I took my sweet time flying back to the lockers. What I was doing could hardly be called flying. More like crawling on the ground in the air. It was getting dark. I couldn't face them.

I think it's weird how the sun and the moon always come up, but you never notice since you're too busy to be paying attention to stuff like that. You blink and all of a sudden the moon is up in the sky and the stars are out. You blink again and it's morning. You got barely any sleep and feel like hay.

I took a spot in the cloud stadium for a view of the starry night sky, and I just watched the moon inch its way up while far away in the distance, the sun dipped below the horizon as it set.

It's like watching grass grow, or looking back on the years gone by. You never notice until it's too late. And then you start feeling a little depressed and prop an elbow up at your windowpane, staring out and sighing forlornly with music playing in the background pretending you're in a movie. I do that sometimes.

I think we look for things to make us sad because nothing makes us sad anymore. What was there to be sad about? And then I remember that I'm Soarin' (still single, by the way! And totally hot). Reality comes crashing down, because then I remember how well off I am, and how many other ponies would do anything to be me.

I pulled off the hood of my flight suit, fixing my goggles so that they pulled back my mane.

Like that Rainbow Dash. It was hard to forget her. I mean, how could I? She'd saved my pie after all.

I stood back up, twisting my back a little. A few flaps of my wings were enough to get me through the underpass beneath all the cloud bleachers. The locker rooms, empty. The lights flickered when I came in, and the only sound of my hooves making soft plods on the cloud floor punctuated the eerie silence.

The showers came on. Lukewarm water washed over my body, quickly turning hot. I dunked my head under and closed my eyes.

"Race you!" I taunted, running forward for a head start.

"Soar-in'!" Spitfire called in a whiny way. "Not everything has to be a race!"

"Oh." I slowed down until I was back next to her. "Okay."

She stuck her tongue at me. "Race you!" In a fiery streak, she flew off, flapping her wings.

"H-hey!"

Saturdays were truly something to be treasured. No teachers or parents to stop us from flying too fast. Watch out Cloudsdale, Soarin' and Spitfire were on the loose!

The water shut off with a squeak. With a toss of my head I flung off most of the water on my mane and shook myself dry like a dog. The other guys got so mad when I did that, heh. Normally, our manes were all messy and spiky because we spent most of the time flying, so the wind kept it like that. I usually kept mine slicked back, using my Wonderbolts goggles to keep them in place. I decided to keep them dangling around my neck.

When I left the stadium, Cloudsdale had gone dark. Well, sort of. Even after the sun went down, the lights came on. Cloudsdale never slept. It was always awake and ponies would still roam the streets to experience the night life. I passed by the weather factory.

I could have been one of those poor saps, working in the factory 365 days a year making different kinds of clouds.

I shook my head, trying to change the subject in my mind.

Clouds were weird. How did they work? Even I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. Pegasi used clouds for almost everything! Our entire city had been built by hoof using clouds. We even used clouds as a nice bed occasionally. We obviously could walk on them, probably something having to do with magic (or how light our bones were), and could even mold them into different things. It's kind of like playing with snow, except it doesn't melt. You could pack it together, or stretch it apart and it'd come apart like cotton candy.

I kept my wings spread, riding the current as I banked, taking a different direction. I'd changed my mind. The night was still young. I flew down onto another street and landed, trotting the rest of the way to a sizable cloud house.

I rang the doorbell politely. Five seconds later, I rang it again. And again and again and again...

"Alright, hold your horses!" The grumpy resident tore the cloud door open and glared. "Oh. It's you."

They slammed the door shut. I rolled my eyes, pounding my hoof. Pegasi only knocked to be polite. I could have just have popped my entire body through whenever I felt like it.

"Thunderlane," I hollered. "Open up. It's Soarin'."

A pitter-patter of hooves. The door came flying open again and I was tackled by a grey blur, landing painfully on my back.

Ow.  

"Uncle Soarin'!"

The charcoal Pegasus with the electric-blue mohawk sighed at the doorway. "Rumble, he's not your uncle."

"Thunderlane, don't be dumb!"

I grinned. "Yeah, Thunderlane, don't be dumb." I glanced down at the small colt, grinning and mussing his mane. "How's it goin', Rumble?"

The precocious colt beamed and hugged me tight. I tried to get back up, but Rumble had me pinned.

"Rumble, you can let go now."

"Uh-uh," he mumbled into my chest, shaking his head.

I grabbed him and held up at arm's length. He shot back, clinging to my leg. I sighed, trying to pry him off. He was like cling wrap. I eventually gave up and let him ride on my back.

Thunderlane let the both of us in. As usual, their house was a mess.

"New interior? Nice."

Since pegasi could mold clouds, it was inevitable that they would want to build their own houses and be their own architect. The only problem was that it wasn't regulated, and there was a huge problem with random houses floating all over the place. Nowadays, all you had to do was purchase some property space and build it yourself or hire somepony else to do it.

"Nice?"

I said, "Yeah. It's, uh, spacious."

The entire place was an absolute mess and in disarray.

"You didn't come over here to admire my hoofwork," Thunderlane said. "What's up?" We bumped hooves, like colts usually do.

"Just came to say hi to Rumble."

"Hi, Uncle Soarin'!" Rumble wrapped his hooves around my neck.

I smiled. "And I thought I'd just visit you."

Thunderlane rolled his eyes. "What gotten you all sentimental?"

"Best buds can't hang?"

He stared. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"What's gotten into you?"

"You keep saying that," I said irritably.

"Soarin', we can always hang. We're best buds, but..." he trailed off, pointing at a clock, "it's almost nine. What about the Wonderbolts?"

I didn't want to talk about the Wonderbolts. "Yeah, yeah, everything's swell. Wonderbolts, practice," I said breezily.

"Oh, that reminds me. it's almost nine. Rumble, time for bed."

The colt on my back stuck out a tongue. "Make me."

"Rumble," Thunderlane said, his tone dangerous.

Rumble immediately dashed off upstairs. Thunderlane waited for a few seconds before turning back to me.

"You look tired."

"I do?"

Thunderlane pointed. "Bags under your eyes. You been sleeping?"

"I dunno," I said, looking away.

"C'mon. I think we still got a pie in the fridge."

We trotted into their cramped kitchen. I sat down. Something squeaked underneath my haunches. I pulled the toy out from under me. It was a stuffed toy, more specifically, me in my Wonderbolt suit and goggles.

"Hah, Rumble loves that thing. Sleeps with it every night."

I smiled. "Gave it to him for his birthday." I slicked my mane back, arching my eyebrows. "I'm pretty handsome."

"Oh please."

Thunderlane set a plate down in front of me, a slice of apple pie with some whipped cream on top. I blinked a few times, not feeling too hungry. I pushed it away. I swear, his jaw dropped to the floor.

"No thanks."

"Dude."

All of a sudden, Thunderlane was up in my space, touching a hoof to my head. "Are you sick?"

"Get offa me!"

"Are you dying?"

"Thunderlane! I'm fine!"

"You don't want pie?"

"Nah."

"Soarin', be straight wit' me for a sec. What happened?"

I sighed and pretended to think it over, looking around. "Spit got mad at me today."

"What'd you do?"

"I messed up during one of our routines. I got...distracted."

"That's it?" He looked relieved. "You still like pie, right?"

"Thunderlane!" I snapped, snorting angrily. "I was thinking a lot today, and I thought about you and Cloudchaser. You guys going steady?"

"Four months," Thunderlane said proudly, puffing his chest. "She's awesome. Best filly I ever met."

Personally, I thought she put on too much makeup.

"Congrats," I said glumly. "You have a special somepony."

"You don't?" he asked, surprised.

Now that was just offensive.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothin'. Just surprised is all," Thunderlane stammered.

"Why?"

"Well, I mean, you're Soarin'."

"So?"

"You're a Wonderbolt, dude! You should be rollin' in girls!"

"I want something more out of a relationship than that," I said.

"Well, who do you like?"

"I don't like girl."

He gave me a questioning look. "Whoa."

"Spitfire's the only one I really care about," I said.

"Then ask her out."

"You make it sound so easy."

"It's not that hard. You walk up to her and ask, 'Hey, you wanna go for a cup of coffee', and take it from there."

"But what if she doesn't feel the same way?"

"Whoa, whoa. Slow down. I said ask her out to a cup of coffee, not asking her to be your girlfriend. Those are two completely different things."

"Ahhhh," I said, waving a hoof, "she always says she's busy."

He gave me a look. "How long have you been crushing her?"

"I don't know," I said hastily. "Depends at how you look at things."

I tried not to look at things.

"Since last week, or maybe since flight camp," I admitted.

"That's...not healthy."

"Shut up."

Thunderlane socked me. "You should be out there, looking for somepony who really likes you."

"That narrows it down a bit."

"That's the point of this game, Soarin'."

"What game?"

"You know. The game. Trying to find that special somepony."

"Did I lose the game?"

"You only lose when you want to," Thunderlane said wistfully.

Pause. Our eyes locked. We stared.

"Whoooooooooa," we both intoned together.

"Deep," I added. "Well, night." .

"You should move on, Soarin'."

"Some help you are," I said, jumping off the chair.

So in the end, I got my best friend from flight camp lecturing me on how relationships worked. I didn't know why I came there in the first place. Ponies go to their best friends to hear what they want to hear, and I didn't like what I heard.

I landed on the balcony of my penthouse, sighing. I propped an elbow up on the edge, studying Canterlot from my view. A penthouse was already too much. In my high school days all I ever wanted was that dream that every other pony thought they wanted. The fast life, the party scene. I got my penthouse, and the parties were fun at first. Now I just had a pool and concierge service I rarely used.

Most of the other Wonderbolts had multiple penthouses, sometimes in other cities. Sometimes they'd even pay rent even though they hadn't been back in years. Some had vacation home in Canterlot, or even in Manehattan or whatever. Maybe a ranch in Ponyville, just because it looked nice. Huge mansions the size of castles. I didn't see the point. They had to spend even more money to fill the place up with junk just so that it wouldn't look so empty, spend money on giant parties with thousands of ponies just to make it feel alive.

Big places made me feel...lonely. Lonlier than I already was.

Isn't it funny, how you can be surrounded by your teammates and ponies who act like they like you, but they're never there? Thunderlane, now he was my best friend. Spitfire, she was too. I wanted it to be more.

I slid the glass door open. It was still the same. Nice, clean, and if you looked carefully, you could even see the white cloud floor. A mess. It looked like a tornado had raged through the apartment.

"Just the way I like it," I said sarcastically.

I never got around to cleaning it.

A pizza box on the coffee table, some of my Wonderbolts uniforms on the floor. The counter top of the kitchen was a cluttered mess, much like the rest of the place. It was an apartment, but bigger. Mine was styled really simple. They had all kinds of interior styles you could pick from, and you could have someone come over and remold your home. I kept mine really simple.

"Real cozy."

I popped open the fridge. Nothing. I wasn't hungry anyway. The last thing I remember doing was just flopping onto my cloud bed. I had a headache.