Leaks of Heaven
By Matthew DePointe
In Fillydelphia, we always have a crappy weather system. Idiots are somewhat common, since they got rid of the I.Q requirement when Rainbow Dash became a member of the Ponyville Division. One pegasus that I think crawled through the bureaucracy of paperwork by chance was Risky Flyer. Sometimes Risky would have puffed the clouds too much and it would be like cotton candy, soft but hardly durable. And like cotton candy, any pressure would dissolve it. A million times I’ve told him to put more volume on it and a million and one times he didn’t listen.
Another certain pegasus I would have had to watch out for was Sunny Dayz. Not for her lack of common sense, however. Lets just say that knowing too many things about her have become a problem. Like knowing she loves hot coffee when she was coming out of my bed half naked towards me at 2 A.M in the morning. Or that her violet eyes would haunt the back of my mind when I was facing the ceiling on a very messy experiment that neither of us ever talks about again.
I’ve come to accept this. Not due to some high moral duty, but because I had no choice as the newest commander of this “elite” weather team. I didn’t have a great attitude most of the time, but I tried not to be a flankhole to other ponies. Like, one time when this douchebag cut in front of me at the bank, I didn’t swear and threaten to kill him with lightning. I wasn’t as happy as I thought I would be when I ended up doing that exact thing the day after. Still pretty sweet, though. That taught the guy not to be rude to me again.
I can’t say I loved my job. I wanted to become an attorney, but financial problems evaporated my dream. I got weather control job fairly easy. All you had to do was be alive and fly. The old routine of wind flying across my goggles, the hot sun shining off my light brown coat, and the sight from a bird’s eye view are really overrated. All I ever saw were ponies bargaining for apples, and the occasional peeing behind the trees. The earth and unicorn ponies all got to look up at our (mostly my) creation of the sky and its endless boundries. I never get the see it, as I’m mostly busy fulfilling my other duties (public television only comes on twenty-three hours a day!)
It’s not like putting the clouds in the right places was a genius’s job. All you had to do was calculate the chances of precipitation, pinpoint the areas using Standard Form, measure out the volume of each cloud, and then put the cloud in the general area – again, not that hard.
I’d still be doing the same routine if old Trotter didn’t fly right into a skyscraper when he wasn’t paying attention and got amnesia. The company tried to make this new adjustment work out, but fired him permanently after he got mixed up on the tornado schedule. A lot of ponies lost their homes and Trotter, the old fool, was found murdered in the dumpster behind his cottage. It was easy to bury him since all we had to do was slam the lid shut.
So I got promoted. I thought that I could just sleep all day at my desk since all I had to do was yell at the Sunny and Flyer once in a while for doing a crappy job. It was easy because I’ve been doing that ever since I became a weather pony. I handed the day’s schedule to Dayz, who tried to give me a convincing “I hate you, but I have to work with you” frown, but left me more confused than anything else. Obviously she likes me, but the problem is she is too obsessive. Maybe I should've slept with one eye open. I didn’t want to wake up to find Dayz on me…again.
I was taking one of my “executive naps" when I got a call from Flyer. Apparently, the wind was too strong to hold any of the clouds in position, and they needed my help to fight it off. Thinking about the next 3 hours of my life I would never get back, I flew over to the Financial District downtown. The skyscrapers were built during World Party Two, and since Fillydelphia was as broke as every city claims to be, it just fell into disrepair. The once shining windows of the old MacGyver Building were cracked. The roof of the same building had asbestos and at least ten bums from the street lived under them. I guess ponies just prefer to die inside so they don’t end up a plague of the world.
I met up with Dayz while I comically watched Risky get hit in the eyes by two blue jays. “I suppose this breeze wasn’t something either of you could handle?”
“Oh, its nice to see you working so hard at that new desk of yours. Risky and I are sweating our flanks off here while all you do is sleep. Did your drool finally reach the desk?”
“My saliva was ten feet long for your information. Almost a new pony record, too. Wanna see?”
“You’re disgusting, Seeker.”
I guess you can’t win them all.
“Is this why you called me over here? I don’t even feel any breeze.”
Sunny put her hoof in her mouth and tried to find the wind again. That only works in the movies, I thought of telling her. “I suppose it’s gone now. You may go back to your…important… duties, Commander.”
“Gladly”. I started towards headquarters when Flyer suddenly called my name.
“Seeker! I want to make sure this cloud I just puffed meets standards. Sunny is telling me it’s too light, but I think she is lying to me. What do you think?”
I don’t know why I did what I did. I knew it was too puffed, but I was suddenly very tired. It was almost 20 yards to my new comfy recliner and it might as well have been a mile. I had to take a nap right then, and the closest thing that resembled a bed was an oddly shaped white cloud.
I got on the cloud, closed my eyes, and was immediately surprised that it came apart. Who would have knew? I fell right through the cloud, and just kept coming down…
Half a century later, I was laid up in Urgent Care. Pain. Horrible, immediate pain. I apparently broke every bone in my body because I was attached to tubes and some monitors that made a beeping sound. I silently asked for the noise to be turned down and surprised a very scared nurse, who ran to get a doctor. I had no idea why she screamed. It might have been the idea of the dead coming back to life that scared her. When Dr. Hooves came in, he told me in a very serious tone of voice that they were just about to unplug life support. My liver would have been in some other guys stomach had I not woken at that very moment.
I asked if I was going to be okay now. Dr. Hooves said I had to wait for a few months for my bones to heal back up. He also gave me a piece of bad news. I asked him if he could just wave his magic screwdriver to fix me up, but all he said before he left was, “I’m not that kind of doctor.”
So for the next few months, high on morphine and pain killers, I got through my boredom. I’m sure Dayz came to visit me at least once. It was a little foggy in my memory , but I’m sure she told me when I was unconscious she was going to do me in that hospital room. I thought hospitals had lousy security, until they wrestled Dayz to the ground after the nurse found her on top of me…again.
I imagine that Risky visited at least once, too. I have no memory of that , but I would like to think he would, because this was all his fault. Besides watching T.V and drinking loopy drinks, I was stuck in this lousy bed. But, one day at a time, I got better and was well enough be released.. The first thing I decided to do was deliver the hospital bill to Risky’s cottage, since I definitely wasn’t paying 10,000 bits.
In one moment, I positioned my legs for takeoff. A habit that I had ever since I was a colt. Apparently, you never forget the most important rule of hoof: always spread your wings before you take off. My wings were up, my hooves on the ground started shaking, and I…couldn’t fly. A millisecond later, I started crying. I couldn’t fly ever again. Dr. Hooves told me that the fall has broken a vital piece of bone in my left wing months ago, but the morphine made it seem unreal. I could walk, but for me, I was handicapped for the rest of my life.
I cried in that spot for hours. I kept crying until I finally used up all the liquid in my body and made me re-examine my life. All I had to stare at now were the sky. It was set to rain that day, so dark clouds were positioned around the city. I didn’t care about the rain, as I was only staring at one cloud in particular. It was a white cloud, apparently forgotten of water, that looked and probably felt like cotton candy. I got as mad as I’ve ever been in my life. That bastard will never learn how to do it right! Even as he ruined my life, he still didn’t care enough to do a decent job.
I just kept staring at that one cloud. I’m sure that other ponies thought I was crazy, ranting incoherently at the sky. I got soaking wet, but all this pushed past my mind. I was livid and nothing was going to make me change my mind. It eventually stopped raining, and that’s when I saw it.
The cloud slowly disappeared, and all that took its place was a rainbow. I stopped ranting immediately and was mesmerized with the lights of seven colors. I have never seen such beauty before. I’ve heard and even read about this great phenomenon, but I have never been in the position to look at one. I was always off watching television, or setting out to complete my job on time. Or even sleeping.
Just as I was starting to get swept away forever by the lighted beauty, I saw several of the weather ponies push away the clouds. My rainbow disappeared .
“Stop! Please! Not now. My god, stop!”
I must have been a sight, being in hysterics over not letting the ponies I once yelled at to get back to work. I quickly realized what I was doing and stopped immediately. I felt the diminishing light ooze off me, or shall I say slime off me, or whatever. I was heartbroken. Why has my only hint of hope faded away so quickly? I knew only one thing after that. Someday, I was going to reach that light. A bird’s eye view is only as great as the sights you see with it. I had a new perspective. I realized that my life could be even better than what I dreamed. I could go back to college. I could go get my law degree.
Suddenly, I could travel to more places than I could flying. Places I could have only dreamed about were now in my hooves. One day, I was going to be able to see Risky and thank him for the gift he gave me. I ripped the hospital bill in half and walked on the ground for the first time in years.
Author's Note
I would like to say that my intentions for this story were strictly comically. If you feel disdain for me by killing an innocent old guy in the beginning of the story, I would like to point out I have a very warped sense of humor. Near the middle though, I started to swerve away from comical humor. If you have read my other stories, you probably noticed that this is the background story for Seeker. If you would like to read more about Seeker, please read my other stories. Please comment below.
P.S Yes, I intentionally added Dr. Whooves to the storyline. And yes, I was thinking of Derpy when I was writing about Risky. Maybe they will go on a date together!
P.S.S If absolutely nothing else, I hope you enjoyed the story and at least got a few laughs from it. I hope to be like Mark Twain, who only wrote for fun stories with no apparent motivation. Anything fan art related is welcome as I'm a terrible artist.
