---

A piece of chalk sailed across the room, violently impacting a green chalkboard. Cloud Hop swore and flew into his bed, stuffing his head under a cloud pillow and letting out a muffled scream of frustration.

Why couldn’t he figure this out?

Here he was, a pegasus pony in the Weather Research Center, with a degree in nonlinear cloud dynamics, and this stupid equation was getting the best of him. What a pathetic, useless pony he was - he couldn’t even do his job right. He was mumbling to himself under his pillow when there was a knock (or rather a dull thump) on his office door.

“Hey Cloud Flop!”

It was his buddy, Dusk Wingbeat. He’d normally be happy to see him, but not in his rotten mood. Rolling his eyes, he extracted his head from under the pillow and looked down.

“What?!”

Dusk winced, instantly sensing the tension in his friend’s voice. “Er, well, I finished work early today and I was gonna ask if you wanted to... hang out... maybe... But if you’re busy...” The dark-coated pegasus turned to leave.

“No, wait!” Cloud Hop flew down from his perch and landed in front of Dusk, “Celestia knows I need a break from this infernal bifurcation analysis. Where are you headed?”

Dusk grinned, “Oh you’ll see.”

---

While Dusk once again failed to pierce Cloud Hop’s stubborn refusal to consume alcohol, they still managed to have a wild night of chicken diving. Cloud Hop had been rather reluctant at first, but was eventually forced to admit that he was having the time of his life. Granted, he was also the only sober pony there, which gave him a bit of an advantage, but his general lack of flying ability kept the playing field (or lack thereof) even.

Now, however, he was back in front of that infernal chalkboard, his brain chewing away at all the potential solutions it had generated while he was out partying. None of them were working. Even worse, Dusk had run off with his new marefriend afterwards, and now all Cloud Hop could think about was that aching emptiness that no amount of friendship could fill. The cold, unrelenting, crushing loneliness of never having had a marefriend - heck, he’d never even kissed a mare.

He was a very lonely pony. As the chalk clattered to the lip of the chalkboard, he decided he was also useless. The sun had set hours ago, and now he was the only pony still in the research building. They let him sleep in his office, due to his unusual sleep cycle and his tendency to get inspiration at 3 AM in the morning. It was nice not having to worry about dashing back and forth between a house, but he was also utterly alone.

He sighed and let his wings lazily carry him over to one of the windows, resting a foreleg on the windowsill and letting the cool night air flow around him. Tonight smelled nice, as a breeze carried the scent of mist with a dash of mint over his nose. In the distance, he could hear the faint fluttering of wings, peppered around Cloudsdale. There was even a hole in the cloud cover, through which he could see Canterlot, illuminating the landscape like a campfire in the dark.

The serenity of the night did wonders for his creativity, but it also tore at his insecurities. If he wasn’t occupied by a problem, his mind would turn inward, and it would always end with him sobbing into a pillow until he was fast asleep.

He dropped down to a window lower down, where he kept a precious instrument perched on its lip. It was a portable piano, enchanted so as to play notes without the keys being connected to anything. He’d inherited it from his parents when he was just a foal, so he had no idea how old it really was, but it seemed ancient. He wasn’t particularly concerned about how antiquated or valuable it was, only that it gave him something to do when he was thinking. His hooves hovered over the keys, and he paused for the briefest of moments, before a melody came to him, born of the loneliness and frustration that filled him.

Music: Far From Home

His quiet improvisation filled the silent room with delicate tones, surprising him with an emotional depth he rarely managed. This was a nice song, he thought to himself, I wonder where it came from? He fantasized about some nightflier hearing his melody and pausing by his window to listen. He imagined himself pouring his heart out until he finally ended on a single, sombering note, his handiwork acknowledged only by a small nod from his anonymous audience, as they flew off to return to their duties.

No one heard him.

---

“Ugggggh, maybe if I formulate it as a maximum-flow problem? But would that be a circulatory flow reduction or...” Cloud Hop was mumbling to himself again. He groaned and flopped onto his bed, noting that his pillow was still damp after he’d cried himself to sleep last night - again. He stared up at the ceiling, momentarily fascinated by the intricate patterns the setting sun was casting along the clouds that made up the walls of his office. His progress on the problem was agonizingly slow. He had thought he’d come up with an answer earlier that afternoon, only to have it fail on the first edge cases he’d thrown at it.

Cloud Hop frowned, this was ridiculous. Suddenly he began to wonder what day of the month it was. A quick peek at his calendar below revealed that it was almost the end of winter. His heart skipped a beat - that was concerning. His mind raced as his past began to catch up to him.

---

It was his junior year of Flight Academy, and he had an awesome idea for a senior project. He’d come up with an idea for a different simulation algorithm, and he was dead set on implementing it. It would be a great setup for the simulation reconstruction he wanted to work on later, too.

Ok, so, the senior project hadn’t actually worked out too well. In fact, he was barely able to get a simulation algorithm working at all. He’d still get full points, of course, just for the effort, but he would need to spend more time ironing out the details. Next year, he’d get it working.

Well, now he needed to build a subsystem for the cirrus dynamics, but even though he hadn’t make much progress, it was totally ok. I mean, he was in the Weatherversity now, and had homework. Next year, he’d make some real progress.

Ok, his approach was wrong - he needed to restructure the core differential evaluation function, and probably refactor the Wronskian he had generated from his two stabilization equations. Once he did that though, he’d start to make some real headway on this thing. Next year, he could finally finish it.

Alright, so it turned out that the Wronskian had more wrong with it than he’d realized, and his numerical calculations were sensitive to the input parameters and liable to get unstable. But he’d totally fixed that, so now he could focus on finishing up the rest of the simulation and write a paper on it next year.

So, he ended up not actually doing much at all during his last year in Weatherversity, because of all the homework. But now he had a lot more free time, and he could totally get this working. Next year, things would work out.

Ok, maybe his job was taking up more time than he’d liked, and maybe he had discovered a critical error in one of the edge cases, but he’d figure out a way to fix it. Next year, he would finish this thing.

Next year...

---

Next year never came.

Cloud Hop clenched his jaw. It was never going to happen, was it? His eyes narrowed. I’ll inch closer and closer, never actually reaching my goal, never actually finishing anything, until I’m an old colt whose only memory of his dream is a faint wisp, filled with regret. No matter how hard he tried, no matter what he did, he was just too stupid to make it happen. He wasn’t good enough. He was a failure.

His tail twitched. An ancient memory from his childhood came screaming into his mind like a runaway steam engine. He was a young colt, and it was summer break. He was going to Flight Academy next year, but had been helping some ponies out with a cloud sculpting project. He remembered his last day on the job, when the project leader screamed at him. “You useless piece of crap! This project would have gotten faster if you just hadn’t helped at all! Just go! Get out of here and never come back!”

Useless piece of crap, that’s me. Useless, useless, useless, USELESS, USELESS!

Cloud Hop’s internal tirade was interrupted by nearly smashing into the floor - he was trembling, and his wings had started twitching instead of flapping. Luckily, his instincts were still intact, and he landed on all fours. He then immediately fell over, uncontrollably shaking, as his whimpers echoed through the empty hallways of the research center. The pegasus took deep, slow breaths. The shivers began to fade, and his wings began to obey his thoughts once again. The pegasus drifted up to his bed at an agonizing pace, until he abruptly collapsed on top of it.

An hour later, and Cloud Hop was curled up in a fetal position. A gooey substance dripped from what he called his “squishy cloud”. He could bring himself momentary bliss, but it would soon be replaced by a flood of cuddle hormones, and all he could cuddle was a cold pillow. He wondered just how pathetic and bucked up somepony had to be when touching themselves invariably ended with them sobbing into a cloud.

His crying echoed through the empty hallways of the research center. He wished that, just once, somepony would hear him, and walk in and ask him what was wrong. They would sit there, quietly listening to all his doubts and insecurities and everything that was wrong with him. Then, when he was done and whimpering on the floor, they would trot over and softly nuzzle him. “It’s ok,” they would say, “you’re not alone, everything will be alright.”

No one heard him.

---

The next day, Cloud Hop stared at a wall. Since his job involved lots of thinking, this was not a particularly unusual activity, so nopony really thought anything was out of the ordinary. As the day wore on, and the bustle of activity slowed to a crawl in the research center, Cloud Hop continued to stare at that wall, wondering how he’d managed to buck up his life so badly. Nopony offered to console him. In fact, barely anypony even acknowledged that he existed. Why would they? He was one of the problem solvers, he didn’t like being bothered even on a normal day. They didn’t know he desperately wanted to be bothered today. They didn’t know that his resolve had been broken, the very meaning of his existence brought into question. They just offered him a muffin during lunch hour.

He didn’t respond.

It was getting late, and much of the research staff had left for dinner. Cloud Hop was absentmindedly preening his feathers, his mind running on autopilot. He had just conquered one particularly stubborn feather when Dusk poked his head through the office doorway.

“Oh, hey Cloud.”

The pegasus stretched his wing and let it retract, but said nothing in response.

“Just... heading out the door, wondered if you needed anything...” Dusk frowned, his mouth frozen mid-speech, as if he wanted to say something, but instead he just shook his head. “Nevermind, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He was alone again.

The despondent pegasus lazily fluttered over to one of his windows, staring out into Cloudsdale’s expansive cloudscape as the sun began to near the western horizon. Long shadows played across the buildings, as tiny particles of mist were held by the long yellow rays, suspended in glowing sunbeams.

He didn’t even know what he wanted anymore. The years he’d spent toiling away at his personal projects were worthless. He would never finish them on time. Heck, he’d be lucky if he finished them before he had kids to worry about. That, of course, just reminded him of that empty black hole in his heart. As he looked out across the cloudscape, another, deeper scar began to throb. That forbidden desire, the lust for adventure, the insane drive to just fly away and never look back.

It was crazy, of course, he had no idea how to take care of himself outside the city. But still, that drive stayed with him, eating away at his sanity, a needle being slowly hammered into his brain. It was like an instinct, deep and vague, a feeling that resisted being looked at directly. But even then, there was something else. Something beyond even his hidden desire for adventure, a truth he had buried and tried to forget. As his life fell apart in front of him, that truth he so hated began to bubble up inside him, and he found himself whispering.

“You have wings. You could just... just...” Tears welled up in his eyes. Every word was another knife being stabbed into his bleeding heart. “fly away, right...”

The pegasus couldn’t finish the thought before bursting into tears, crying and whimpering on the windowsill, until his wails were reduced to sniffling, and he was able to collect himself. “You could just fly away, right now, if you wanted to.”

His heart felt like it was going to implode. He wanted to die. He wanted somepony to fly straight into his window kill him and make it all end. “You’re a pegasus, you have wings, the only thing stopping you from flying away, right now, into that very sunset, is... is...” Cloud Hop was struggling to choke out the words between sobs. He took several ragged breaths, “...is yourself.”

He collapsed into a heap onto his bed, crying profusely. He wondered if the janitor was still around, if she would notice his heaving sobs as he clutched his pillow like a terrified filly.

No one heard him.

Cloud Hop abruptly stopped crying. He sniffed and looked out the window again, then softly began to repeat himself. “You have wings, you can fly away, and the only thing stopping you is yourself.” He got up, tears dribbling down his cheeks, his voice rising. “You’re a pegasus! You can fly away to a better place, right bucking now, but you won’t, because you’re just too scared!” He slammed his hooves down on the windowsill, then simply hovered there, silently, for what seemed like ages.

Cloud Hop decided to go on a drift around the block.

---

The pegasus wafted around the back of the Weather Research Center, following nothing in particular, letting himself float along the natural air currents that sailed through Cloudsdale. Everypony was at dinner by now, and the airways were relatively quiet. The turmoil rushing through his head was ever so slightly calmed by the tranquility he found outside.

The sun had just begun to kiss the edge of the mountains in the distance when Cloud Hop found himself in front of Rainbow Dash’s grave. He stared at the magnificent cloud sculpture, depicting that brave element of harmony, a million times more awesome than he ever would be. His eyes watered as he stared at the last sunbeams illuminating her in brilliant, vivid orange. He knew what she’d tell him.

“What’s WRONG with you, man?” Rainbow Dash gestured at him with both hooves. “Stuff isn’t working out for you, ok, but you want to go out there, don’t you? You crave adventure.”

Cloud Hop stared at the ground in front of her. “I guess?”

“You GUESS?!” She trotted up to him and gave him a smack on the head. “Stop bumbling around with your life like you don’t know what you want! Look inside yourself! You know what you want, you’re just too scared to admit it!”

Cloud hop said nothing to the apparition as it admonished him.

“Deep down, you know exactly what you want to do. You want to tell that whole research facility to jump off a cloud. You want to fly off into the sunset, consequences be damned, and see the world. You want to live.”

“I guess,” Cloud Hop mumbled.

“But you won’t. What will your friends think? What will your family think? What if you get hurt? What if something goes wrong? What if the friends you visit don’t actually want you to visit? What if- What if- What if- JUST STOP ALREADY, JEEZ!”

Cloud Hop was whimpering now, though a passerby would have simply assumed he was simply a relative of Rainbow Dash.

“I... Look, dude, I know this is hard for you,” Her voice seemed to soften, as though she was really there, talking to him across the impassable barriers of time. “Twilight was an egghead too, and it was hard to get her to let go, but seriously, you know this stuff isn’t working out. Whatever you’ve been doing, it didn’t work. What do you eggheads do when something doesn’t work? You try something new!”

Cloud Hop looked up at her, tears staining his cheeks.

“Life is kicking you in the balls right now. It’s winning, and you can’t win whatever game you’re playing against it right now. So change the game. Change the rules. Do something different.”

Cloud Hop gulped down his tears and wiped his eyes.

“Somepony once told me, we don’t regret the things we did, but rather the things we didn’t do. You only get one shot at living, kid. Don’t waste it doing something you don’t want to do.”

Part of him knew Rainbow Dash probably never would have said something quite that profound, but the rest of him didn’t care. He turned around and jumped into the air, hovering in front of the cloud statue as the red orb slowly began to descend into the distant mountains.

He made a choice.