((Prompt: This music.))

I like it up here. It isn't as complicated as it is down below.

Way down there, among those hills that look like dimples and the buildings that look like matchboxes, it's complicated. Noisy. Full of ponies that shout and whisper and nag and cry.

Up here, it's really simple. Just keep flapping your wings, and you keep going up. That's all there is.

I suppose the wind makes noise up here. You could even call it loud, since there's nothing up here to stop it from ripping by as fast as it wants to. It pulls and tugs on me hard; it's strong, and it's cold. But the wind doesn't really care if I go where it does. If I were to just glide and let it carry me, soon enough it would just change direction again.

It isn't really noise like the noise down on the ground is. It's not complicated. It isn't eggheads that don't know as much as they think they do. It isn't clingy pink bakers that think I'm leaving for good. It's simple, just the sky roaring at anypony that will listen. I'm up here, so I'll listen.

My chest hurts. That's okay, it's supposed to hurt when you're up this high. The air gets thin up here, you have to breathe more. My lungs ache for more oxygen. There's oxygen down lower, but that's where all the complication is, too, so I just keep flapping. Keep going up.

Equestria looks so small from here. I could cover up all of Ponyville with just a coin. Canterlot is just a dollhouse stuck to the side of a lump of rock. Even Cloudsdale, which is supposed to be pretty high itself, is just a clump of white fluff, not really all that different from all the other clouds I have between me and the ground. I can look over to the east, and I can swear I can almost see Fillydelphia peeking over the horizon. It's not that far. I can span the distance with just one hoof. The quiet voice with teary eyes was wrong, the distance is smaller than she says.

It needs to be smaller. I keep flapping. I keep going up.

My ears throb. They've already popped a couple times on the way up, and I guess they're going to do it again. I'm gonna have a major headache when I go back down. When I go back down. Yeah, I guess I am gonna have to go back eventually. Not now, though. Right now, I'm staying up here, above all the horsefeathers that goes on down below. Above unicorns and farmers that completely missed the point of what's going on. Above letters from the Wonderbolts about year-long training camps on the other side of Equestria.

Up here, the blue starts to drain away. I see the sun and the moon hanging in the sky, and it feels like I could just keep flying off to one of them instead of returning to the ground. I probably can't. Twilight says they're a lot further away than they look, that you can't get there without magic. But it sorta feels like if I just keep flapping, just keep going up, I could do it.

It's really cold up here. Moisture rolls off of my eyes and it's frozen into ice crystals before it manages to fall more than a few feet from me. My chest can't take much more of this thin, freezing air. I need to turn around soon, go back down where there's warmth and oxygen. Where there's all this complicated noise. I need to go back down and explain to them that a year isn't forever, that there'll be breaks when I can take the train back and hang out again.

But I think I'll stay up here just a little longer.