Tonight is the night, a night you've been planning for months. You sit at the edge of Cloudsdale, watching the last of Luna's stars wink out as the moon sets in the west. There are only a few pegasi out at this time of night, some coming home from a night on the town, others leaving for an early morning appointment. You watch them for a moment, then you take a few calming breaths and wait for the last star to flicker out.
When the last one has disappeared from the horizon you slowly tilt back, hooves lifting off of the cloudy ground. In that moment everything is quiet as your vision fills with the fading light of the moon, and then you fall.
One, two, three...
The sound of the wind rushing past you fills your ears, your mane whipping around them. Your wings and legs are tucked in tight against the tendrils of the air currents trying to pull them away from your body. You try to hold your tail in as well but quickly give up letting it whip and flutter as it pleases.
Seven, eight, nine...
Your vision is now filled with the underside of Cloudsdale, framed against the lightening night sky. The rainbow falls catch your eye as they give off a soft light before dissipating into the air. You wonder for a moment if maybe you shouldn't have cast off by the edge of one of them. Then you decide that the splashes of random colors obscuring your vision would have been far less amazing then the view you have now.
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen...
As you continue to watch Cloudsdale grow smaller and smaller in the sky, you feel a nervous energy build up inside you as the adrenaline course through your veins. The sound of your heart throbbing dully in your ears competes against the sound of of the wind.
Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen...
At the last second a thousand doubts fill your mind, 'Did I calculate this right? Was Cloudsdale high enough for this? Will I be able to pull out of the dive in time? What if I hit the ground and break something?' But as soon as the doubts come you reign them in. You don't have time to worry, only act.
Twenty.
You give a great heave, spin your body around, and flare your wings out. You now look down at the ground as you start to glide. The wind now pulls and tugs at your feathers, rippling through them. For a second you panic as you wobble the trees below you growing close. You readjust your wings correcting your weight. Now your as steady as a rock, but the tree tops grow ever closer. Those nagging doubts come back, you grow unsure of yourself as you watch them draw near, perhaps Cloudsdale had been to close to the ground after all. Your heart beats faster, it takes all of your will to not pull out of the glide and flap your wings, losing so much of the speed you gained from the fall.
The branches at the top of the trees start to brush against your tail, like claws trying to grab you. Then all at once the brown and green of the forest drops away and the deep blue of a lake stretches out beneath you.
You let out a breath you didn't even notice that you had been holding as you glide lower, reassured now that everything was going just as you planned it to. You giggle a bit, the nervous energy still building up in your system.
You look ahead, taking in the view. This lake is remote, only a single log cabin rests at its edge, smoke is coming up from its chimney as its earth pony inhabitants start their day. You watch it as it passes you and then turn your attention to whats in front of you. The forest continues in front of you off on the far bank of the lake, and beyond its green canopy two mountains from the Unicorn Range stand side by side. Just beyond them the sky starts to glow as Celestia's sun starts to rise in the distance. As you glide lower and lower the sun stays hidden behind the curvature of the mountains, though the sky itself grows brighter filling with different shades and hues of red and purple.
You look over your shoulder as the landscape behind you is painted in brighter hues by the sunlight sweeping over it. You glide lower and lower, getting closer to the surface of the water, and regaining some of the speed you lost. Now you are so close to the lake that you can feel light splashes every now and again and see the wake that you leave as you glide by.
You take one last deep breath and tilt your body toward the water. An icy numbness immediately hits your wing and you feel the drag of the water pull you backward. Through the icy pain you hold your wing to the water as you rapidly lose speed, leaving a massive spray of water behind you. You hold like this for five second and then pull your wing out of the water, the cold numbness already subsiding. Using your forward moment to gain altitude once more, and to turn back around away from the sunrise. You watch as the sun hits the lake, turning its dark tepid blues a lighter shade. Then the sun bursts through the veil of water that you sprayed up into the air.
A rainbow leaps from the droplets of water for just a moment, its colors as vivid as any rainbow that you had seen produced from the cloudy city up above you.
All of your planning paid off, all the careful calculation you had done proved correct, everything has gone according to plan. You grin and let out a wild whooping yell of victory, flapping your wings, and punching the air with your hooves. The rainbow dissipates in a matter of moments, but it doesn't matter. You hover over the lake for a minute more, wings flapping as you laugh, all the tension drained from your body. An earth pony would say that they felt as light as air, but you're already feel lighter than the air itself.
Once you've calmed down a bit, you flap on over to the shore line and watch as Cloudsdale slowly drifts over the lake. You rest there for what feel like forever, letting out a bout of triumphant giggling every now and again. Eventually you stand back up, shake the dirt out of your fir and make you way back towards Cloudsdale, smiling and triumphant.
