash!" shouted a stray cloud right in the middle of Dash's territory, shaking slightly as the pony inside of it pulled herself out. Cloud Kicker continued, "You were meant to start half an hour ago!"   "Yeah, sorry, I was too busy having sex with my girlfriend." Dash snapped, her fine mood broken by yet another pony nagging at her. She RAN the weather team, who did Cloud Kicker think she was to call her out on being late? Sure, Dash had delegated her to doing the schedules (Because Dash couldn't be bothered to do it herself), but that didn't give her the right to enforce them, did it?   Dash guessed it kinda did. Then she felt like a bit of a dick, she knew full well that Cloud Kicker was alone, and she knew full well what that felt like - it'd only been a few weeks, after all. Dash didn't apologise for things, though - if you said something, you said it, as far as she was concerned.   "Great, Dash, but now your girlfriend is going to have to deal with a storm next week because there's no way you can get enough clouds in position before today's rains." Cloud Kicker countered, not taking pity as she started to explain exactly how Dash wasn't doing her job, "Without those rains, of course, the farm can't grow their crops, and without crops we don't have food. But no, Dash, I'm sure what you were doing was far more important. Pull yourself together and do your job"   "I... I run this team! I could fire you!" Dash yelled after the retreating Cloud Kicker as she flew off to do her own job. "I... I could" she whimpered afterwards, sitting down on one of the few clouds hanging around in the sky. She was right, Dash'd screwed up.   She could worry about that later, though - right now she had about 40 minutes to pull together a decent sized storm. At her regular speed, the weather station was about 5 minutes flight away and Cloud Kicker was right, she didn't stand a chance of making enough round trips to have a good storm going. At her full speed? Dash didn't know, but she was going to find out.