My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Page 101

“Ha ha! Sorry 'bout that. I was just practicing some of my tricks!”
They were on a road just outside of Ponyville. A deep and earnest rain that morning had made the roads muddy, so when Rainbow Dash had come crashing down out of the sky and tumbling into some poor filly, a cascade of mud had whipped up. Rainbow dash – still quick and agile even after a crash – narrowly avoided the mud, which only meant that it would splatter all over the innocent crash victim. This cute, young filly, now drenched in mud, whose name was...
Rainbow Dash saw the filly now, as if for the first time. Even with mud dripping down one side of her face, she was beautiful. Her coat was an unusual teal color, with an even more unusual pattern of white lines spiraling up her legs. Her mane was made of waves of glossy white fading into a deep, dark violet. Her eyes... her violet eyes were staring right at Rainbow Dash, who began to blush.
And then Rainbow Dash gasped because she realized she had just crashed into and laughed at a pony she didn't even know.
“Uh uh uh, uh I'm so sorry! Here, um, here I'll help you,” she muttered, stumbling over her own words as she recalled the last time she had tried to help a muddy friend of hers. Dash flew into the sky and was back in an instant, bringing with her a dark cloud. She set it beside the nameless filly, and trotted around in a circle above the cloud, careful not to stomp to hard. Rain fell, not too light of a drizzle nor too strong a downpour. The filly smiled as she took her cue, stepping into the rain and letting the mud wash off her body. When Dash asked if she was ready she nodded, and Dash put away the cloud.
Dash looked at her hoofs, slightly embarrassed, as she said, “Hey, look, uuuuuum... I think I can dry you off, but I've never done this before so it could mess up. So, can I...” Dash looked up and saw the filly giving her the strangest look – and it never occurred to Dash that she had no idea what drying her off would entail. Regardless, Dash heard her make no note of dissent, so Dash began a winged gallop, circling the wet filly. Within moments Dash had created a gentle tornado, a cyclone of wind calmed to the point of enveloping the filly with warm, dry air.
Rainbow Dash looked over the result, anxious as ever. “Your mane is a bit ruffled, but...”
“You are a marvelous pony, you know that Rainbow Dash?”
Rainbow Dash almost jumped, so startled she was at the filly's first words to her – and then her blush deepened to a conspicuous red on her coat of blue.

–

The filly's name was Patchwork. Patchwork had grown up in Ponyville with her single mother and her older brother, but then her family moved to Fillydelphia to be with her grandparents. Rainbow Dash hadn't recognized her all grown up. Back when they knew each other, they hadn't even acquired cutie marks yet. Patchwork's mark was a brown square that looked like it was stitched to her side.
“I got my cutie mark after watching a really scary play in the Fillydelphia theater,” Patchwork said, as she walked alongside Dash back to Ponyville, “Because when I slept that night I had night terrors, night terrors so bad that I somehow tore up the quilt I slept with. This quilt was my mother's before she gave it to me, and it was her mother's before she gave it to her, and so on and so on for countless generations. It's incredibly important to our family. It's a beautiful thing, truly, a melding of many different patterns that swirl together and... well, you'd have to see it. When I woke up-”
“What happens when there's more than one daughter?”
“What?”
“I mean, if you had two daughters. Who would get the quilt?”
“Oh. Our family never has multiple daughters, there's only ever one. I think one time there was a woman who only had sons, so she held on to the quilt, but then out of all the grandchildren she had only one was a girl, and so the tradition held.
“Anyway, when I woke up the next morning I was horrified to find the quilt torn, and even more horrified later when my mom told me that I had been the one to tear it. She had held me during the night, trying to calm me. When I started to cry just then, she held me again, and she explained that there was nothing to be upset about. She explained it was about time for me to make my own addition to the quilt anyway. That day she helped me sew a piece of patterned cloth of my choosing onto the quilt. When we finished, I was overwhelmed with this sense of – this sense that I'm a part of this big, wonderful family, and that my ancestors will always be with me, not only through the quilt but also watching over me, and I was so happy that I got my cutie mark.” She smiled brightly at Dash. “It also turns out that I love to sew, and to weave. Any sort of weaving, actually, even basket-weaving, which I plan to do here in Ponyville because I heard you gals are lacking a basket weaver. But if you gals didn't already have somebody to sew and patch clothes, I would want to do that.”
Patchwork is a beautiful name. This was the thought that filled Rainbow Dash's mind at that moment. She would have never before thought that something as mundane as “patchwork” could be such a beautiful name, but now she realized it was.
However, Dash knew that Patchwork hadn't always been her name.
“So that's when you stopped being called Sweetie Pie, Sweetie Pie!” Dash teased, chuckling.
This time it was Patchwork's turn to blush. “I always hated that name, and I always knew that the day I got my cutie mark would be the day that I change my name, and so I did. My mom still calls me that though, and it's actually sort of sweet.”
They trotted along for a moment. “So, Rainbow Dash... what's your cutie mark story?” the teal filly asked, with a sly grin spreading over her face.
Rainbow Dash exploded with excitement, her own grin fierce, as she sprung into the well-versed tale of the Sonic Rainboom.
Rainbow Dash never noticed that Patchwork was leading her through the longest route possible to her home in Poneyville, hoping to extend their evening of conversation. Dash would have been pleased, had she known.