Two days later, after training, Rainbow Dash rushed to Manehattan, where she knew her rival lived.
It took her the usual five hours to arrive by train, and during that infinite time she began to read the new Daring Do book, but she couldn't concentrate as usual, so after a few pages she decided to put it back in her bag and look outside the window, as Ponyville's trees and mountains gave way to tall modern buildings, skyscrapers and the unforgettable Mane Statue.
Once she arrived at Maneway Station, Rainbow found herself immersed in an immense bedlam, between ponies with inseparable briefcases, models grappling with a busy schedule and colt scouts on a summer trip.
According to her knowledge, Lightning Dust lived near Bridleway, on the very top floor of a state-of-the-art skyscraper. Typical, on the part of those who had flight in their DNA.
The blue pony pressed the button next to the word "Dust" and after a few uncertain minutes a croaking voice replied:
"Who is there?"
"I'm Rainbow Dash!"
There was still a little pause; Lightning Dust was probably thinking about whether or not let her fiercest rival in.
Despite everything, the Wonderbolt heard the *click* of the front door unlocking, so she braced herself and flew up to the thirtieth floor, where she saw the golden-haired pegasus already waiting for her at the door of her apartment.
"You don't give up easily, huh?" the latter greeted her, with a sarcastic smile which, however, seemed to Rainbow Dash as tinged with... gratitude?
The rainbow-haired girl entered Lightning Dust's bright and well-appointed apartment, looking around her as if looking for clues to her owner's condition.
"Are you worried about me, my dear wingpony? Although I am your enemy?"
Rainbow Dash sighed; it was damn hard to get Lightning Dust to understand a nuanced concept, she thought in extremes. However, she tried:
"Lightning Dust, I don't consider you an enemy. You're just my bitter rival, but that doesn't mean I'd leave you alone in your time of need."
The other raised an eyebrow inquiringly:
"Did you understand at the funeral that I need help?"
"Not just me, my friends too."
Lightning let out a bitter chuckle, then she sat down on the couch.
"Nothing escapes you… But you must know that I am not sick, nor about to die. If that had been the case, you wouldn't have seen me in that pitiful state, I would have accepted my fate like any other challenge. But this... what happened to me... goes beyond my imagination..."
Rainbow Dash, who had remained standing, motioned for her to continue.
"… I am a very bad host. Make yourself comfortable, and get yourself a drink from the refrigerator. There is a lot to tell if you feel like listening to me..."
Rainbow was more and more captured by that situation, she had never seen Lightning Dust so subdued, she who had always had the biggest chutzpah on earth, even superior to Discord's as far as she was concerned.
So, to soften the story a little, the two girls poured ginger ale into their glasses and the Washout began to tell what she had discovered on the day of Cadance's death.
"The news of Princess Cadance's death quickly reached all of Equestria. I discovered it the same evening, she seems to have had a cramp in her wings and she didn't have time to teleport before crashing. A sneaky, absurd accident. A stupid death.
The next day the last pony I wanted to see rang my bell: my father.
He never shows up, he never writes, he doesn't even care about his granddaughter, but yesterday he went up to this landing, put his butt on these cushions and calmly told me:
-Yesterday your sister died.-"
Lightning Dust's golden eyes settled seriously on Rainbow Dash's astonished ones, after which the pony took another sip of ginger.
"You must know that my father has always been an unreliable type, he has sown around daughters he never cared about. He has two younger ones, one that I have never seen since forever and another worse than the devil. Four days ago I discovered that I had another sister, older than me, that I had never known and was none other than the ruler of the Crystal Empire!"
The ginger nearly choked Rainbow.
"But how?! From what I understand Cadance was an orphan adopted by the Princesses!"
"And no, she is the daughter of my father and a poor mare whom he deceived and left. This chick must have abandoned her or she must have died too, seeing how things went!"
"But I can't understand… Why didn't your father show up to Cadance again? I mean, as far as I could see, she never mentioned her parents. She was a princess, he would've been able to exploit her position of power!"
Lightning glared at her.
"Oh, do you think he hasn't thought of that? He told me he wanted to try to reconnect with her when she was a young girl, but he didn't want to upset her harmony. Hooey, I say. He wanted to manipulate her in his favor, she being the protégé of Celestia, but the latter was very attentive to my sister and didn't often leave her alone, so he didn't even try to meet her, because he understood that it was like getting honey from a parasprite. On the contrary, he would also have put himself in a bad light with the sovereign."
"Whoa..." Rainbow managed only to say, finishing her drink.
"Never mind, Wind Rider didn't need to meet his first-born daughter to fall out of favor..."
The glass flew out of Rainbow's wing, who snatched it back, a few hundredths of a second before there were shards of glass on the floor of the room.
"W-W-What? Wind Rider?!"
"Yes... If I decided to enroll in the Wonderbolts Academy it wasn't only for my competitive spirit, but also to attract my father's attention, as he had been precisely a glory of that institution. He and my mother have been married for seventeen years, and they broke up because he was expecting a daughter from another mare. Even when he was still living with his family he was distracted, too busy with himself to give something to somepony else. Apparently, I am truly his daughter... Selfish, unable to empathize, in love with my bravado... My mother tried to hold down the fort, but she too had to work and her job as organizer of the Equestria Games took her much time. I loved my father. I wanted to be like him when I grew up, a Wonderbolt glory. I did it for him, to prove my worth. When they threw me out of the Academy he shrugged and simply told me that I would've found my way. You understand? I would have preferred that he shouted at me, that he had a reaction of hurt pride, that he cared, in short. Instead nothing. He remained calm not because he trusted me and my future, but because he didn't give a damn. He had his travels, his autographs, his adorable little girls who had just started school, there was no longer room in his thoughts for a shoe as old as me. With the passing of the years and the breakup of that new family as well, I gave up. I could have become the empress of the whole world, but nothing would have changed for Wind Rider. He is the only idol in his life, he pursues nothing else."
Lightning Dust had spoken like a river, and Rainbow Dash's mouth had opened a little with disbelief: she had touched with all four hooves the complicated character of her former flymate, but she didn't imagine that she was Wind Rider's daughter, despite the obvious similarities.
Many, too many questions about her were piling up in Dashie's mind, so she asked for a glass of water and told her the one she considered the most urgent:
"Who are your younger sisters?"
"The oldest is called Spur, she is now fourteen. She lives with her maternal aunt and uncle and her cousin Biscuit.
Her younger sister is thirteen years old and is a stone statue. Her name is Cozy Glow."
This time the glass really shattered to the floor. What kind of family did Lightning Dust have? For that matter, Princess Cadance too!
"Sorry for the glass, but what you're telling me is unbelievable!"
"I know, it's a real crap..."
"But why did Cozy break away from her family and go around wreaking havoc? Couldn't she have stayed with her sister?"
Rainbow's last question was more to herself than to Lightning Dust. She couldn't forget what that demon filly had been up to.
"What do you want me to tell you, Rainbow, my father's second wife is a nutty in Ponyville Hospital. Her daughter most likely took it from her."
"What?"
"My father met her at his Wonderbolts retirement ceremony. Screwy, that was her name. A huge fan of him. A master in pretending what she wasn't, in pushing back her madness with pills and who knows what other devilry. When I saw her for the first time she looked like a pony among many others, I didn't imagine that she was hiding mental disorders. My father told me that she was having scary fits, where she behaved like a wild animal, bit the curtains and pillows and drooled, and she had become progressively unable to take care of herself and the girls. I believe that his desire to break up and take my sisters to Screwy's brother and his wife arose from this."
"And then?"
"Still haven't understood the ditty? He parked them there and that was it, in this case we were talking about the daughters of a mentally ill mare, and my father feared that they might have inherited some mental illnesses as well, so imagine if he wanted to throw himself into that trouble."
Rainbow Dash lowered her head. It was all so different from her golden foalhood, surrounded by her parents' affection, sometimes too present but always solicitous and protective. On the other hoof, Lightning Dust's life had always been characterized by the contrast with an absent and disinterested father, a bulky shadow. That didn't justify her, she might have acted differently, but it sure cast a different light on her mistakes.
"Mom…"
The door leading to the bedrooms swung open and from it appeared the same little figure the girls had noticed at the funeral. Lightning Dust's daughter.
She was a small earth pony with a pleasant cornflower-colored fur. Her short straight hair faded from dark golden blonde to orange to pale yellow.
Her eyes, sweet and meek, were the color of sand.
"Thunderquake, honey, did you wake up?"
Rainbow Dash was struck by the sweetness with which she addressed the child.
"Quakey, I want to introduce you to Rainbow Dash, an old friend of mine."
Wonderbolt did not reply to Lightning's erroneous statement, also because she seemed to have gotten quite close to the other pegasus after all those confessions.
While her little girl was having breakfast, the Washout decided to tell her the story:
"It's just me and her. Thunderquake's father is a fan of mine, but I haven't told him anything about her, nor am I going to involve him in our life."
Lightning paused to look at Dash's face.
"I know what you're thinking, I can read it on your face. You might think that I am the same as my father and I can agree with you about this, but I would never dream of separating myself from my daughter, I love her too much, she is the good part of me."
The blue pegasus watched the little girl eat with appetite. Her mother continued to speak:
"You know, Rainbow… I'd like to take Thunderquake to her relatives… I'd like her to know her uncle and cousin. Could you please warn Princess Twilight for me? My little one is four years old and I wouldn't want her to repeat my foalhood without fixed points and roots. On the other hoof, even with my mother, the relationship is not good, so much so that on the doorbell you read Dust and not Harshwhinny. It's a surname that I invented when I went to change it, to symbolize my desire to reduce the past to dust."
Lightning now looked beaming, with a defiant smile on her lips.
Rainbow Dash rubbed her chin, undecided what to do, but then she promised.
On the way home she felt like she was immersed in a soap bubble, traffic noises came muffled and Lightning Dust's family tree, more intricate than the roots of a palm tree, gave her a pounding headache throughout the journey on train.