The sun set the evening sky aflame to my left. It painted half the world in red and yellow and orange, and the purple blots of clouds formed silhouettes that slowly marched behind me as I flew. The darkness to my right was speckled with the faint light of stars peeking through the veil of night.

It was still warm, even thousands of feet above the earth. Autumn had yet to give way to winter, though beneath me I could see flocks of birds, numbering in the thousands, making their way to the south. Instinct guided them, and when the chill of winter did finally arrive, it would find us alone in the skies.

I watched the birds stream by in silence, occasionally tilting my wings to adjust my course. Even with the fading light of evening, my target was obvious. It loomed ahead of me. Streams of clouds gathered near its tips, caught on it like puffs of cotton caught on a tree’s thorns. Bits of them broke off and dissolved into the dry wind.

It was a mountain, if a mountain could fly. The largest city ever constructed by pegasi. Easily twice the size of Cloudsdale, and at the height of its fame and power it housed half the souls of our race.

But that was then. Today Derecho was nothing but a ruin, as lifeless as the mountain it imitated. For a thousand years it drifted, empty, slowly disintegrating under the weight of the sun and the hammering of countless storms. Only the strongest parts of it, the foundations, lasted. Only its bones.

I banked my wings and climbed around the fortress city’s perimeter. A cloud wall a thousand feet high still girdled the ruins, broken every hundred feet by guard towers whose empty eyes stared out at the evening sky. Cracks had formed over the centuries, and in places huge sections of the wall had broken and tumbled away, leaving jagged gaps hundreds of paces across.

Even in its ruined state, Derecho could fill me with awe. I remembered exploring it as a foal with my friends, each of us daring the others to fly closer to its center, where we convinced ourselves that ghosts still flew among its columns and towers. When the wind shrieked through its empty streets, we heard those ghosts crying out for us. When thunder boomed among its cliffs and halls, we imagined the hoofsteps of an angry god, come to punish us for our trespass.

I smiled at the memories. They rushed back as I circled Derecho’s crumbling towers. Some days, I would give anything to relive those innocent years with my friends, never caring for the future, never knowing the hardships it would bring. I could get lost in Derecho again, and float away with it on the wind, and live there forever chasing the ghosts and fleeing from the thunder and never growing old.

It was a harmless fantasy. I enjoyed it for a moment, then pushed it away as I would brush away a fly. My life may not have been perfect, but there were some things I wouldn’t give up for the world.

And there was one now. I spotted her from nearly a mile away. Her light blue coat blended with the dark grey clouds atop the highest point remaining in the city, but her white mane fluttered like a flag, and drew my eye as it had so many times before. I adjusted my course again and slowly glided toward her.

Alto looked up as I approached. She waited until I landed before giving me a tiny nod.

“Is that any way to greet your father?” I sat down beside her and brushed her cheek with mine. “We were worried about you.”

She snorted. “You mean you were worried. Does she even know I’m gone?”

That was a good question. I decided not to answer it. “She loves you, you know.”

“She has a funny way of showing it.”

I thought of Aurora perched on the nest above our house. Right now she would be settling in for the night, her eyes fixed on the north, waiting for a pegasus who would never return. I sighed again.

“She is filled with love,” I said. “That’s why she does it.”

“Humph.” Alto turned her head a fraction of an inch away.

“I mean it. She would do the same for you.”

The tips of Alto’s ears sagged for a moment, and she turned back to face me. We stared at each other in silence. Around us, the sky grew dark, and color fled from the world, leaving only mute shapes and stars.

Eventually, she spoke. “How did you know I was here?”

I put on a smile before answering. “He used to come here, too. Derecho was the first place he explored when he was old enough to fly without your mother or I at his wing.”

And long ago, it was the first place I explored, when I was old enough to fly without my own parents at my wing. I didn’t tell her that. There was no need.

“It’s beautiful.” She paused to look around at the ruined clouds. “Why don’t more ponies come here?”

I shrugged. “Not everypony feels the call.”

We were silent again. Off to the east, pale light filled the horizon as the moon began its slow ascent toward the heavens. The city below us became landscape of silver and jet.

“What if I said I did?” she asked. Her voice was soft and lonely.

A sharp pain jabbed at my heart for just a moment. I held onto the sensation as long as I could. His memory rarely hurt me, and I dreaded the day when it would cause me no pain at all. I didn’t want to forget.

“Well, ah...” I licked my lips. “What would you do?”

“Go out there, like him.” She waved a hoof at the wide, empty sky before us. “Look for him. Maybe find him.”

“He’s gone, Alto.”

“Maybe we haven’t looked for him hard enough.”

“You’re thinking like your mother.” It was the worst thing I could imagine saying to her. “You have to know when to give up.”

She shook her head. “I have to try. It’s what he would do.”

“And what if we lose you, too? What would that do to your mother?”

She was silent for a while. Light slowly returned to the world as the moon rose ever higher.

“I think she’d understand.” She brushed my cheek with hers and jumped away, her wings already outspread to catch the air.

I watched her go and clung to that pain in my heart, the ache that grew smaller and further away with each passing year. I watched her go, and my pain flew away, and the ruined city of Derecho drifted where only the winds could dream.

Author's Notes:

Written for prompt #339: Explorers of the Sky.

Third short featuring Alto, Cumulus and Aurora. A few years after the first.