A Dashing Encounter

by David Eltz

Pink. Everywhere she looked, she saw pink swirls and curls, every one in similar dark shades. It conquered her vision, leaving nothing else visible. Undaunted, a hoof reached out to the table beside her and gripped a shiny silver instrument. Bringing it within an inch or two of her face, she quickly whisked it upwards, pulling the pink mass with it. She repeated this motion several times, until the pink cotton candy curls bobbed just above her range of view. Setting the hairbrush back on the table, she sighed. Not a sad sigh, but one welcoming a fresh day into the world. And with her impaired vision fixed, she shifted her weight and bounced. She bounced again and again, gaining altitude each time, until finally she leaned forward and rocketed out of bed.

She opened her mouth wide, sucking in a massive gust of air before singing, "GOOOOOOOOOD MORNING, good morning, to you and to me, good morning to the land of pony! A bright new day's dawning on us, time to get over yesterday's fuss! The sun in the sky is shining so bright, showing us the end of Luna's NIIIIIIIIIIGHT!"

After a light breakfast (six cupcakes covered in hotsauce and a loaf of toast), the pink earth pony bounded outside of her new home, humming to herself. Pinkie had only moved into Sugar Cube Corner last week, and had already met everypony from her deliveries. With pastries and cakes of all sorts in her saddlebags, she recited the delivery list in her head. Four chocolate cupcakes for Mayor Mare, a birthday cake for Berry Punch (it was her little foal's second birthday today and she'd helped plan the party!), a box of apple tarts for Lily, and lastly a dozen muffins for the post office. Skipping along, Pinkie never noticed a small shadow rapidly expanding right in front of her. She didn't even notice as she stepped into the growing shadow. She didn't notice until she thought she heard the sound of frantic flapping and a pony's voice, sounding very close to her ear, screaming.

"LOOK OU- oomph!"

With tremendous speed, a young pegasus filly, most definitely the same age as Pinkie, landed on top of the pink pony, knocking the breath out of her, and crushing the poor sweets in the process. Icing and crumbs were strewn all across the path, it looked like a cupcake bomb had exploded!

Pinkie, resilient as ever, jumped to her feet only moments later, and began surveying the destruction, and counting the survivors. Thankfully, the cake had made it, but only two cupcakes were left, five apple tarts, eight muffins, a blue pegasus- A blue pegasus? Pinkie hopped over to where the other filly had landed. She was just laying there on her back, tiny little wings outstretched. Looking over her, Pinkie noticed how beautiful the filly was... The pale blue coat, strong legs, the brilliantly bright rainbow mane, and the deep rose red eyes. Pinkie couldn't help but gasp. This seemed to snap the pegasus back to reality, and she sat bolt upright, staring at the earth pony.

"What?" Her voice had a slight edge to it, undoubtedly from her crash. She met Pinkie's slack-jawed gaze with a fiery glare.

Pinkie regained her composure quickly, and hid a blush as she asked, "Are you an angel?"

The blue pegasus gave her a puzzling look for a moment before asking "What do you mean?"

"An angel, you know, with wings and they fly around heaven-" Pinkie was now talking at her usual rate of a million miles an hour.

"Why would I be an angel?" Asked the blue pegasus.

"Well, sometimes angels fall down! They look like ponies with wings, except they're so SUPER beautiful and they always look perfect!" Pinkie shot out.

The blue pony blushed at the compliment. "Beautiful? Haven't you ever seen a pegasus pony before?"

"Well of course I have, silly! But I never met you, and I know EVERYPONY in this town, I have since I moved here last week! I live in Sugar Cube Corner now! Oh! My Grannie Pie was an angel too! Are you from-" Pinkie's voice suddenly grew very quiet and slowed down tremendously as she used her hoof to point almost ninety degrees into the sky. "Up there?"

The blue pony gave her a slight laughing glance. "What? You mean heaven? Nah! I live up there alright, but not, you know, up there up there."

Pinkie shot the pegasus a genuinely confused glance. "Wha-?" She asked, tilting her head.

The blue pegasus laughed. "Well, a long way up in the air up there is a town called Cloudsdale. It's my hometown. And every great flier's! I was in Junior Flight school training for the Wonderbolts – I'm going to be on their team one day, you know – and I... I uh..." Her voice quieted down and she blushed in embarrassment.

Pinkie laughed. "You fell? You do know what falling is right? It's when you start up really really high- or kinda high, or even low, you can fall from a lot of heights, actually! - and then you come down really fast. You fall when you lose your balance or when you trip over a cr-"

"I know what falling is-" The blue pony cut her off, then broke off herself, realizing she didn't know the pink pony's name. "What's your name anyways? Mine's Rainbow Dash!" She said proudly.

Pinkie smiled at Dash. "I'm Pinkie Pie! It's so very nice to meet you!" She took one of Dash's hooves and shook it up and down rapidly, realizing just how soft this blue pony's coat was. She didn't know why, but she wanted to keep rubbing it, feeling it against her hooves...

"Uh, Pinkie? You can let go of my hoof now." Dash said after half a minute of shaking. Blushing, Pinkie Pie did let go of the hoof, and stared at the pony.

"Oh, sorry! I got distracted by- by- by a thing!" She said, the words tumbling out of her mouth.

Dash blinked, and suddenly her eyes grew wide. "Oh, I gotta get back to Flight School! They're gonna think I'm dead or something. I gotta go, Pinkie, I should visit again sometime!" And without another word, she stood steady on all fours and did a few test flaps of her wings before taking off, leaving behind a singly blue feather from her wing.

"Bye! Bye Rainbow!" Pinkie called after the quickly receding image of the blue pony before carefully grasping the feather with her teeth and putting it in a nice safe pocket of her saddlebags. And as she turned back towards Sugar Cube Corner, she felt something new. It was like a... like a tightness in her chest, but not necessarily a bad one.

"Hmm," said Pinkie thoughtfully, "I've never felt the twitch inside me before, I wonder what that means..."