With the gardners long perished, the castle garden was an overgrown tangle of wild roses and tangled thickets of nodding blooms. The flowering trees drooped low, weighed down by their fragrant burdens as well as drapes of deep green ivy which trailed in a clear, winding stream of water. It started in rivulets, welling from the mouth of a long-forgotten fountain worked into the castle wall, carved to look like a blank-eyed face. In the midst of it all, a rainbow-haired pony wandered among the banks of violets, treading gently with his powder blue hooves as he paused to munch on a flower here or there. His name was Rainbow Dash.
To describe him (as Sparkleworks had) as "vapid and innocent" was somewhat unkind, but also somewhat apt. Rainbow Dash was both extremely nice and extremely forgettable . . . the kind of pony who goes unnoticed at a party, and who no one can recall, one way or another, the day after.
In addition, he had frequented Cotton Candy's café long before the ponies had discovered that her favorite ingredient, the dubious clusters of colorful fruit nicknamed "rainbowberries", caused short-term memory loss. As a result, he was now vague and forgetful as well as uninteresting. Really, the plague was the best thing that had ever happened to Rainbow Dash; only in a herd of a dozen or less ponies could he hope to be noticed. And even then, he seldom was. But Rainbow Dash was simply too dense to notice his exclusion or the way his compatriots tended to roll their eyes when he said something in his bright, cheerful tone. Sparkleworks said he was "tragically boring and mercifully stupid", and if that wasn't entirely accurate, it was at least fairly close . . .
Rainbow Dash waded through the burbling stream, staining the cracked tilestones with wet, half-circle hoofprints when he reached the other side. Clipping along at a slow trot, avoiding the tendrils of ivy that caught at his heels, he worked his way over to the strawberry patch. The plants were of the wild variety, with tiny, dark red berries clustered around low, fluted leaves and cheerful white flowers. Not, Rainbow Dash thought with regret, as tasty as the rainbowberries, which Sunsparkle had quite determinedly dug out of the garden herself and then burned. But still tasty. He knelt on his forelegs, the better to look for the ripest berries (and avoid slugs), and was just about to help himself to a particularly juicy looking bunch when he found himself nose to nose with Sweetberry.
"Oh!" He pushed himself to all fours again. "Hello, 'Berry! Sweetberry," he amended hastily. Sweetberry hated nicknames.
The mulberry pony tilted her head with half-closed eyes, deciding whether to take offense. At last she said, "Hello Rainbow Dash."
"Hello!" he repeated. He was always nervous around Sweetberry, as she took offense easily if you said the wrong thing, and the list of things that offended her was too long for Rainbow Dash to easily remember. (Sparkleworks had tried to help. "Look, just shut up when she's around, okay? Don't say anything. Just accept that there's no way you can get on her good side; she's a total bi--" Unfortunately, Sweetberry had entered the room just then and with an expression like a summer storm, and Rainbow Dash had never discovered what else the orange stallion was going to say. Maybe if Rainbow Dash asked him again, now that Sparkleworks' black eye had mended . . .)
Having lost his original train of thought, Rainbow Dash thought it was safest to start over again. "Hello!"
"Yes . . . you said that already."
"Did I?"
"Yes. Three times."
"Did I?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Ummmm . . ." He cast about for a safe subject. "Nice weather we're having!"
There was a long and significant pause before Sweetberry finally committed herself to an answer. "Yes." Another pause. "I'm going to go pick berries over there, okay?"
"Okay," Rainbow Dash agreed in relief, watching her pick up her wicker basket (faintly stained purple on the interior) and move away with dainty, determined steps.
The blue pony was just about to return to the strawberries when something an energetic orange, pink, and white blurr collided with him. "Oops, sorry Dash!" the sun-symboled mare laughed, bouncing to her feet as Rainbow Dash shook his head, dazed.
"Hi Sunny," he greeted her, pushing himself to a sitting position. "That's all right." He liked Sunny Daze, a cheerful, happy pony who generally bounded from one topic to another so quickly that he didn't have a chance to get lost. It was hardly like talking, for example, to Kimono. "What have you got there?" he added, noticing a telltale bulge in her cheek.
In answer, Sunny Daze leaned down and spit out something round that rolled on the weathered cobblestones. "That!" she giggled, showing remarkable enthusiasm for what looked (to Rainbow Dash) to be a saliva-covered rock.
"Ah . . . and that's . . . what is that?" He tilted his head.
"That's what I have to find out, silly." She winked. "I thought it was a marble, but Sparkleworks doesn't think so--"
"Ah. Sparkleworks. Right," Rainbow Dash said hastily.
"--but whatever it is, someone carved stuff on it, see?"
"Hmm." Rainbow Dash did see--strange symbols wormed around the blue-grey stone, sunken into its surface. He didn't recognize any of them and just looking at them made him feel slightly dizzy, as though his eyes couldn't align to them properly. He broke his gaze away and said, "What are you going to do about it?"
"I thought I'd ask Sweetberry about it; she knows all about that kind of thing," Sunny Daze said breezily, picking up the object in her teeth and once again pushing it into her cheek with her tongue, thus giving her a lopsided chipmunk face.
"That's a good idea," Rainbow Dash agreed. Sweetberry tended the library, often complaining that no one would help her with the task, then coldly demanding if the others "didn't think she was doing a good enough job" if they offered to help. Rainbow Dash really didn't understand Sweetberry at all, but there was no denying she knew more about history and books than all the other Ponyvillians combined. Remembering his earlier conversation with her, he nodded across the garden, to an area hidden by a flowering hedge, and said, "I think she's over there."
"Well, come on then!" Sunny Daze grinned over her shoulder.
"Oh." Rainbow Dash was taken aback at first, but then he returned her smile. "Okay."
Somewhat surprised, he watched as she shouldered her way through the bridal wreath hedge, catching minute white flowers in her tangle of sunset-shaded hair. Rainbow Dash himself, choosing to trot on the path around the hedge, ended up on the other side at about the same time that Sunny Daze burst through, shaking off a shower of flowers and twigs.
"Hmm," she said, glancing around at the strawberry beds clustered with red fruit even as they sent inquisitive, vine-like runners exploring the area around their domain. "Where is she?"
"Um . . ." Rainbow Dash looked around, noting a remarkable absence of mulberry ponies with purple and teal hair. "Well, she was here," he said, feeling foolish.
"Well, maybe she's still around here somewhere."
The mare started down an old path, half-covered with soft velvet moss. Again the blue stallion followed, ducking under boughs of lilacs (deep purple, lavender, and white) that casually draped themselves in front of him, having long forgotten the feel of shears. The path meandered around banks of early blooming irises, tulips cupping their red petals skyward, and golden daffodils trumpeting the triumph of spring. Rainbow Dash closed his eyes, breathing in the sweet fragrances, and as a result ran smack into Sunny Daze when she suddenly stopped.
"It's a dead end," she said, not bothering to address the fact that he'd just rammed into her. "But it's worth it."
Rainbow Dash, taking a few steps back, had to agree.
In front of them, half-wreathed by morning glories, was a small, old-fashioned well. Beside weathered stones, soft with moss and lichen, that formed the base of the well sat a splintered bucket. It had not been used in some time, judging from the blue flowers twined through its rusty handle. Everything in the little alcove was cool and hushed. The birds sang, but softly, almost reverently.
"I've never been here before," Rainbow Dash said, somewhat surprised because he often wandered through the garden.
"It's a well," Sunny Daze said in delight, but softly for once. She reared to rest her front hooves against the grey-blue stones as she peered down. "A wishing well."
Rainbow Dash, sticking his own head down to watch the distant gleam of ripples far below, had to agree that it probably was.
The clip-clop of hooves behind him shook him out of his reverie, and he looked towards the garden path to discover a young pony, all purple and pink and yellow, standing there. As usual, she was trying far too hard to look solemn.
"Have either of you seen Sweetberry?" Sunsparkle asked. "I really need to speak with her . . ."