Starfire felt his eyes glazing over, and his eyelids grow heavier and heavier, but every time he closed his eyes, even for a moment, a softly accented voice shot out of the darkness, sharp and quizzical.

“Starfire, dear chap, I’m not boring you, am I?”

And so the stallion’s eyelids would reel back open with an audible snap, fast as greased lightning, and he’d disguise his startled cough as best as he could. “No, no,” he would reply each time. “No, no.”

This always seemed to please the reclining Pegasus that lay below him, as he’d give such a wide mouthed smile each and every time, and smack his lips contently, wetting them for whatever string of information he was to divulge in next.

“That’s good,” would be the response, “So, as I was saying...” And so he’d continue along his previous point of topic, about this and about that, which turned out to be fairly one-sided, with little in the way of response. And then the cycle repeated anew, and conversation was far from flowing for he was forced to stop every thirty seconds to make sure his one-pony audience was paying ample attention.

Starfire had no idea what Weatherstorm was talking about by this stage, little more did he actually care. It was something irrelevant, of little consequence, something about the writing processes or editing or his childish fixation with the fictitious fantasy novels he would frequent, and a stallion of his caliber and of his profession should be far more engrossed in the educational tomes of learning and understanding that Starfire himself would consider a good read; but then, that was but his own opinion.

Starfire once more swallowed another yawn, and hoped that they didn’t all accumulate in his stomach, a big bulbous ball of trapped air, and explode out of his every orifice in one horrendous release. He was tired of course, that is, if such an assumption had not already been made until now.

Sleep was gold-dust to him as of late, as rare and in want as immortality itself, and now the bags under his eyes had bags themselves. It wasn’t the gruffness and roughness of nights on the road that kept him from restful slumber, however: sure, he was used to a comfy city bed in a bustling Fillydelphian city community so having only the hard dirt ground to lay his head upon and utter deathly silence to turn in to was an odd and foreign experience, but even these small details were not what reduced him to the shell of his former self that he was now. No, what kept him from his rest was the nightmares. Unrelenting, unforgiving, the most horrific scenes that his mind could not even dare to conceive, for his imagination was not nearly vile and twisted enough to spawn such visions.

They'd been seeping into his dreams as of late, no matter how pleasant, like a plague, a parasite, feeding off of his emotions; they came fast, and hard, and more becoming more and more frequent. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw it: his family’s business, up in flames. The horrified expressions on his parents' faces as the fires and the darkness engulfed them were forever fresh in his mind, burned into his retinas. They were always there, the shadows: always. They held no permanent form, just some shapeless, shifting, faceless thing, an unidentifiable abomination of a presence. Even as he sat there, accompanied by a slightly-tipsy reporter in a fairly comfortable home, he felt the sickly fingers of the unknown, dreamy foe slither through his mane and fondle his shoulders. It was a great incentive for keeping awake, anyway. He had no wish to re-visit those horrid, ghastly scenes.

But then, why did his head droop so? Why did his eyes grow so blurred, his brow so heavy? Why could he not control his yawning? Could he simply not shovel enough air into his mouth at one time, had his eardrums not stretched themselves amply? It was interesting, and worrying, to him that his bodily functions were far beyond his control. He was winning a losing battle against his own fatigue.

He had to concentrate. On something, anything. His wildly wandering eyes found Weatherstorm’s faded form once more. The stallion was finishing his story on some unspecific subject matter, likely about himself. “How,” he paused to yawn. “Did you find this place, again?”

The question seemed to puzzle Weatherstorm. “This place? As in this very place?”

Starfire fought to keep his mind focused. His stomach still hurt like heck, but slowly, the pain was fading and he did not yet know whether this could be attributed to his worsening sleep deprivation, but for whatever reason it was, he was thankful. “This very place.” He repeated, as though that was not made obvious the first time he had inquired.

Weatherstorm placed a feeble hoof to his chin. “I’m afraid I cannot divulge in much information, sir, for I was rather unconscious for the better part of the experience. I had a slight run in with some gargantuan eels of questionable motives and they seemed adamant of removing me from my life. They tried their best, bless them, but all they gave me was a slight bonk on the old melon,” he tapped his skull, “and a ruddy broken wing, the fiends.”

Starfire shivered visibly. He was growing unnaturally cold. “You don’t say.”

“I do say, indeed.”

"You haven’t a clue as to how you ended up here with Zecora, then?”

Weatherstorm shook his head at once. “Heavens, no. I heard snippets whilst fazing in and out of my comatose state, and I like to think myself intelligent enough to figure out the correct sequence of events fairly accurately.”

Starfire shifted his position, leaning forward on the cardboard box which sighed softly under his weight, as though waiting in utter anticipation. In reality, he was growing numb and couldn’t feel his legs.

“So there we were, Derky and I,” the Pegasus began, setting the scene with a magical gesture of his hoof, “At Ghastly Gorge, the great split in the Earth, some say the pit to Tartarus itself. Ever been there yourself, old chap?”

“No.”

“Well,” Weatherstorm stated, “You’d love it. There we were, Ghastly Gorge, the great split...”

Starfire wiped his eyes lazily. “You’ve already said this part.”

Weatherstorm shrugged nonchalantly. “Have I?” He asked with half hearted sincerity. “I must have, for you say I have.”

He turned his mug upside down, peered inside the upside-down glass, and licked at any stray droplets which landed upon his soft blue muzzle. “To cut what would be a fairly long-ish story considerably shorter, one of the blighters managed to prang me, and gave me a right concussion. It’s scary, when you feel yourself falling into the unknown like that: body giving way, darkness fading in, the ground approaching fast and hard and knowing there’s not a darned thing you could do about it.”

“I...” Starfire fought away the darkness even as he sat there, afraid that at any moment, he too would find himself falling into the land beyond the waking eye. “I can imagine.”

“But at the same time, I was more relaxed at that moment than I have been in years,” continued the winged one, “I heard Derky screech out my name like a wailing banshee-pony, and the horrid cry of a Quarray eel puncture my bliss, and instead of the cold, unforgiving ground, I felt myself land atop a warm blanket of fur, ever so gently. Wings stretched out over my head, and I daresay I must have looked quite the fool, laying sprawled upon dear Derky's back like that, but I was certainly wasn’t in a position to worry about such things. He called out once more, panicked and desperate, and shook my person around like a ragdoll, and he felt so close but sounded so far away. I have no idea what happened after that, for I was out cold like a sack of potatoes.” There was something decidedly un-poetic about that last analogy. “I awoke here, upon this very sofa on which you see me now. My wing was crushed to high heavens, my head pounding like a drum, my body mummified in these accursed bandages.” He tugged at them and lost, tangling himself instantaneously in the white strips, and certainly looked the part for Nightmare Night.

Starfire bit his lip and watched the Pegasus flail around desperately, entrapped in his own bindings, like a fly in a spider’s web. With a strained groan, he pulled himself up and gently rescued Weatherstorm from his predicament. It took but a gentle tug, and the white sheets floated to the floor like streamers, or toilet roll, depending on one’s view. Weatherstorm gave him a cheery, tipsy smile and thanked him from the bottom of his heart.

“I hate to be a burden on you, dear Starfire, but since you’re already on your hooves, would you mind if you fetch me another...?”

Into the kitchen area of the hut he trot, or rather, stumbled. Weatherstorm managed to make himself look mildly concerned, at the very least. He winced, clutched at his now bare, bruised chest, and inquired, “Oh my, dearest Starfire. Are you quite alright? Whatever is the matter?”

Starfire felt dazed, and little white stars exploded through his vision, but he kept himself steady. He took a moment to catch his breath. There was something terribly wrong with him, and he wasn’t sure whether this was a relatively new development or had always been with him from the moment he’d placed his first step into the forest. Whatever the case, he felt queasy. “I’m fine.”

He returned, composed, and handed Weatherstorm the newest victim to his unquenchable thirst; the zebra had enough apple cider to last a year, it seemed. It was truly bizarre.

The first gulp was long and steady, and ended with a satisfied mumble. “That’s when I met Zecora. Truly remarkable soul, to let two strangers into her house like that. I heard them talking, in secret, when they thought I was asleep: of how Derky had carried me the whole way through Ghastly Gorge, how he’d dodged eel after eel and risked his life to save me, how he’d brought me here, just by chance. And so I was cared for, and treated with the utmost hospitality.”

“You’re lucky to have a friend like Derky, then,” was the reply.

The journalist was silent for several seconds, and the only sound that could be heard was the ticking of an invisible clock, yet to be unpacked and welcomed into its new abode. “Yes,” he finally answered. “I guess I am. As are you.”

There was something about that last remark which stayed with Starfire, and burrowed itself deep into his heart. It both cried out joyously yet throbbed painfully, skeptically.

“And how did Cananor... oh, excuse me, CANDI and yourself find your way here?” Weatherstorm inquired, taking another swig of his drink which turned his cheeks a warm, rosy peach.

“Zecora found us. Protected us from Timberwolves. She saved all of us, in a way.” Starfire flopped back down upon his seat, and sat still. He still felt as though there were eyes in the trees, onlookers in the oval windows, faces in the wind. He dearly hoped this wasn’t the hallucination portion of sleep deprivation. He had no desire to see what he had already seen outside of the dimension of his dreams. “She said she heard the commotion. A funny co-incidence that she should be the factor which reunited us.”

Weatherstorm gave him a perplexing stare, complete with dripping white beard. His lips were puckered together, solemn. “Coincidence? Our reuniting was no mere coincidence, sir, not by a long shot. No, what brought us our aid, and each other, was nothing less than fate.”

“Hardly,” Came Starfire’s fatigued reply, “I don’t believe in fate. Just coincidence.”

Weatherstorm’s face dropped like a ton of bricks, and was twice as unsightly. Cider and dribble coated his chin. “Oh, but my dearest friend, you simply HAVE to believe in fate! You must!”

Starfire almost laughed outright at the prospect of being named Weatherstorm’s ‘friend’. He found it fairly remarkable enough that the Pegasus should act so natural in spite of their recent falling out. “I believe what is backed up by scientific fact. Personally, I think fate is utter nonsense. There’s no scientific proof to back up such an argument.”

“Not everything in this boring, mundane world can be attributed to mere scientific fact. The world seems so colourless if you hold such a philosophy. But there is true magic out there, my chum, and in all of us. You ask how I know that fate exists? Because of what exists in here.” He tenderly placed a hoof on his chest, draped with the remnants of his bandages.

Starfire tried to focus on the smiling-faced journalist’s chest, rising and falling softly like the smooth waves of a still ocean, calming to the soul. It made him feel sleepier than before, and he cursed Weatherstorm for doing so. Biting his lip a little harder than he had planned to, the taste of copper flooding his mouth, he kept his eyes as wide as possible. “What,” he asked, skeptically, disguising his unintentionally patronising tone, “Your heart?”

And Weatherstorm could keep a straight face no longer. His laughter erupted through the single empty room, and rebounded against the boxes in plentiful supply. It startled Starfire so much that he was rather close to the ground by the time the laughing hyena coughed, choked a little, apologised for his outburst, wiping the tears from under his eyes with a dramatic swipe and a dab of the embroidered cloth that was oh-so-not-his. “My heart? Are you getting symbolically deep on me, Mr Starfire? What I was pointing to was a belly-full of cider, of course! I’m tipsy as all-else and rambling on about complete nonsense, and that’s all the proof I need.” He laughed again, and indeed, his cider consumption was likely a major factor of his nonsensical tone as of late. “’My heart.’ Pfft. Believe you me, it’s rare that I should get such a response from anypony else. I’ve grown to expect little, and ready myself for disappointment.” His tone grew once again sombre, and he settled himself in his seat.

Sucking in a panicked yelp, Starfire visibly shivered as a chill whispered along the back of his mane, and he turned in his place, convinced that he’d witness the dark slimy tendrils of nightmarish proportions caressing his person. He could see the shadow from his dreams, that mess of evil conjuring, lurking in the stack of containers that teetered behind him, nestled within the crockery and the loose Polystyrene, squeezing through the unopened gaps in the packaging. He saw it slither through the cracks, and slide over to him, breathe down his neck with breath as icy as death itself, and scrape its foul fingers down his back.

No. Of course not. The window lay slightly ajar, and a draught of cold night air was blowing through, and stroking the fibres of his fur. Nothing more.

His sigh of relief was audible, and he was sure that Weatherstorm heard, but the Pegasus said nothing. Creaking and groaning more than the settling floorboards under his hooves, Starfire sluggishly dragged himself over to the open window and tugged it closed. Beyond the glass lay the many layers of trees, Zecora’s private garden, all around. Every now and again he’d see the wind blow a crack in the leaves, and he saw the shifting clouds that rolled thunderously above the hut. They were darker than the sky itself, grey and miserable, almost as though it were going to rain soon. Impossible, he told himself, for he knew that the weather teams never ventured this far into the wilderness, and certainly not during the panic and confusion which was currently running rampant in Equestria. But he had heard the tales; of how the unnatural forest’s weather worked on its own, free from pony intervention, and whilst it did seem a little ridiculous thinking about it, it also made so much sense, and it wouldn’t be the first old pony’s tale to be proven reality in the last couple of days.

He’d wager that they’d pass soon, and make their way over to the mountains of the Everfree, where Candi, Derky and Zecora were headed. The trio had been gone for some time, but how long, he knew not. Several hours seemed to meld into mere minutes, and minutes meld into hours simultaneously. The packaged clock, boxed and safe from prying eyes, mocked his efforts with every tick, and kept its secret safe, concealed.

The room was still chill now, and the window pane rattled as the strong winds crawled under the gaps. A strike of flint and rock and the sizzle of a flaming match lit up the dull room, and Starfire threw the lit stick into the frame of the ornamental fireplace. He’d never lit a fire by using his hooves before, but until this elusive ‘cure’ was in his possession, there was little else he could do with his lack of horn. The wood, lying dormant in the hearth, was ablaze at once, sending great flumes of black smoke up the chimney funnel and into the atmosphere. Warmth flooded the room in a heartbeat as the wood crackled and popped, but Starfire didn’t feel any more at ease. The flickering patterns that the flames cast upon the walls and ceiling kept him cold, and clammy.

“So then, why do you believe in fate?” Inquired the scholar.

The journalist merely shrugged, tapped his noise, and winked. “I guess I have my reasons.” He finished with a sly smirk. He seemed satisfied with the newfound source of heat, and he stretched his hooves out behind him, to where the fireplace was, and yawned.

Half an hour passed. Starfire grew more fatigued. Weatherstorm grew merrier. With every mug of sparkling cider that went down the hatch, the slower and more slurred his speech became, and the content of his conversations became more obscure and cryptic. His laugh did seem to improve somewhat, however: a high pitched cackle that could only be described as deliriously feminine.

“Starfire,” the Pegasus would begin, each and every time, always accompanied by a resounding hiccup, “Mr Starfire, I’m sorry about the way I behaved a few days back. I am, old chap.”

And Starfire would forgive him each and every time, and when he would repeat himself less than five minutes later in his intoxicated stupor, he’d forgive him again. But Starfire’s heart wasn’t in it, and he knew that neither was Weatherstorm’s. It was half courtesy of the copious quantities of the apple cider when now resided in his stomach, or rather his brain, and the other half the journalist’s pride, and his false morals and deceptive gentlecoltly appearances.

He must have fallen asleep for a few seconds, for he woke with a frightened start when he heard the gentle voice whisper his name, and he was sure it was the shadow figure which haunted him, hunted him, and was returning to finish him off once and for all. But lo, he awoke to find a solemn looking Weatherstorm returning the glaze with bloodshot eyes.

“Starfire.”

“Yes?” The unicorn sighed and straightened himself up.

“Are you awake?”

Starfire mustered the last of his energy to roll his eyes. “No,” he strained, “I’m still asleep.”

“Well, wake up.” Weatherstorm demanded.

He went through the motions. “What is it?” He inquired. He could barely have cared.

“He landed perfectly, as always...” Weatherstorm began, with genuine drunken enthusiasm, and waved his hooves around dramatically. They swiped the stacked boxes at the side of the sofa over at once, but he didn’t seem to be aware, or care.

“Wait,” Starfire struggled to find speech. “What are you talking about?”

Weatherstorm whinnied in outrage, as though it should have been obvious. He swung his brimming cup and sloshed the liquid along the floor. “Why, my dear Starfire, I’m telling a story.”

“Well... WHY, exactly?”

“Because... oh, I’m not quite sure, exactly. Be quiet and listen, if it pleases you.”

Starfire groaned. He just wanted to SLEEP, but alas, he knew he could not until the others returned to this place. He sucked up his courage, readied himself, and allowed Weatherstorm to continue. “Go ahead then.”

“Thanking you, Starfire. Now, where was I, exactly...?”

Ah yes, that’s correct...

He landed perfectly, as always, with a soft plump atop the rolling white clouds. The dark mane of the Pegasus took on a life of its own as it was cast back, gloriously, floating in the wind. He stretched his light Welkin blue wings, powerful and commanding, above his head, a confident smile smeared across his face. He was handsome, of that there was no doubt. His mane and tail, still willowing in the breeze, took a few seconds to settle and become still. Then he removed his eyewear and the cheering broke out at once.

The Pegasus was you, I take it, Weatherstorm?

My, my, whatever gave you that idea, Starfire?

“Soarin’!” Coach Crusher cried, his dark eyes alight with pride and admiration. He zipped over, blowing back the still hollering fans, and landed beside the blue colt. The stallion peered down upon the radiant little figure below him, and the radiant little figure stared up at the massive hulking giant above him. The contrast was vast, but one could tell at a glance that, young as he was, Soarin’ would grow up to be just like his mentor.

“That phenomenal performance was just the reason why you’ve been picked to attend the Wonderbolt Academy!” The coach continued joyously, giving the much smaller Pegasus a friendly punch on the shoulder, laughed heartily, and drew him close beside him.

Coach Crusher was a big stallion, in every sense of the word. In fact, he was so huge and hulking that a new word needed to be invented just to put his considerable height into scale: gargantuous seemed like a nice fit. He wasn’t just tall, but wide, with broad shoulders and broader wings, like a walking mass of muscles. His wing span stretched for miles, each yellow feather rippling with raw power, and his voice sounded akin to a sonic boom, throaty and deep and heavily accented. It demanded the attention of all who surrounded him and held them in a trance until he finished speaking. He had a rough way about him, and he was both gruff and sharp in his tone. He held no kindness for wimps, and layabouts, and slackers, and working as a school flying coach in Cloudsdale was the perfect way for him to vent some endless anger. His cousin, a young earth pony in the Ponyville guard, shared many of his traits; and that pony would end up becoming known as Captain Blue Brigade, Cananor’s father, carrying on the family honour.

Removing his red and white patterned cap and wiping the sweat of victory from his brow, he called out to his audience; a class of young Pegasi, fillies and colts alike, stood in total silence, huddled around the sky-stage. They looked both terrified and exhilarated, eyes wide in wonderment. “You should all learn a few things from this colt, foals,” Coach Crusher beamed. His name wasn’t ACTUALLY Coach Crusher, naturally. He was born as Kindness Drops, but of course, such a delightful sounding name did not merit a stallion such as he, and after several displays of his violent attitude, the nickname of Coach Crusher stuck, and he’d made it his own. “This is the face of a successful flier. Such power, such poise, such control. He’ll be a Wonderbolt some day, you all just wait and see.” He gave the grinning colt a wink. “You’re gonna go far, kid.”

And then his moment of kindness was over in an instant, and, clearing his throat, he barked, “How many of you maggots think you can fly as well as that performance that my prize pupil Soarin here gave us, hmm?” His eyes searched the sea of faces below him like spotlights, weeding out the weeds.

A light, cobalt blue colt slunk back into the crowd as far as he could. Slick sweat gushed down his forehead and dribbled along the length of his round, chubby face. He knew that he’d have to face the music sooner or later. It was the day of his flying exam, after all. But he didn’t want to go: not yet. Let some other headstrong fool be the first up. He held no sympathy for headstrong fools.

Coach Crusher’s eyes lit up when he spied the blue-coated colt, almost camouflaged, nestled into the bulk of the crowd. A cruel grin seeped along his features, and Weatherstorm knew at once that all his hoping and praying was in vain. A malevolent, muscled hoof shot out in his direction. “You there,” he croaked, “Weather, isn’t it? Soarin’s brother.”

The coach did know his name, of course. He yelled it at the top...

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait up. ‘Soarin’s brother?’

That’s what I said, isn’t it? I-isn’t it? I do hope I didn’t stutter.

As in, THE Soarin?

Do you know many others, Starfire?

He’s your brother?

Indeed he is. My big brother, in fact.

THE Soarin from the Wonderbolts? The very same Soarin?

The very same pony. I thought that much was obvious. Is there a problem, Starfire?

No, but... I mean, he’s famous!

I hadn’t quite noticed that. Thank you for the validation. Are you a fan, perchance?

Of the Wonderbolts? Well, not particularly, but still... Having a famous brother must be exciting.

Is it? I’m learning quite a lot today, it seems. May I continue with my story uninterrupted, perchance?

Sorry.

Coach Crusher did indeed know his name, of course. He yelled it at the top of his voice quite regularly until it became routine. It wasn’t the colt’s fault that he wasn’t the strongest flier in all of Cloudsdale.

“Weather Storm! Storm, can you hear me?” The coach once again boomed. He wasn’t the sort of pony who was particularly fond of repeating himself, and he spat out the three syllable name with as much contempt as a teacher could legally shower a pupil with.

The crowd dispersed at the mention of his name, and he was met with the glaring silent eyes of all of his fellow classmates. The colt’s blue face drained as white as the patchwork of clouds he was standing atop and he wished, he just wished, that he’d fall through and meet the ground below, swallowed up whole into a fluffy white abyss.

Murmurs spread like wildfire, and certainly cranked up the heat like one. One voice, then a chorus of whispers, and the voice of the coach parted all over chatter, “Come up here, Weather. You’re first.”

The blue Pegasus nodded silently, and slowly cantered up to the stage, nearly tripped on the top step, and found himself up against the podium. It stood at twice his height, casting an evil, eerie glow overhead, which settled on Coach Crusher’s darkened form, and caused his wide-mouthed smile to glow a nasty shade of white. The flying instructor gave a gesture with his head and, summoning his bravery and his dignity, Weatherstorm hoisted himself atop the podium with a single bound.

The laughter broke out even before he had hit the ground. He feverishly opened his eyes and found himself in a rather unusual position; one leg up and over the towering platform, his other limbs strewn to and fro in a confused tangle. His mane swept along his face, his wings flapping furiously, his rump risen majestically for the whole crowd to see. The coach’s laughter rose above the rest, a mocking, bellowing jeer, which showed no compassion or remorse whatsoever. He roughly grabbed a bundle of Weatherstorm’s tail and yanked it upwards, dangling the colt at eye level, allowing him to soak in the fear in the youngling’s eyes, before hauling him like the trash he was onto the podium. Weatherstorm landed with a thump, and a pained grunt.

“There you go, princess,” Coach Crusher chuckled, patting the colt on the head, “Don’t disappoint, now. You don't want to fail and have to repeat the year. How embarrassing that would be.” A false pretentious smile was flashed, courtesy of his mentor, and then the heavyset heckler took a step back, and Weatherstorm was left to his own devices.

“Think fast!” Came the voice. Of course, Weatherstorm certainly did not think fast enough, for the object which had been hurled in his direction was not caught by a deft hoof, but in fact only ceased in a forward motion when it collided with Weatherstorm’s face. It hit with a wet slap and knocked the fellow senseless.

This merited another round of laughter and mocking. The callous coach chuckled under his breath. One of the bigger kids jeered, “Never mind goggles, Weatherstorm needs glasses!”

Soarin’ blushed, just a little bit, but it didn’t dampen his attractiveness. “Sorry, I guess,” came his awkward half-apology. “I didn’t think I threw them to you THAT hard.”

Weatherstorm’s face glowed red from where the rubber-strapped, bronze-rimmed flying goggles lashed out around his cheek. He valiantly fought back tears. The pain was throbbing and unforgiving. He mouthed 'It’s okay,' and then he gulped, sliding the eyewear over the back of his head, and resting the cold metal upon his muzzle. Wearing glasses was a foreign experience to the foal, and he was sure that he’d rather not make any item of such attire a permanent fixation of his person. The entire courtyard fell silent as he stepped up to the start line, a red velvety ribbon, embroidered with gold. It was peculiarly lavish for a school flying exam, that much was certain.

Sucking in a sharp breath, he turned, trying to disguise his violent shaking, to his classmates. They offered no support, nor did they condemn him. They merely watched in silence. He looked for his only friend amongst the faces, to no avail. In a final effort, his eyes fell on those of his brother’s. Soarin’ gave him the smallest of smiles, and whether it was truly genuine or not, he hadn’t the faintest idea. He felt so much bigger than his sibling at that moment. He felt bigger than them all, a million miles high above them all the audience, the family, the entire city, standing as still as stone atop his mighty marble pillar, but he felt half as confident.

“Well, Master Storm? We’re all waiting…”

The wind stopped for pause, as though for breath, when Weatherstorm’s small wings timidly unfurled. He felt so exposed, so frightened and alone and inferior, all those gawking eyes pressed on him, and so he thought no longer on failure or misery and performed the bravest feat he had performed in his short life.

He jumped.

He remembered little after that, for his eyes were pressed shut and his heavy breathing caused the protective eyewear he wore to steam and fog up the moment he left the podium, just as he completely fogged over the entire sordid memory as a whole. It was the first time he’d felt that feeling of falling; that feeling of helplessness, of gravity tugging at your insides, stomach tightening, blood rushing to the head and swamping the mind. He couldn’t scream, for screaming requires some semblance of thought and at that moment his mind was a blank. But, unbeknownst to him, the wind gathered under his outstretched, feathered appendages and the feeling of falling changed into something more, much more. It was the feeling of weightlessness. The sensation of effortlessness.

The little foal was flying.

The entire thing struck him as odd. He’d never flown before – never. No matter how hard he tried, and tried, and tried into the late hours of the night, no matter how much taunting he’d faced from his coach and his brother, he’d yet to have lifted an inch from the ground.

He opened one eye cautiously, then the other. And here he was, flying; not falling, but flying. He felt the cutting wind slide over his aerodynamically shaped wings with ease, and trail behind him in a stream of white lightning, and the pressure pushing against his goggles, burrowing them deeper into his brow. He saw little of any consequence on his flight: clouds, of course, and he sailed over the white-wash marble ancient buildings, their architecture grand and distinguishably elegant with their shining columns, which lined the sprawling, floating streets. He might have even seen the Equestrian Weather Corporation rainbow factory in the distance, high above even himself, the huge flumes of grey smoke willowing from the stacks protruding from the wispy warehouse roof, and the sparkling fountain of multi-coloured magic spewing over the edge of the city, and mingling with the waterfalls, before poofing into nothing but vapour.

But the experience was brief. Had he flew for even a second longer, heck, he might have felt a smile emerge from his worried features, aged before their time with stress. There was a slim chance, a very slim chance, that he may have even enjoyed it, but it was over in what seemed like a millisecond.

He wasn’t aware of how fast he was moving, but it mattered not, for he failed to see the brazen flagpole bending in the gusty wind, or the flag perched atop said flagpole, proudly blowing along with every swirl of its extended, metallic arm. It snuck up on him so fast he hadn’t time to register a reaction. Coming in a blur of blue and white and yellow and red tarp, the flag muffled his screams at once and encased him in darkness, his eyesight obscured by black cloth, pressed tightly against his face. With his eyesight extinguished, every other sense became oh-so-much-more keen, and he was aware of every bump. He cried out when he crashed into a column, which crumbled into confetti as he was carried through the centre. He screeched as he smashed into the sturdy steel statue of a steadfast stallion, his steely stare silenced as its hardy spherical head was severed from its shoulders, sifting through the soft clouds. And he wailed when he walloped into the wall of the Weather Outlet pipe.

Most intimidating to him was when he heard the soft ‘plumpf’ as his little body sifted through the layers of clouds that made up Cloudsdale’s base, and, even as blind as he was at that moment, he knew that he was falling to his doom. His heart stopped altogether, and he felt himself fall to the foreign earth below.

But this was not, whatever the little blue colt might have thought, the end. The wings of his guardian angel were far softer and kinder than any cloud he’d felt in this harsh, white world, and he barely felt the landing at all. He didn’t dare remove the cloth that obscured his vision. He preferred the suffocating blackness to the humiliating white.

“Hold on… I’ve got you…”

Had the patchwork flag been swiped from his nose, the tears in his eyes would have been made apparent to the crowds of gawking onlookers as he was chauffeured back to the starting platform by his disembodied rescuer. It could cover his face, but never his shame.

“Are you okay?” Derkington's squeaky voice was like music to his ears then, smooth and delicate and caring. And Weatherstorm felt less than a spec of dirt, for he knew what was coming.

Coach Crusher tore the makeshift mask from Weatherstorm at the same time that he tore him from Derky’s back, and dragged him to the floor with a strangled grunt. The world span and shifted, and as the colt lay on his back, looking up to the very bluest of blue skies with teary eyes, the heavens gave way to a scowling face, overflowing with contempt. Hate incarnate, and upon it was a red cap.

“That was a foolish thing to do. You could have severely hurt yourself doing that.” the face began, looking down with eyes as glaring and scarlet red as the cap they sat under. “Pathetic attempt.”

Pathetic.

Pathetic.

The word was spat out like a gunshot, and left a ringing in his ears, drowning out whatever other vile comments continued to spew forth from the fat, worm like lips. Weatherstorm's head was light, and his eyes rolled lazily, dizzily in his throbbing skull. Pathetic.

The ringing grew to a crescendo. His body was numb. Derky might have aided him to his hooves. He thought he saw the coach shaking his head at him. His classmates must have cleared a path, made an isle as he stumbled past them towards the bleachers. Did Soarin sit with him, talk with him, or didn’t he? Everything was a blur, of lights and colours and shapes and that insufferable ringing, and the laughing and the mocking and the white, white, so much white all around, brighter than a star yet as black as coal.

Pathetic.

He told himself he wasn’t. But alas, he wasn’t a very good liar.

The rest of the school day went like a flash. He was lost in his own thoughts, his own little bubble, his own little world, disconnected from everypony else. Safe and secure in his own mind, armoured against the hurt and the pain and the never-ending failure. But that word, that one malicious word, kept seeping through his defences, jabbing at the weak spots of his psyche, and burrowing into his very soul until the flame of determination was extinguished, dampened and moist with sorrow.

“Weatherstorm, are you okay?”

It took the colt quite some time to respond. Lifting his head, he found the school sports field empty, devoid, but for the brown fur and ginger mane before him. The pony’s mouth was twisted in confusion and worry, and his big lime eyes, wide and unblinking, shimmered like emeralds. Weatherstorm nodded, just a slight movement of the head. He said nothing.

The beginnings of a smile slid into place along the lines of Derkington’s steady muzzle. “You didn’t answer for a while. Everypony has gone home.”

And he was right. The wind picked up and whistled through the skeletal gaps in the bleacher stands, one of the long, cheerful banners that adorned the side of the seating hung loose and jostled like a ghost amidst the solemn graveyard. There was not a soul, but for Derky, and himself.

“Are you coming?” The Pegasus continued, “Our parents are here to take us home.”

Weatherstorm silently consented, and they crossed the white, gossamer playing fields with each other, and nary a word passed the blue one’s lips.

“It’s actually really peaceful here,” Derky said, “When there’s nopony around, I mean. I don’t like the others. They’re mean.”

Weatherstorm seconded that motion with a tilt of his head, (for they were both outcasts in this city, the two of them. Two weird, little outcasts, strange little leftovers) but he shivered when Derky said he, 'disliked the coach most of all, more than any of the others.'

“He’s mean to us more than anypony else. He made me go straight after your turn, um... everypony watched, and Coach said that you...” Derky stopped there, his mouth divulging more information that he morally should have, and he was smart enough to recognise this. Weatherstorm saw the colt slowly bring his wing closer to his side as though to conceal something from visibility, and he spied the little white roll poking out from underneath the feathers, and the little red ribbon that sealed and bound the certificate. Weatherstorm said nothing, and pretended not to see anything at all.

Their parents were at the sheening, golden gates that separated the schoolyard from the street, and there they were congregated, engaged in conversation, so much so, that they failed to notice their children approaching. The sun, huge and magnificent (Weatherstorm always thought it close enough to touch, if he tried hard enough, but he yet to achieve this) was setting now as the day faded slowly to night, dipping behind the rolling waves of clouds, and casting the most magnificent orange glow across the bronze dyed skyline. Weatherstorm knew at once that that he’d sat on that bench for far too long, but not once did his parents go searching for him.

Mr Bellray was a slim and trim sort of pony, his fur as light creme as his business-stallion’s cut mane, and his waistcoat as black and cold as his beady eyes. It was his voice that floated over to the youngsters’ ears first, for he was a loud and pretentious pony, and he made sure his voice was heard. “…Can’t have any more slip ups this year; Profit is down 2.53% and if it continues, there’ll have to be some heavy budget cuts. Perhaps even more layoffs, redundancies. And believe me, that’s the last thing I want, but remember: it’s your job on the line. If things continue as they are at present…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.

Weatherstorm’s father laughed, his face jovial, but his eyes were rigid with fear. “It won’t come to that, sir,” he spoke as formally as he could. He never was very good at disguising his thick, common, foreign accent but in the presence of his boss, he still made an attempt to smarten his dialect. The result was something humorous indeed. “I have utmost faith in my team, and we the utmost faith in you. We’ll pull this around, sir. We at weather station are dedicated to cause.”

“See that you are,” Mrs Bellray butt in, with a flick of her expensive red fur scarf. Her cantaloupe-orange face told the full story: she no more wanted to be with this rowdy working class family than Nightmare Moon wanted to be banished to the moon. She cared not for her formalities (they were awarded only to those she deemed worthy, and of the same calibre of herself) and so she spoke to the ‘gutter trash’ as though she were talking to a stain on the sidewalk. Her voice was akin to that of a squealing pig, and her front teeth were more prominent than those of a squirrel’s, and nopony was certain whether there was a chin under those pearly white peckers. “Else my husband will toss you onto the street and you’ll shine horseshoes for a living.” Her eyes remained narrow slits, and her head remained snobbishly high. Why was her son taking so long? She hoped he’d fallen through the clouds and they were finally shot of him. She disliked the colt as much as she disliked his little mute, blue commoner friend.

Weatherstorm’s father shifted uncomfortably from hoof to hoof. He said something then, but the shifting wind stole his voice and carried it off into the distance.

Weatherstorm frowned intently at the couple as he drew closer to the gate. He liked Derky, of course, but his parents were repulsive indeed. They were a living testament that having great wealth did not make a great pony, and as was the trend with self-made ponies, they looked down upon those that belonged to the social class they had clawed and scratched their way out of. It was fortunate that their son shared absolutely none of their ‘qualities’.

“I can’t hear what they’re saying,” confessed Derky, “Are they being horrible again?”

Weatherstorm nodded slowly, and although he didn’t say a word, there were a thousand unspeakable adjectives burning in his flickering eyes.

“Ayup, there’s our lad now.” It was Weatherstorm’s mother that spoke this time, turning back towards the approaching duo. She was short and round and cerulean-coated with a short faux hawk of blonde, but not at all beautiful, and one could tell from a single glance that she wasn’t quite all there.

Derky passed the swaying gates first, and as he expected, he wasn’t greeted with a hug and a kiss as normal parents would to their foal; in fact, he wasn’t greeted at all, but for a sharp, “Oh, there you are. You’re late. Time is money,” from his father who drew his embroidered pocket watch from his waistcoat and, dangling the glaring yellow clock by the chain, he tapped the face with an impatient hoof. “Well? Spit it out, boy! Did you pass your flying exam or didn’t you?"

“I doubt it dearly,” remarked his mother, poising her chin to the steadily retreating sun. “Our son can barely walk in a straight line, least of all fly.”

The foal heard, and the foal hurt, but he held his tongue and, like the centrepiece of a magician’s act, he materialised his certificate from under his wing with a half-smile.

"Be quick about it, boy. Quickly now. I've a shareholder's meeting in half-an-hour, don't you know." His father barely reacted as he yanked the bound paper from his son’s grasp. The red seal was torn and cast aside, and the parchment unrolled. It was very white, Weatherstorm noted. Like everything else in this city. White and white and white, so bright, so bright it hurt.

Mr Bellray’s lips moved to the rhythm of the written words, his beady, cold eyes, stony as coal, scraping along each and every line, and Weatherstorm was sure the friction were to cause the sheet to burst aflame there and then. But it did not and, when he was finished, the suited stallion simply released his grip on the scroll and allowed it to re-roll with a snap. “Hmm,” he grunted with a hint of surprise and an air of superiority, “That'll do. Good."

Derky was unaccustomed to feeling two emotions at once, just as he was accustomed to his father lending him a civil word at all, but when he heard his father say that, he felt both happiness and sorrow; it was dually the nicest and saddest sentiment he had ever received from his distracted-dad, and the tears that sprung up behind his big, emerald eyes were unsure of their own origins, and of which emotion provoked them first.

“Let’s not flatter the boy,” sneered his mother harshly as she too scanned over the results, “He barely scraped a pass.” She craned her head downwards and spoke, this time directly to the colt. “Remember what it means to wear the name ‘Bellray’, because it's important to keep up appearances, and scraping passes just won't do. Not at all. Unless you actually start showing some strength, and…” The word ‘ruthlessness’ had so nearly escaped the dungeon of her mind, but she crammed it back in and discarded the key, as she was in the presence of the working class, and gossip amongst the working classes spread like wildfire, tarnishing her respectable name. Derky had gotten the message, of course: she didn’t want him showing any kindness at all in this life, especially not to one such as Weatherstorm, a colt she deemed inferior and unfit to play with.

The Storm family stood huddled beside the other open gate, and they pretended not to hear the ruckus which transpired behind their backs. Weatherstorm slinked over, with his head bowed down towards the soft, silky white clouds that the grand city was built upon. They were very white, like fresh snow. Weatherstorm had never seen snow, but for it being deported with the weather teams in huge shipping boxes, and he’d heard it was very white indeed. White as clouds. White. White.

“And how did you, my son?” Weatherstorm’s father asked, his plump baby-blue face squeezed into a friendly smile. Out of earshot from his employer, his accent reverted to its natural state, and his shoulders drooped as the tension left his body. "Gut, oder, nicht so gut?"

“I’m positive he's done just fine, dearie. Soarin passed on his first attempt, last year, remember?” The mare placed a tender hoof on Soarin’s head, nestled between the husband and wife. The elder brother looked up and sighed contently, his enflamed ego growing by the second. “I bet his presentation helped you today, didn’t it, laddie?”

“Well, WetterSturm? Where is certificate? Can your mother and I see?” His father inquired, and he too placed a hoof on his elder son’s back.

Weatherstorm’s head slowly lifted, but what he saw struck him in the heart like a knife. The trio just looked so… RIGHT together, the sun glimmering with the final embers of day behind them. All three of them, standing there, so alike, smiling at him, happy families. He knew deep down that his parents loved him, but sometimes he felt as though they had nothing in common with him whatsoever, and maybe they’d be better off without him. Soarin was the son they wanted, and he’d rather spare them the constant disappointment. His head was lowered again, and a ball developed in his throat, tightening, compressing. The clouds were very white today.

“Lad?” Asked his mother, her smile fading, just a little. Mrs Bellray yelled something behind her back, and the wind carried Derky’s hushed whisper. “Where is th’ certificate, honey?”

Weatherstorm coughed, but the clot in his oesophagus didn’t move an inch. He tried to find the words but couldn’t. “I-I-I…” He began but that’s as far as he got. “I… I…” The youngster stammered, and the youngster stuttered, just as he had done for as long as he could remember, but his labours simply refused to bear fruit. He’d faced ridicule time and time again for his stuttering, but he couldn’t help it; the words simply refused to leave his mouth, and it infuriated himself most of all. Slowly but surely, he began to recline into himself, to the point where he barely made an effort to try to speak at all. “I…”

“It’s okay, son.” Cooed his father, glancing casually sideways to his employer, deep in argument with his own son. His words were muffled, but his face were fierce and his stern forehead crinkled. “Tief Luft Holen. Relax, and tell me what you want to say.”

“I-I-I…”

Soarin spoke for him, as he always did. Weatherstorm’s voice was his voice. And that infuriated him all the more. “He didn’t pass his exam.”

His father bit his lip. His mother sucked in a sharp breath of air. It sounded unpleasant. Mrs Bellray scolded her son, and Mr Bellray nonchalantly, distantly, mummered in agreement. Somewhere in the distance, in the bustling streets, a door slammed shut. There was laughter, a female’s soft laugh, and the echoing bawl of an infant, the whistling roar of the wind. Weatherstorm’s cough. Nervous. The crimson blush of embarrassment.

“O-of course,” continued Soarin, only now noticing that the tears that glistened in Weatherstorm’s eyes were now falling to the ground like snowflakes, “He tried really hard.” The sporty Pegasus may not have been a particularly learned individual, but he knew his brother well enough to know that he was in emotional pain, and so he tried to amend things.

And even though the world continued to carry on as normal around him, Weatherstorm was met by silence.

It was his mother, this time, that was the first to speak. “Never mind, Weatherstorm. We’re… not all perfect. Some of us just take more time learning to fly.”

“Ach, just so,” agreed his father, “Everypony is different, and some ponies are suited to different things. It’s all part of growing up, and discovering your talent.”

Their smiles, like lavender and honey, mingled into one and almost caused the colt to choke. He knew that they’d bring cutie marks into this: they really wanted him to get his in flying, just like Soarin. They had hoped he’d join the Wonderbolt Academy just like his brother was to in a few years’ time when he came of age, but it was seeming less and less likely that Weatherstorm would ever be accepted.

Not that it was of much concern to Weatherstorm, of course, but to his parents, having both their children in the Wonderbolt team was their ultimate dream, and he felt like every time he let them down, it crushed them inside. They’d named him Weatherstorm in tribute to the original famous member of the Wonderbolt flying squadron, such were their aspirations of him.

‘This city is obsessed with flight,’ He thought. ‘It’s sickening and cruel, and I want no part of it.’ And that’s what he dearly wanted to tell them, that he never wanted to work on the weather teams like his father or join the Wonderbolts like that long-gone distant relative of his. He wanted his own destiny to be his own. That is what he wanted to tell them. But words were a rarity.

“No sweat,” said his mother as delicately as she could, “You can always try again next year, can’t ya, laddie? Tell him, dearie.” She ordered the last of that sentence to her husband, and her soft touch on his shoulder tightened.

His father’s white smile stretched, intensified, “But of course he can,” he beamed with a dwindling fire in his heart. “We can get much more training between now and then.”

How very white the clouds were today. How very white.

“Now,” his mother clasped her hooves together with a resounding crack and smiled her pretty smile. Her false smile. “How about we go get something to eat, as a treat for… trying so hard?”

“Pie?” Soarin’s eyes lit up like lanterns. “Can we go get pie?”

“Of course we can, dearie.”

“Apple pie?”

“Whatever pie you want, honey.”

Weatherstorm hated pie. He hated apple pie most of all; the powder that dusted the top of the pastry reminded him of the clouds, or the snow he had heard so much but seen so little of. He saw little up here: he only saw the clouds and the sky.

And that was it. They walked off together, the happy trio, with their plastic smiles and their false support. They sang together as they left the grounds, as a unit, a family, their voices one and the same, into the white streets, and the golden gates swayed as they passed.

Weatherstorm stood alone. He didn’t follow: it didn’t seem appropriate, for they weren’t his parents, and Soarin wasn’t his brother.

They may have acted like it, they may have loved him like it, they may have been genetically identical, but they were not his family, and they never would be. They were so different in nature that he truly believed he was adopted. They wanted Soarin, not him. And Weatherstorm didn’t know where he belonged.

“Your family are walking off without you,” Derky fluttered softly over and spoke barely above a whisper of wind. “Aren’t you going with them?”

Weatherstorm shrugged, but after letting out his bottled sigh, he nodded and forced a smile. “Y-y-y-ye-yeah.” He stuttered. It was strange, but he could find his words with Derky, and Derky alone.

“I really like your family,” the brown coated colt continued, glancing quickly behind him and catching a glimpse of his father angrily tearing his pocket watch from his pocket. He swung it to his face and tapped the transparent face once more, then coughed loudly, deliberately. The ginger-maned colt mouthed something in return, and his mother rolled back her foul eyes and tapped her hoof impatiently. “Uh… anyway, I have to go. My parents want me, and my mom doesn't want to be seen in public with me if they can help it… so, bye I guess.”

“G-g-g-g-…b-bye.” The cobalt pony retorted, “S-s… see y-y-y-you at sch-school t-t-tom…” He stopped and tried to regain his composure, but what Derky said next literally left him speechless.

“Tomorrow?” The young Pegasus finished the sentence for him, but his face spoke of confusion, and a hint of melancholy was prevalent in his tender dialect, as though the word held some hidden meaning, buried and forgotten. “I didn’t tell you?”

Whatever it was that was so special about the day proceeding the current, he had indeed not told Weatherstorm, and the gentle look of a distant sorrow in Derky’s face told him at once that the news was dire and sombre. A part of him had no desire to hear, but he knew, somehow, that he must.

“I’m moving tomorrow. Away. From Cloudsdale.”

Weatherstorm was unprepared. It came quickly and sharply, like a fanged dagger in the side, and caught him in the stomach with a sickening stab. His head reeled. It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. He refused to believe it. It was a lie, like everything in this city. A veiled imagining, a conjured fabrication, smoke and mirrors, mirrors and smoke as dense and concealing and white as the fog and the clouds.

He tried to speak, but his mouth was numb and his throat dry and barren like the sands of Saddle Arabia, not that he’d ever seen the place. “W-w…” He coughed and wheezed, his face growing pale, pale and white like the clouds of Cloudsdale.

“Away from here.” Derky answered the unasked question. His face, in comparison, with glowing with compassionate crimson red. “To Ponyville. It’s a little town, quiet. On the ground. I’ve always wanted to see the ground more often. There's animals down there.”

That made two of them. But Weatherstorm was unconcerned with such things. How could he possibly be now? “For-for-…” The word ‘forever’ seemed incomprehensible, unspeakable; forever was such a long time…

“Forever, yeah. I’m sorry.” He turned away to look at his parents; they were ready to leave without him. “My parents say it’s to get away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. It’s stressing them out, or something. I’m sorry.” He repeated.

Weatherstorm dearly wanted him to stay. He was his only friend, the only pony with whom he could talk, communicate, connect: they were outcasts both, one and the same, against the world and all the badness and sadness that dared to steal their happiness away. Derky was the only pony who understood him, just as he was the only pony who understood Derky: they were each others' lighthouse beacons burning through the darkness and the cold white ice, but in one fell swoop, the fire was put out and smothered with a damp white cloth, the white of the sky. Weatherstorm felt physically sick, and tears sprung like leaks in his eyes.

Derky could not bear to look at him, but he forced himself to be strong. “I want to stay. More than anything, ever, but it’s decided. I thought I’d told you sooner. But it’s okay,” He smiled. “You can come visit me whenever you want.”

That was a lie. Derky’s parents, his mother in particular, hated Weatherstorm and he knew it. That much was no secret. This was an official cutting of ties, a final goodbye, the last sayonara. And even as tears sparkled in his blue eyes like crystals, Weatherstorm scowled inwardly. He hated Derky’s smile. He hated it, hated it, hated it. That stupid, lopsided, whole-hearted grin. Was that meant to make him feel better? Stupid idiot. Stupid, stupid fool. Let him go; he didn’t need him. Let him go to his new home and his new surroundings of green and brown and the azure skies in the mornings and the golden skies in the evenings and the snow, the nice snow, in the winter, and the rain in the fall and the colour that shone along the skyline when it stopped. Let him go, and leave him alone, for Weatherstorm didn’t need him. Weatherstorm needed nopony.

He threw his hooves around the ginger-maned colt, and tears came freely now, seeping into the thick, brown coat of his friend. He was unsure of who shed the most tears in that particular moment, but he’d wager it was himself.

Derky broke away and, silent as a ghost, he slunk back and rejoined his parents and faded away into the shining white.

Weatherstorm stood alone by the gates. They moaned like lost souls as they swayed. His family were out of view. Derky was gone, forever, it seemed.

The sun set and, and the white clouds ushered in the moon.

The little colt cried his tears alone. Alone, alone, alone in the white void.

Weatherstorm’s voice wavered, then trailed off. It was evident that something was upsetting him, but Starfire had no idea as to what that could be. This could be attributed to Starfire not actually being conscious to hear the majority of his sombre tale. “Looking back on it, the day I took my first flying exam wasn’t a very good day at all.”

Starfire awoke with a grunt, and the blackened forms of his imagination stayed put for all of a second, as though to tease him and question whether they did indeed exist, or whether they did not. They shifted form the corners of his vision, and when he turned, they slipped away without a trace. Good riddance. His head span with the abrupt awakening, and his stomach churned violently. He swallowed his slightly acidic saliva and his stomach rumbled in protest. “W-what was that, sorry? I dozed off for a few minutes.”

Weatherstorm appeared irked somewhat. “Are you…” He hiccupped and made an attempt to cover his mouth, and he still seemed rather stunned as he sat there, soaking in cider. Obviously, he’d managed to forgot about the flagon he held in his right hoof. “…Telling me that I was talking to myself the whole time?” He added, “You couldn’t pass me a towel or something of the like, could you? There was a small error on my part.”

Ain’t no rest for the wicked.

And so the student teacher found himself on his hooves once more, this time in search of an instrument with which to cleanse the journalist of his sticky situation. The Pegasus was worse than a foal, of that there was no doubt, and the irony that Starfire, as a teacher, would spend a good portion of his life repeating the same actions he performed now with scaled down Weatherstorms was not at all lost on him. “I was awake for a good portion of that story.” He said, instead choosing to ignore the stallion’s self-confessed lapse of judgement. “I was resting my eyes.”

“Aren’t we all.”

Starfire didn’t get it. What he did get, however, was a dishcloth, soiled and dirty, with frayed fibres and worn colour. Obviously, it wasn’t as new as the rest of the abode, perhaps some odd family heirloom of Zecora's. It hung from the kitchen sink, draped across the dripping tap. The light from the window above shimmered through and illuminated the object like a holy grail.

It was almost automatic, like clockwork, for as soon as he pulled the cloth from its resting place, the dripping intensified and grew a little louder, more frequent.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

It wasn’t the tap. The window glimmered with tiny rain droplets. Barely noticeable, at least at first. But then another hit, then another, and before he knew it, the entire slab of glass was weeping, tears trailing down the transparent surface. The mingled into one before they slid off altogether, and the pattering intensified until it rose to a crescendo. The noise was all around them: the sound of water gently beating off of the treetops, and moistening the soil, and the moon gleamed intricately like a diamond amidst the jewelled fragments, beautifully distorted by the surprisingly natural phenomenon.

The blond-maned stallion had experienced rain a million times in his life, but not once did he ever think of precipitation as ‘relaxing’ or ‘peaceful’. And yet, his eyes grew as big and bold as the moon itself, and lay transfixed upon the droplets as they slid elegantly along the window and melded into one form. His muzzle grew slowly into a tender grin. The sound the water produced as it rushed overhead and pooled over the branches and slouched the leaves, gorged with rainfall, was exotic and foreign but familiar and comforting. No pony intervention: the rumours rang true. How very unnatural this bizarre forest was. What was even more bizarre was that this established unnatural occurrence was one of the most natural things the student had experienced.

“It’s raining,” he muttered, sparkling with radiance.

“So it is,” was the other’s reply. And then they said nothing for a long time, and the forest was silent, but for the pouring rain, and the sweet sound it made as it fell form the heavens and moistened the soil.

Starfire’s problems subsided at once: the stabbing pain in the pit of his chest, and the throbbing in his legs, the heaviness of his eyes – and the shadows and the dark, obliterated, made obsolete by the rainfall, it was no longer real nor relevant: only the rain remained. He felt soothed, safe, and happy. The lit fire cracked and popped in synch with the falling rain outside, and for the first time that night, everything felt as it should. With a sigh, he trotted back to his patient and lowered the towel upon his person.

It took the Pegasus a few seconds for his rolling, clouded eyes to find the object, and when he did, he simply balled the thing up in a bundle and dabbed under his eyes. “Thank you,” he announced, before following, “I knew that old sailor was telling the truth about the weather here. A journalist always knows when somepony is telling the truth. What a bizarre world in which we live; get used to one thing, life just throws you a curveball and tells you to suck it up.”

“Say what you will, but it’s a beautiful curveball,” Starfire smiled and sat by the fire. The heat it gave off warmed him to the core, and cast the room a rosy red. “It goes against everything I know, but I could get used to it, I suppose.”

“’A beautiful curveball,’” Weatherstorm repeated, “Alas, my good friend, I could not agree with you more.”

The day was bright and cheery, in theory, but Weatherstorm lived not in some fantasy world and he wasn’t a brainless fool. Today was, to him, grey and dull and sad. And still, it tried to deceive him, the ground, with its flowers and colours and ‘grass’, and the floor so solid he could feel it underhoof. He refused to believe any of it. No place could be so magical: none. Not today.

He’d come to see him off, his only friend. Come to see him off to his new home, his new school, his new life without him. Derky was free of Cloudsdale’s deadly shackles now: no longer would it ensnare him so, whilst Weatherstorm would do as he always did, and stagnate, this time by himself.

The little town was quite a beauty, and there seemed far worse places to make your personal residence. Trees lined the cobbled streets, beside the white-washed shops and cookie-cutter cottages. They swayed softly in the breeze – there was a slight breeze, he could recall. He’d never shaken like this before. It felt as though his fur and skin would slide off of his rattled bones, and he’d be left there, naked and vulnerable and frightened.

The residents greeted him and his mother as they made their way through the thriving market district, with a warm smile and small, delicate wave.

“Hello!” They would beam, “Fine day!” and “Wonderful weather we’re having!”

He wanted to live here at once, but he knew such an action was not likely to transpire. And for that, he hated them, those unnamed ponies. Their cheer and smiles and pleasantness. He stayed by his mother’s side, and hadn’t it in his heart to falter from the path. The world was so open, yet he felt so enclosed. All paths lead to the same outcome, in the end.

The air was thick down here, on the earth. It felt heavy and cumbersome but strangely comforting, and not at all like the choking, claustrophobic smog of Cloudsdale. The sun and the clouds seemed lustrous and new, so much so he barely recognised them at all, reshaped anew. A squirrel veered across their path, and his mother laughed and moved aside for the creature to scurry up the thick trunk of a golden tree, brown leaves already accumulating along the bottom. It was a very different world down here. Very different indeed.

Derky met them outside the schoolhouse, leaning lazily along the glaring white fence which ran the length of the school perimeters. The copper Pegasus, brown as the autumn leaves, rummaged through his rust-coloured saddlebags with genuine enthusiasm, but there was no worry about his furrowed features. Weatherstorm couldn’t blame him: he was, after all, starting a new life, meeting new ponies, exploring a new world, and for that he knew he could only pretend to, for his own sake, be so sad.

He looked up when he heard the approaching hoofsteps, and, flicking his wild, orange mane aside, he smiled his same goofy little smile. He wore its obscurity well. He didn’t seem at all surprised by their unexpected arrival: he welcomed it. “Hello, Mrs S,” he greeted Weatherstorm’s mother first, such was the done thing to do. “Hello, Weatherstorm.”

It was goodbye that was singing mournfully in his heart, and Weatherstorm knew it all too well. They were, after all, one and the same.

Weatherstorm’s mother spoke for her child. “G'morning, Derky. Where are your parents?”

“They’re not here,” he replied, still smiling his sad smile, “My mom is at home, making sure the new servants are getting the house ready. And my dad said something about, ‘scoping the local market.’”

Of course his father was. ‘To get away from it all,’ they said, ‘The hectic city lifestyle.’ The Bellrays did nothing unless they saw a profit, and it seemed Ponyville was the next small Equestrian town to fall prey to the couple’s money-making schemes. Whatever their plans for the new sleepy abode they called home, it interested Weatherstorm not. Obviously, it was important enough to tear his only friend from his grasp.

“And there’s nopony here at all to wish you good luck on your first day at your new school, my lad?”

“Nopony but you, Mrs S. Is that why you’re here?”

“’Weather wanted to see you, and wish you good luck.”

Her colt stepped out from behind her legs, and bowed. Weatherstorm’s face was like a stone; cold and hard and grey. But there was life in his eyes, and they were locked on Derky, alight with something, but it was indecipherable whether it was vengeance or jealousy or sorrow or the whole darned lot. He didn’t attempt to speak, to wish him good luck and say goodbye, for he knew the words would never come. He had some dignity, and he wanted Derky’s last impression of him to be proper. The placed their hooves on each other’s shoulders, and squeezed tightly.

"G-goodbye." The blue one choked out. His voice might have been lifted by the breeze and sent spiraling off like a kite. He couldn’t remember.

Derky’s smile was gone now, and his face was barren. “Why? I’ll see you again. Positive.”

Were it so easy.

The bell, nestled like a giant in the great, shingled spire of the schoolhouse, tolled, signalling the start of the school day. It was like a crack of thunder and twice as demanding, and shook the rolling plains the building was perched upon. Derky spoke when it rang for the ninth, and final, time.

“Classes are starting soon. I have to go.”

He walked off then, and slipped away from Weatherstorm’s touch, and he knew at once that this time it was final. Halfway before he reached the single wooden door of the pleasant, peachy, primrose pink schoolhouse he turned and, with a grand sweeping motion, he waved.

“Aren’t you going to wave back, honey?” Weatherstorm’s mother asked under her breath.

He did not.

The noise was unbearable, and Weatherstorm’s head began to throb furiously. Foals laughed and played in the school grounds, their voices high and shrill and joyous. Their parents chatted and murmured by the gates, and cheered their children goodbye, wishing them all a fun and safe day. There was another voice, that of a colt’s, shrill as all the others, emanating from behind the building: it sounded as though he were telling jokes. How could anypony tell jokes on a day like today? A horrible, miserable, solemn day? All these noises mingled into one big mess of sound, like a low, buzzing drone. But one noise stood out amongst the rest.

“Oh! Excuse me, darling.”

It caught his attention at once, and almost as though he were in a trance, Weatherstorm stopped dead, and his muscles locked up. The voice’s master stood out from behind him, and into his vision for the very first time.

She was stunning, that much was immediately obvious. Petite and delicate, her horn small and round and perfect, like her nose, her eyes big and bold and captivatingly deep. “I didn’t quite see you there. I’m afraid to say I almost knocked you over.”

She gave him the slightest embers of a smile then, and the heat that emanated off her pearly white teeth was magnificent. “Sorry again.” Her mane, velvet purple, blew wistfully in the wind, swirling in hypnotising little circles, but never enveloped her face. She waited for a response. “You don’t talk much, do you?” What a beautiful voice she had: soft and wonderful and as willowing as her mane, it reminded him of roses and lavender and all the other plants he had heard of, but never been fortunate enough to be in contact with. “Are you new here?”

“No, no,” replied Weatherstorm's mother to the filly, “We’re only visiting.”

“Oh,” The filly appeared somewhat surprised, and a little disappointed. “I heard tell that we were receiving a new classmate today. I do so like meeting new ponies, and, perhaps in time, bringing out their own, unique styles.”

There was something about the way she talked that mesmerized the colt: never before had he heard such a wonderful way with words, and her accent emphasised what she was saying just-so. Had he had the time, he could simply have listened to her all day, and all notions of seeing Derky off were instantly forgotten as he basked in her presence.

Derky’s stomach was in knots by the time he ascended the short flight of steps, up to the front door of the school, and the gateway to his new life. The door was being held by a cheerful, magenta-coated mare, her mane bedraggled and her braces glaringly bright. She beamed at him and ushered him inside. She introduced herself as Cheerilee, the new student teacher, and that her younger sister also enrolled here. She seemed trustworthy, and pleasant, and when she took him by the hoof he made no attempt to protest. But he paused just before entering the classroom, and turned back to his friend, who was here to see him off.

Weatherstorm wasn’t even looking in his direction. He stood with his mother, talking to another, a filly. His face was blank, but his eyes were wide with wonder, and Derky could tell at once that he was smitten. And that made him smile. The butterflies in his stomach subsiding, he calmly walked into the classroom, still shaking, but urged on by his friend’s happiness. The door shut behind him.

The mysterious filly’s head snapped backwards at the sound of the door slamming shut. “Oh, look at the time. I must be off. It was a pleasure to meet you… Actually, I didn’t catch your name.”

“W…W-W-wea…” He mumbled, trailing off into a whisper.

“What a darling name. Absolutely fabulous to meet you, Wea.” She gave him one of those heartwarming smiles that burrowed deeply into his soul, and then she was off, running down the path to the schoolhouse, rounding the swings and the roundabout which turned to attention as she sped past, up to the steps and inside the building. As quickly as she came, she was gone.

“We’ll go now, honey,” Weatherstorm’s mother cooed. “Derky is already inside.”

The walk back through Ponyville seemed considerably shorter than the journey to the schoolhouse, and all the while, Weatherstorm uttered not a cheep. He thought, and thought, and thought, but no longer of his friend, but of the mysterious new girl. She was so pretty, so perfect. Underneath her saddlebags, brimming with opaque cloths and decorative fabrics, were three shining, pale blue diamonds upon her flank – he saw them only a moment, for diamonds were indeed fleeting, but they were as pretty as the filly who wore them. He was intrigued, and there was a stirring of emotions in his chest.

He couldn’t pinpoint exactly WHAT it was about her that moved him so. Was it the way she talked, the way she acted? The way that he had almost talked without stuttering when she was near? It was very confusing, but he simply could not tear his mind away.

The cart was right where they had left it, near the market square. The same ponies said hello to them a second time as they passed. The owner of one local establishment, Quills and Sofas, patted the foal on the head and gave him a free quill and inkwell. Something about a ‘promotional offer for his new business,’ and whilst his mother thanked the stallion and they exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, she did mumble that ‘She’d rather have a free sofa’ when they were out of earshot of the shopkeep. Weatherstorm would have complemented the stallion for daring to bring Equestria such a daring fusion, but alas, as previously stated, his mind was elsewhere. He half climbed, half stumbled into the back of the wooden carriage, and his mother shackled herself to the front, and in a moment’s notice, they were off into the sky.

Weatherstorm watched Ponyville sink further away into the distance, the sprawling town reduced to nothing but a pebble in minutes. She was still down there, somewhere. Who was she? Where did she live? He sighed, dreamily, and leaned against the back of the cart as it carried him away, back into the sky, where the blue and white merged. He’d known happiness now. He’d stood alongside it, and heard it whisper in his ear. It was a physical entity, happiness, something he could touch, that existed of this world.

It was nightfall when they got back to their home in Cloudsdale. They lived in a less than stellar area of the floating city, but whilst the terraced, cloud-brick houses were featureless and cramped and claustrophobic, the streets outside never lost their white sheen.

His father and brother were already there as they trotted in through the front door of the residence, and they sat by the kitchen window, father and son, hooves around each other and dinner in their laps, watching the activity outside. The great coliseum of Cloudsdale, domed and oval and always bustling with ponies, stretched out a mere layer below them, and from the kitchen window everything was visible: the try-outs for the Equestrian Games had begun, and nearly everyone in the city, young and old, wanted to be on the team. Huge sconces lit up the darkened sky like hundreds of miniature suns, and illuminated the Pegasi below, each one zipping and zooming along with a gigantic smile plastered across their faces. The stadiums were full to breaking point, and others were in the streets, cheering wildly like things possessed. One pony, adorned with the distinctive navy uniform of the Wonderbolts (Weatherstorm could not for the life of him identity which member it was – he had no interest in such things) soared past the window in a trail of smoke, so blazingly fast that the window shuddered and rattled in the pane. This caused a collective ‘whoop’ of joy and adrenaline from mother, father, and son.

The other, the ‘guest’, rolled his blue eyes. How could they find this entertaining? He’d rather watch paint dry than be subjected to such foolishness.

All three sat in a row on the windowsill, their shadows cast lengthily along the room by the flickering candle that rested on the small dining table. They huddled together, and warmed the fire in their collective family heart, and felt an overwhelming sense of belonging.

“Weatherstorm, come and sit down also, and we shall all watch the fliers together,” commanded his father.

“But dad, there is no room on the windowsill.” Soarin pointed out with a shrug. He was, indeed, correct. No room remained for poor Weatherstorm, not even if he tried and struggled and forced himself to fit, it would be in vain.

“He can pull up a chair, then.”

It didn’t take Weatherstorm very long to decline the generous offer. He gave no reason as to why other than yawning and rubbing his eyes.

“But sweetie, what about dinner?” his mother inquired. She did not want him going to bed with an empty stomach, after all.

He yawned again. His excuse was fool-proof.

His brother’s eyes lit up with greed and indulgence. “Dibs on his helpings!” Like that, he was stuffing the pre-cooked servings into his mouth and munching down upon the foodstuffs furiously.

‘Let him have it,’ Weatherstorm thought as he ascended the stairs, quill tucked safely under his wing. He stopped on the last step when he heard his father’s low whisper.

“There is something very strange with that boy, I tell you. Something very strange.”

“Leave him alone, dearie. It’s just a phase.”

“Ah, but when will he grow out of it? Will he ever fly at all?”

“When it’s his time.”

“Ack, I so wanted him to be…” The whisper trailed off, slinked away. “Soarin, watch this! Here they come.”

Weatherstorm didn’t move for quite some time. He stayed there, prone at the top of that narrow fluffy stairway, enable to move or feel anything. He wished he had tears left to cry, but he did not. They refused to come, abandoned him, cast him away like…

He knew now what he had to do. He felt it, deep in his soul.

Rushing up to his shoebox of a bedroom, he flung the door open and threw what few possessions he possessed from the little oak desk, huddled in the corner amongst the propaganda, the less than subliminal messages his parents had strewn around his room to urge him to fly: nothing he owned was truly his own. As Wonderbolt dolls and Olympian figurines scattered across the stained, white carpet, he turned to his bookshelf and yanked free his only tome from the surrounding Wonderbolt posters and Equestrian Games banners. The cover was a light blue, the same colour as his fur, and the title read, “Wonder Years: A history of the Wonderbolts.” His parents had bought him that for his birthday, and he’d yet to read the thing. Even if he could read the big, daunting words, he assured himself that it would be of no interest to him. And yet he stopped for breath before he began his work, as though having a change of heart.

‘No,’ he decided at last. ‘I must.’

With a tug, he ripped the first page from the book and it screeched like a living creature. He tore out the second page, and the third. Faster and faster and faster. With each and every shining white page he ripped free from the spine, he felt his confidence grow, like he was tearing free the badness from his life, and transforming himself a husk, ripe for re-programming.

He wasted no time when the book sat barren and lifeless. The pages were bundled like kindling and thrust upon the bench in unorganised piles. He sat down, hunched and gently dipped his quill into the inkpot. They wrote sparingly at school and he was not accustomed to such an apparatus and so he took it slow and steady. One stroke, one letter, then another stroke, another letter.

The filly was still playing on his mind, fresh as winter snow. From her mannerisms, she was wealthy, for she spoke well and looked well and had a bag of expensive things, more expensive than anything Weatherstorm had laid eyes on before. For this reason, he began to make a list, a scrawling of notes of everything he had ever learnt from his time in Derky’s parents' presence. They were well to do, as she must have been, and ponies like that only befriend other ponies of the same social standing, of which Weatherstorm was not. But he could fool her. He could pretend. He could write himself anew, with this holy pen and this heavenly paper, he’d re-write his life: past, present and future.

When he was satisfied with his notes, he started into his real work, his real mission. Stoke after stroke after stroke he delivered to those marked pages, for he hadn’t the privilege of blank sheets. His hoof was a blur as the writing became faster and faster and faster, and his maniacal grin grew stronger and stronger. He sat there, just a colt, into the long hours of the night, writing away his past and re-imagining himself rising as a new pony from the ashes of his figurative death like a phoenix. A pony with class, and style, with friends and a family that were just like him. And his mystery girl was there, worked skilfully into this intricate fabrication, a tale of fictional ponies and fantastical, wonderful lands, where magic wasn’t stale but fresh and free. He was all grown up in this story, and he had friends with jobs as did he, and they all shared flaws and faults but for her. The story was taking shape, growing, growing, and the old Weatherstorm was growing smaller and smaller. All he could do was write, guided by the light of the moon, filtering in through the open window.

So hard at work was he that he never noticed his cutie mark fizzle into his existence. There it sat upon his thigh like something of beauty; the image depicted a rolled scroll bound by the red ribbon, and the moon above it was a sentry guard, a caring mother, keeping watch over his secret and forever keeping it safe and enlightened. He had done it. After years of silence and obscurity, he’d found his voice, his method of communication. He would write forever, and sail to the moon on his paper yacht of literature.

The door creaked open a fraction and in slid two shadows. The foal’s parents found their youngest son asleep at his desk, quill still in mouth, and fresh ink blotched along the creases in the crumpled pages. They could do nothing but smile when they saw the cutie mark that lay upon his person. A tear formed in his father’s eye as his mother gently carried the bundle of fur to his bed, and delicately tucked him in. The colt stirred, but didn’t wake.

“Our little boy has done it,” she whispered to her husband. “He’s growing up.”

“I know he’ll never be strong flier, nor will he ever be Wonderbolt, but... Weather has to make his own choices. And if he’s happy, then so be it.”

His mother reached down and kissed his forehead. “Goodnight, my little pony.”

“Gute nicht, Weatherstorm.”

The door shut with a click behind them.

Weatherstorm didn’t stir once in his bed, rather he slept more peacefully that night than ever. Subconsciously, he pulled the sheets up to his chin and sighed in his slumber. They smelled of roses and lavender, and they were very, very white. A wonderful, beautiful white. As white as the snow he had heard so much about, or the clouds.

Even living amongst them, he’d forgotten that clouds could be that white.